Keisuke Itagaki

Career

As a teenager, Keisuke Itagaki looked up to karate master Mas Oyama and threw himself into training. He earned a second-degree black belt in Shorinji Kempo. Wanting a job where his intense physical discipline would be recognized, he spent five years in the 1st Airborne Brigade of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force. While serving, he took up amateur boxing and even entered the National Sports Festival. A line in Eikichi Yazawa's autobiography pushed him to aim for a manga career at age 24, even though he had been drawing since he was three. After five tough years, he joined Kazuo Koike's Gekiga Sonjuku in 1987, signing up for both the manga artist and manga author courses. Since he was already married with kids, he took the classes—which cost 180,000 yen total—very seriously.

Itagaki debuted in 1989 at age 32 with Make-Upper, which ran in Young Shoot and Comic Shoot from Koike's Studio Ship. He started Baki the Grappler in Akita Shoten's Weekly Shōnen Champion in 1991. In 1996, he began adapting Baku Yumemakura's Garōden novel series, later creating the spin-off Garōden Boy in 2004. Starting in 1998, he has put out irregular one-shots in the Waga Seishun no Narashino Dai-ichi Kūtei-dan series, based on his Self-Defense Force days, in Young Champion and Weekly Shōnen Champion. A collection of the four published so far came out on January 1, 2023. He also designed a special costume for Bruce Irvin in Tekken 5 in 2004.

In November 2010, Itagaki launched Dogesen, a manga about dogeza, with his friend and fellow artist Rin Kasahara. Itagaki came up with the idea, attended plot meetings, and supervised, while Rin wrote and drew it for Weekly Manga Goraku. But disagreements broke up the partnership in October 2011. Rin kept the series going under a tweaked title in another magazine. Itagaki then started Daku Jotaro in the October issue of Play Comic, writing it while Seisaku Kano handled the art. Even though the second chapter said it would move to Young Champion, the series never continued. Instead, Itagaki decided to start a new dogeza-themed manga. He began Shaman in the December issue of Weekly Manga Goraku. A book he wrote on dogeza was released by Gentosha on September 26, 2013.