Yokusaru Shibata moved to Tokyo after high school and spent years as an assistant to several established mangaka—Makoto Kobayashi, Harold Sakuishi, and Jun Watanabe—before debuting in 1992 with Tanikamen in Young Animal magazine.
He's best known for Air Master, a long-running series that got a TV anime adaptation in 2003. The work draws heavily from his own high school experience in the amateur wrestling club, and fans often note how authentic the fight choreography and wrestling details feel. He eventually jumped from Young Animal to Weekly Young Jump because he felt creatively restricted, saying he "couldn't draw what he really wanted to draw."
Beyond manga, Shibata has dabbled in game design work—he did character designs for the PS Vita game Samurai & Dragons. He's also a self-described tokusatsu and Super Sentai enthusiast, particularly into the Super Hero Taisen films.
Interestingly, he wanted to be a professional shogi player as a kid. That passion never fully went away; he played exhibition matches against pro shogi players and received a letter of appreciation from the Japan Shogi Association in 2008.
His other major series, 81 Diver, was popular enough to spawn a live-action TV adaptation, plus games for PS2, DS, and Wii, along with pachinko machines that featured animated scenes from the manga.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
