Takako Shimura (born October 23, 1973) is a female manga artist primarily known for her manga on queer topics. She currently lives in Tokyo.
Her debut manga was a 1-chapter story from 1997 called Boku wa Onna no Ko. It was about a world where all the sexes are suddenly swapped. This manga helped inspire Wandering Son, which features the story as a School Play that the closeted trans girl protagonist Nitori writes in middle school.
Two of her manga - Sweet Blue Flowers and Wandering Son - have received Animated Adaptations. Shimura also collaborated on the character designs for Aldnoah.Zero (which is why the anime used her art style) and provided the character designs for Battery's anime adaptation
Works
- Shikii no Junin (1997–2002)
- Seikatsu Ijisho (2003, one-shot)
- Boku wa, Onna no Ko (2003)
- Donika Naru Hibi (2002–2004)
- Love Buzz (2002–2005)
- Wandering Son (2003-2014)
- Sweet Blue Flowers (2004-2013)
- Kawaii Akuma
- Toaru Hi (2004–2005)
- Route 225 (Comic-Book Adaptation of a novel, 2007–2008)
- Fusho no Musuko (2009)
- Awajima Hyakkei (2011-)
- Musume no Iede (2012-)
- Okite Saisho ni Suru Koto wa (2013-)
- Wagamama Chie-chan (2014-2015)
- Koi Iji (2014-)
- Sayonara, Otoko no Ko (2016—)
- Even Though We're Adults (2019-)
Takako Shimura's works provide examples of:
- Art Evolution: Her art style developed heavily in the early 2000s. It started off unpolished and simplistic but smoothed out and was more-or-less in its current style by 2004 (around the fourth volume of Wandering Son and start of Sweet Blue Flowers)
- Mukokuseki: Shimura prefers to draw characters with realistic character designs. Most characters have black or brown hair with brown or black (which is stylized dark brown) eyes. Hair is also kept to realistic designs (with the only vaguely Anime Hair designs being within the realms of hair styling).
- Only Six Faces: Shimura admits to having problems with individualizing character designs. It's usually fine within the series' itself, but fans who read various series will notice characters from different manga look like characters from another (with some straight up lifting character designs with minimal edits).
- Queer Media: Many of Shimura's manga deal with gay and transgender characters.
