Tsukasa Hojo

Famous creator of the manga series Cat’s Eye, City Hunter, and Angel Heart, Hojo has been passionate about comics since childhood thanks to his relationship with a friend who aspired to become a professional cartoonist. After his debut in 1980 as a professional mangaka on Shonen Jump with the piece Ore wa Otoko da!, he began a close collaboration with Nobuhiko Horie that would lead him to the publication of Cat's Eye in 1981. The piece, focusing on the stories of three able and agile thieves chasing down works of art, immediately conquered the public and brought him immediate popularity, both for the themes addressed and for the, then unique, choice to present female characters as protagonists in a market where the female figure was relegated to a secondary role. The success was huge: in 1983 Tokyo Movie Shinsha would go on to create an anime that would be broadcasted in Italy in 1985, as well as in France, Spain, Germany, Brazil, China and the Philippines. In 1985 he debuted the investigative series City Hunter on the Shonen Jump. Its success at home was even greater than that of Cat’s Eye and definitively established Hojo as the leading artist of Japanese comics. In 1987 the Sunrise studio created an anime series of City Hunter which was exported to dozens of countries. In 2001, based on the consolidated success of City Hunter, Hojo created Angel Heart, a spin-off of the series set in a parallel future. Angel Heart also resulted in an anime series by TMS Entertainment and broadcasted in Japan from 2005 to 2006, though it is currently unpublished in Italy.