Kurashina Ryou

Ryou Kurashina is a Japanese former comic artist and author who dropped out of Meiji University. Maakou and Jibiki Kazuya were once his assistants.

He specializes in stories about Mizu shoubai, euphemism for the night-time entertainment business (or, as he calls it, "Neon-gai mono"). He is a big name in this field, and is said to be the founder of Neon Gekiga. He used to write gekiga under the name Tsukasa Kei (also written original manga under the name "Takashi Tsukasa"). In addition to writing original manga, he also runs the editorial production companies "Free Hand" and "Office Kei" under his real name, Keiji Ooba, and is contracted by publishers to produce entire magazines or parts of them.

In 1971, he made his debut as a manga artist under the name "Takashi Tsukasa". He worked mainly for youth magazines, and produced a number of hit works, mainly bunkara stories, and has created many long-selling works,(representative works include "Yabou no Mure," "Aizu Otoko Uta," "Takeda Miken Hoshi," and "Shouwa Baka Hayashi"). In particular, "Yabou no Mure" is famous as a super-long hit that ran for 28 volumes. More than 40 of his works have been published in tankobon form.

However, he gradually began to feel stalled as a comic book author, and decided to abandon writing. As a result, he changed his name to Ryo Kurashina and restarted his career as a full-time cartoonist. His first original work was the "Akujo no Kagami" series with Issaku Wake. Many of his original works are Neon Gekiga with female protagonists, and his representative works include "Jotei", "Jouou," and "Yaou", which were made into TV dramas. He also writes not only neon stories but also economic stories such as "DAWN" and "Zenibana", maiko stories such as "Jotei Hanamai" and "Hanna rito", and entertainment stories such as "Joyuu" and "Ai Ningyo".