Who is Hajime Isayama?

A designer-school graduate from rural Ō’ita whose first series outsold almost everything.

Hajime Isayama was born on 29 August 1986 in Ōyama, Ō’ita Prefecture, now part of Hita City. He drew manga in high school, studied in the manga design program at Kyushu Designer Gakuen, and at twenty moved to Tokyo, working in an internet café while he chased serialization. His apprentice pieces are documented: the 2006 Attack on Titan one-shot (Magazine Grand Prix Fine Work award), Heart Break One (Special Encouragement Award, 2008) and Orz (selected work, 2009).

Attack on Titan was his first serial, and he drew all of it: every chapter and every one of the 34 covers. The honours followed the sales: the Kodansha Manga Award (2011), a Harvey Award for the English edition (2014), the Noma Publishing Culture Award (2021), and a special Fauve at the 2023 Angoulême festival, where the French comics world treated him as one of its own. His post-Titan work has been deliberately small: one-shots, including a 2014 collaboration with Spriggan’s Ryōji Minagawa. His hometown has not forgotten him, either.

Attack on Titan guidebook OUTSIDE cover — **THE AUTHOR’S GUIDEBOOK**OUTSIDE, the official guidebook built around Isayama’s world, its characters and its creator.

THE SHELF HE LEFT BEHIND

Works, briefly

Attack on Titan (2006)

The one-shot. A complete short version of the Titan story, drawn three years before the series. Reprinted for modern readers as a bonus with the anime’s first Blu-ray.

Attack on Titan (2009–2021)

The series. 139 chapters in Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine, 34 volumes, 140 million copies. Few first serials in the medium’s history sit in this class.

Attack on Avengers (2014)

An eight-page Marvel crossover written by Isayama for Brutus magazine, later reprinted in English inside the Colossal Edition line.

The hometown ambassador

In November 2014 Hita named Isayama its Tourism Ambassador after an Attack on Titan event drew some 2,500 people to the city.

Who is Hajime Isayama?

THE SHELF HE LEFT BEHIND

THE FIRST WORD