Yoshihiro Togashi

Legendary manga artist Yoshihiro Togashi is known for being the man behind two of the biggest selling manga series of all-time: YuYu Hakusho and Hunter x Hunter. The former ran for just four years, between 1990 and 1994, and has sold nearly 80 million copies. The latter has run since 1998 has sold in excess of 84 million copies. Togashi won the prestigious Shogakukan Manga Award in 1993. Although it was announced that it would be going on a hiatus in late 2022, Togashi announced the completion of its 401st chapter in early 2023.

As a child, Togashi was only a casual manga artist, and growing up, he studied to become a teacher. However, whilst at university, he submitted some of his work to the Weekly Young Jump magazine, and his success snowballed from there. In 1986, aged 20, he won the much-respected Tezuka Award for his manga, Buttobi Straight, and two years later, he received an honourable mention in the first-ever Hop Step Award selection.

In 1990, Togashi launched the hugely successful YuYu Hakusho, which became both a prize-winning manga series and an internationally acclaimed anime series. The manga ran for a comparatively limited 19 volumes but remains one of the highest-selling manga of all-time almost 30 years after its conclusion. Along with the similarly successful follow-up, Hunter x Hunter, it helped to influence a generation of artists, including the likes of Masashi Kishimoto and Nobuhiro Watsuki. It’s a mark of Togashi’s status that when he joined Twitter in May 2022, he gained 1 million followers in 24 hours and has now become the platform’s most-followed manga artist.