Tomihiko Morimi is a Japanese novelist recognized as the original creator behind several acclaimed anime works, including The Tatami Galaxy, The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl, The Eccentric Family, Penguin Highway, and Tatami Time Machine Blues. He was born on January 6, 1979, in Ikoma, Nara, and is a graduate of Kyoto University, where he completed a master’s degree in agriculture. His deep connection to Kyoto, where he continued to reside, heavily influences his writing, with the city serving as the primary setting for most of his stories.

Morimi made his literary debut in 2003 with the novel Taiyo no To (Tower of the Sun), which won the 15th Japan Fantasy Novel Award. His writing is often characterized by a style of magical realism, blending the mundane details of everyday life with surreal and fantastical elements. A recurring focus in his work is the world of Kyoto’s university students, whose experiences with campus life, romantic fixations, and personal anxieties are depicted with a humorous, verbose, and distinctly sophisticated narrative voice often referred to as the "Morimi style". Common themes include the liminality of festivals, the search for meaning in youthful obsessions, and the surreal adventures that arise from seemingly ordinary circumstances.

Many of his most famous novels have been adapted into anime, bringing his unique vision to a wider audience. The 2010 television series The Tatami Galaxy was based on his 2004 novel Yojōhan Shinwa Taikei. The 2017 film The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl adapted his 2006 novel of the same name, sharing characters and a similar aesthetic with The Tatami Galaxy. The Eccentric Family, a series about a family of tanuki (shape-shifting raccoon dogs) in Kyoto, was adapted into two television anime seasons, the first in 2013 and the second in 2017, based on his novels from 2007 and 2015. His 2010 novel Penguin Highway was released as an animated film in 2018. More recently, his 2020 novel Tatami Time Machine Blues, a crossover with his earlier work and a screenplay by Makoto Ueda, was adapted into a web anime series in 2022.

In addition to these, his other works, such as the novels Taiyo no To (Tower of the Sun) and Kitsune no Hanashi (Fox Tales), have also been released in English, further establishing his bibliography outside of Japan. Morimi has received significant industry recognition, including the Japan SF Grand Prize for Penguin Highway in 2010 and the Shugoro Yamamoto Award for The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl in 2007. His consistent success in adaptation highlights his significant role as a source of distinctive, literate, and imaginative material in contemporary Japanese animation.