Mikio Murai (, 28 April 1952 – 16 April 2022), professionally known as Mio Murao () was a Japanese manga artist and writer, active for about 50 years.

Life and career

Born in

Tokushima is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located on the island of Shikoku. Tokushima Prefecture has a population of 682,439 (1 February 2025) and has a geographic area of 4,146 Square kilometre, km2 (1,601 sq mi). Tokushima Prefecture b ...

, Murao started his career as an assistant of

Kimio Yanagisawa is a Japanese manga artist. His real name is pronounced the same way, but is written with the kanji . He graduated from Niigata Prefectural Muramatsu High School two years prior to Yoshifumi Kondō. After graduation, he attended Wakō University ...

, and made his official debut as a mangaka in 1972 with ''Kappa Love Love Daisakusen'' (別冊少年ジャンプ), which was published in '' Bessatsu Shōnen Jump''. In 1974, he was awarded the

Tezuka Award The is a semi-annual manga award offered by the Japanese publisher Shueisha since 1971, under the auspices of its '' Weekly Shonen Jump'' magazine. It awarded new manga artists in the Story Manga category. Its counterpart award, Akatsuka Award ...

for ''Twin Banzai''. Murao had his breakout in the early 1980s, with the rabu-kome (romantic comedy) series ''Munasawagi no Houkago'', ''Kekkon Game'' and ''Binetsu My Love'', which were serialized in ''

Weekly Shōnen Magazine is a weekly ''shōnen'' manga magazine published on Wednesdays in Japan by Kodansha, first published on March 17, 1959. The magazine is mainly read by an older audience, with a significant portion of its readership falling under the male high ...

'' and ''GORO'' and had multiple film and television adaptations. From the 1990s, he focused on the

seinen is an editorial category of Japanese comics marketed toward young adult men. In Japanese, the word means "youth", but the term " manga" is also used to describe the target audience of magazines like '' Weekly Manga Times'' and '' Weekly Man ...

genre and on more adult themed manga. After a long illness beginning in 2019, Murao died on 16 April 2022, at the age of 69. His last work was the manga ''Yami ni Daka reru Onna'' (闇に抱かれる女, "A Woman in the Dark").

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Murao, Mio 1952 births 2022 deaths People from Tokushima Prefecture manga artists 20th-century Japanese writers 21st-century Japanese writers