Who learned to draw from Takeshi Obata?

Obata learned the trade the standard Jump way, as an assistant, working under artist Makoto Niwano after he joined the Weekly Shonen Jump staff in the late 1980s. The influences above him are visible in the work: he has said he re-read Shotaro Ishinomori's Cyborg 009 over and over as a child, and the cyborg grandfather of his debut series is that childhood reading made literal.

His own studio then produced a remarkable generation. Nobuhiro Watsuki, creator of Rurouni Kenshin, Kentaro Yabuki, creator of Black Cat and co-creator of To Love Ru, and Yusuke Murata, the artist of Eyeshield 21 and later of One-Punch Man, all trained under Obata before their own serializations. The detail-first, fashion-aware style that defines Obata's pages filtered into each of their very different series.

The recognition followed. In 2008 Obata was nominated for an Eisner Award as Best Penciller/Inker for Death Note, a rare nomination for a manga artist who has never written his own hit, and whose entire reputation rests on the drawing hand this wing is about.