Nakatani's first complete project was produced around the time of her high school graduation, after which she continued drawing until her art met a professional standard. which she published under the pseudonym . Nakatani's professional
pen name, Nio, is the Japanese term for
little grebe, which is the official bird of her home prefecture of Shiga. As the little grebe is known as a long-lived bird in Shiga, she stated that she hopes it will grant her a "long and successful career." However, Nakatani admitted that in reality, she came up with "Nio" by scrambling her real name, and the relation to the bird was a coincidence. According to Nakatani, she became first interested in drawing manga about girls when reading
Yun Kōga's manga
Loveless, "which has no girls in it" and led her to realize "I might like stories about girls." In 2014, Nakatani submitted her one-shot work
Farewell to My Alter, which she had previously self-published, to the
Dengeki Daioh magazine.
Farewell to My Alter appeared in the magazine in October 2014 as Nakatani's professional debut, winning her a Gold award in the 21st
Dengeki Comics Grand Prize contest. When Tatsuya Kusunoki, an editor of the manga magazine
Dengeki Daioh (in which she had professionally debuted with their publication of her previously self-published short story
Farewell to My Alter) approached her at a
doujinshi convention to ask if she wanted to draw a yuri series for the magazine, Nakatani accepted the offer, and went onto create
Bloom Into You for the magazine. and concluded on September 27, 2019, after a 45-chapter run. The series had over 1,000,000 copies in print in Japan as of 2019, and placed 4th in the 2017 Next Manga Awards from
Niconico and Da Vinci. It has been adapted into an anime series and a stage play, and received spinoffs in the form of light novels and anthology comics. After the completion of
Bloom Into You, Nakatani expressed that she wanted her next work to be of a genre other than yuri, as she felt she had already written the yuri story she wished to write. Nakatani's next work,
Kami-sama ga Machigaeru, was announced in
Dengeki Daioh on September 26, 2021, and began serialization on October 27, 2021, concluding on November 29, 2023, after 22 chapters. It was simultaneously published digitally in English by
Yen Press under the title
God Bless the Mistaken. On September 27, 2025, Nakatani's current work,
Kimi wa Shuumatsu, began serialization in
Dengeki Daioh. Nakatani has collaborated as an illustrator with light novel writer and
Adachi and Shimamura author
Hitoma Iruma, first on the
Bloom Into You light novel spinoff series
Regarding Saeki Sayaka, as well as his original novels
End Blue and
Shoujo Mousou Chuu. ==Works==