User:Morganstedmanms/Hiroya Oku

Hiroya Oku (奥 浩哉) is a Japanese manga artist who is the creator of, , , and.

Summary
Born in Fukuoka, Japan, he debuted as a manga artist in 1992, with his first series, Hen. The series became quite popular, spawning a live-action TV series in 1996 and an OVA anime series in 1997. Oku is an avid movie watcher and figurine collector, collecting life-like 1/6th and 1/4th scale figures of various famous actors. In 2000, he begun his longest and most famous work, GANTZ, which used a mix of traditional art and CG backgrounds. Gantz was adapted into a 26 episode TV anime in 2004, which animated the first 8 volumes of the manga. It was also adapted into in 2011, and a high-budget CG movie titled  in 2016. After 2016, any future GANTZ adaptions were put on hold as Oku had given the rights to Hollywood executives who wanted to make an American GANTZ film. In 2021 it was announced that Sony Pictures would be adapting a live-action Gantz film directed by Julius Avery.

Since the ending of GANTZ in 2013, Oku has gone on to work on other shorter series, including and, the first of which was adapted into a TV anime by  in 2017. His favourite films are, , , , and. His favourite manga series are, , , , and.

Gantz TV
Character designs by Naoyuki Onda (恩田 尚之).

Inuyashiki TV
Character designs by Naoyuki Onda (恩田 尚之).