Yusuke Murata

Who is Yusuke Murata?

Yusuke Murata is a Japanese manga artist. He is best known for illustrating the football manga Eyeshield 21, in collaboration with writer Riichiro Inagaki. During this series' run, his art style developed dramatically.

He was once the assistant and apprentice of Takeshi Obata of Hikaru no Go and Death Note fame. He had a number of one-shots published in Weekly Shonen Jump namely Partner, Samui Hanashi, Kaitou COLT and of course, Eyeshield 21 which was then serialized starting in Weekly Shonen Jump No. 34 2002. At the age of twelve he entered a contest to design Mega Man villains, and won twice, with the final designs adapted from his sketches. The game credits list his name as responsible for Dust Man from Mega Man 4 and Crystal Man from Mega Man 5, as well as a thanks credit at the end of Mega Man 3.

He wrote and drew a short story, Madofuki Park, for the March 2008 issue of Jump Square, about a futuristic window washer. He also created the one-shot Blust!, centered a boy who was experimented on, obtaining extraordinary powers, its power source being curry. Yet another one-shot created by Murata was featured in the Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in 2010; Minds, a story about a self-sacrificing soldier during a war, set some time in the future.