Takahashi was born in
Niigata, Japan. Although she showed little interest in manga as a child, she was said to occasionally
doodle in the margins of her papers while attending . She co-founded a manga club at high school together with
Yōko Kondō, who also became a manga artist. Takahashi's interest in drawing manga herself did not start until later. --> In an interview in 2000, Takahashi said that she had always wanted to become a professional comic author since she was a child.
Initial works During her university years, Takahashi enrolled in
Gekiga Sonjuku, a manga school founded by
Kazuo Koike, author of
Crying Freeman and
Lone Wolf and Cub. Under his guidance, Takahashi began to publish her first
dōjinshi creations in 1975, such as
Bye-Bye Road and
Star of Futile Dust. Koike often urged his students to create well-thought out, interesting characters, and this influence would greatly impact Takahashi's works throughout her career.
Katte na Yatsura and Weekly Shōnen Sunday Takahashi's professional career began in 1978. Her first published work was the one-shot ''
(Those Selfish Aliens''), which garnered her an honorable mention at that year's
Shogakukan New Comics Contest. During the same year, Takahashi published
Time Warp Trouble,
Shake Your Buddha, and the
Golden Gods of Poverty in
Weekly Shōnen Sunday magazine, a publication which would remain the home to most of her major works for the next twenty years.
Romantic comedies and short stories In 1980, Takahashi started her second major series,
Maison Ikkoku, in
Big Comic Spirits magazine, which had an older target audience than her previous work. Because of the influence of the
New Wave movement of manga in the late 1970s,
seinen manga, or comics marketed toward young men, became more open to including
shōjo manga aesthetics, or the aesthetics of comics marketed toward young women, and to hiring female manga artists.
Maison Ikkoku is a
romantic comedy, and Takahashi used her own experience living in an apartment complex to create the series. Takahashi managed to work on the series on and off simultaneously with
Urusei Yatsura. She concluded both series in 1987, with
Urusei Yatsura ending at 34 volumes, and
Maison Ikkoku at 15. During the 1980s, Takahashi became a prolific writer of
short story manga. Her stories
Laughing Target,
Maris the Chojo, and
Fire Tripper were all adapted into
original video animations (OVAs). In 1984, during the writing of
Urusei Yatsura and
Maison Ikkoku, Takahashi began a series published sporadically in
Weekly Shōnen Sunday called
Mermaid Saga which ran for 10 years, until 1994. The series was partially released in two
wide-ban volumes, with the complete story released as a set of
shinsoban, or special edition, in 2003. Another short work of Takahashi's to be published sporadically was
One-Pound Gospel. Takahashi concluded the series in 2007 after publishing chapters in 1998, 2001, and 2006. One-Pound Gospel was adapted into a live-action TV drama.
Other works In 1987, Takahashi began her third major series,
Ranma ½ . Following the late 1980s and early 1990s trend of
shōnen martial arts manga,
Ranma ½ features a
gender-bending twist. The series continued for nearly a decade until 1996, when it ended at 38 volumes.
Ranma ½ and its anime adaptation are cited as some of the first of their mediums to have become popular in the United States. During the latter half of the 1990s, Rumiko Takahashi continued with short stories and her installments of
Mermaid Saga and
One-Pound Gospel until beginning her fourth major work,
Inuyasha. Unlike the majority of her works,
Inuyasha has a darker tone more akin to
Mermaid Saga and, having been serialized in
Weekly Shōnen Sunday from 1996 to 2008, is her longest to date. On March 5, 2009, Rumiko Takahashi released her one-shot
Unmei No Tori. On March 16, 2009, she collaborated with
Mitsuru Adachi, creator of
Touch and
Cross Game, to release a one-shot called
My Sweet Sunday. Her next manga series,
Kyōkai no Rinne started on April 22, 2009. This was Rumiko Takahashi's first new manga series since her previous manga series
Inuyasha ended in June 2008. She concluded it on December 13, 2017, with a total of 398 chapters, collected in 40 volumes.
Urusei Yatsura,
Maison Ikkoku,
Ranma ½,
Inuyasha, and
RIN-NE are all published in English in the United States by
Viz Comics. The 1989 re-release of
Urusei Yatsura was halted after only a few volumes were translated, but a reprint in a 2-in-1 omnibus format began in 2019 . Rumiko Takahashi started a new manga series entitled
Mao in
Weekly Shōnen Sunday issue #23 released on May 8, 2019. ==Animation==