Hajime Isayama

Hajime Isayama is a Japanese manga creator born on August 29, 1986, in Hita, Oita Prefecture. He attended Kyushu Designer Gakuin in Fukuoka, where he studied manga. Before his major serialization, he submitted a prototype of Attack on Titan to Kodansha’s Magazine Grand Prix; the work received the Fine Work award in 2006. That early version already used a walled human settlement and man-eating Titans, the central premises that he would expand for publication. Isayama later brought the project to Bessatsu Shonen Magazine, Kodansha’s monthly magazine. Its first chapter appeared in the magazine’s October 2009 issue, released in September 2009. Attack on Titan ran there until its final chapter, chapter 139, in the May 2021 issue. Kodansha collected the series in 34 tankobon volumes. Its story begins with Eren Yeager, Mikasa Ackerman, and Armin Arlert inside territory protected by enormous walls. After the Colossal Titan helps breach Wall Maria, Eren joins the military and fights Titans. The narrative progressively reveals that the walls conceal colossal Titans and that people beyond the sea, including Marley, shape the conflict. Eren’s power to transform into the Attack Titan and the inheritance of Titan powers drive the later political and military struggle. The manga became a major international success and was adapted into television anime by Wit Studio for its first three seasons; MAPPA produced The Final Season. The adaptation’s first season premiered in 2013. Isayama’s own manga work also includes short pieces created before Attack on Titan. Heart Break One appeared in the 2008 issue of Magazine Fresh, and Orz appeared in the same magazine in 2008. Killing Pawn was another early work. These projects show that he had developed his style before the long-running series established its full world. In 2011, Attack on Titan won the Kodansha Manga Award in the shonen category. Isayama drew the serial himself while Kodansha published it, and the conclusion prompted extensive discussion because it resolved Eren’s campaign through the catastrophic Rumbling rather than a conventional heroic victory. In 2021, he said in a Kodansha interview that he had struggled with the ending and apologized to readers who were disappointed. The franchise subsequently received further adaptations and spinoffs, but Isayama’s original 34-volume manga remains the primary text. Its combination of horror, siege imagery, shifting loyalties, and revelations about history made him one of the best-known manga artists of his generation.