Minami Ozaki

Who is Minami Ozaki?

Minami Ozaki is a Japanese manga artist, cartoonist and illustrator of novels born on February 27, 1968 in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. She is famous for her best-selling manga series Zetsuai 1989, which is considered to have redefined the Shōnen-ai/Yaoi genres in the late 80s/early 90s. Her old penname is Ryo Minami, but in 1986 she changed her penname to Minami Ozaki. She sometimes uses other pseudonym — Minami Himemuro.

In 1988, her first manga series, Chūsei no Akashi, was serialized in Margaret Comics.

Her success with Zetsuai 1989 has led Helen McCarthy to describe Ozaki as "one of the queens of shojo and shonen-ai manga". Through her Captain Tsubasa dojinshi, Ozaki "played a strong role" in "revamping the boys-love genre" in the 80s. Her hallmark is "prolonged erotic psychodramas" which has earned her a "cult following" through Margaret. Matt Thorn describes her as being a "mania-oriented" artist, with "extremely stylized" character designs and page layouts with a "dream-like quality". Her style had an enormous influence on later shōjo writers.