One of the mangaka most responsible for the prevalence of
Cyber Punk themes in anime and manga since the early 1980's,
Shirow Masamune specializes in stories about technology-gone-berserk and
post-apocalyptic madness.
Beginning his career with such works as
Intron Depot and
Black Magic M-66, Shirow struck gold with
Dominion, one of the funniest
dystopian fantasies ever written — which was later turned into the successful
OAV series
Dominion: Tank Police. The more serious
Appleseed manga was also successful.
However, he is currently best known for his hard-SF saga
Koukaku Kidoutai, known overseas as
Ghost in the Shell; not only did
GITS have an extremely successful
print run, but it was turned into a
film by
Mamoru Oshii and adapted — with help from Shirow himself — into a TV series (
GITS: Stand-Alone Complex) that has run for two seasons.
In 2008 he worked on
Real Drive with
Production I.G., which have been responsible for the GitS series
Stand Alone Complex. An other
Production I.G work he participated in was
Sampaguita, the 3rd game of the interactive anime
Visual Novel series
Yarudora, providing character design. He was also involved with character design for
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon; the true extent of his involvement beyond drawing official artwork (
below his normal skill level in places) for the game is unknown, but the in-game character designs do suggest he did have quite the influence on the general style direction.
Shirow's art style is characterized by an obsessive attention to technical detail (rivaling that of his contemporary
Katsuhiro Otomo), and a similarly detailed — if unrealistic — approach to character design.
Shirow is
a very private and reclusive individual, having often been called the J.D. Salinger of Japan; like many
mangaka, he is best known by his pen name. All that anyone knows about Masanori Ohta, the man behind the pseudonym, is that he lives in Hyogo, Japan (where he moved after losing his house in the 1995 Kobe earthquake), and that he was formerly a high school teacher.
He is a fan of
FN guns and the FAMAS.