Ito, Akira

Original "Yu-Gi-Oh!" creator Kazuki Takahashi first tried to break into the manga business in 1982, but success eluded hiim until "Yu-Gi-Oh!" debuted in the Japanese "Weekly Shonen Jump" magazine in 1996. "Yu-Gi-Oh!"'s themes of friendship and fighting, together with Takahashi's weird and imaginative monsters, soon became enormously successful, spawning a real-world card game, video games, and three anime series (two Japanese "Yu-Gi-Oh!" series and "Yu-Gi-Oh! GX").