Kōji Miura
Description
Kōji Miura is a Japanese manga artist born on March 28, 1995, in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, and is a graduate of the Department of Arts and Culture at Musashino Art University. She is best known as the original creator of the popular romantic drama series Blue Box, which received an anime adaptation. Miura began her professional career while still a teenager, initially working under pseudonyms including Satoshi Yūki and Amami. Her debut work was the one-shot manga Yoku to, created under the name Satoshi Yūki, which earned a special honorable mention at the 90th Weekly Shōnen Magazine Awards in 2013. The same year, another one-shot titled Thirst won an honorable mention at the 91st Weekly Shōnen Magazine Awards.
Her first serialized story was Aozora Rubber, a sports-themed manga about table tennis that ran on the Manga Box app from 2015 to 2016. She gained significant attention with the one-shot I Love You, My Teacher, which won a contest on the Magazine Pocket website in 2017 before being published in Weekly Shōnen Magazine. Due to positive reader response that described the work as cute and erotic, it was serialized in the same magazine from 2018, later moving to Magazine Pocket for the remainder of its thirty-three chapter run. Following this success, she published several one-shots, including Haru's Repayment in Weekly Shōnen Magazine and Parasol Alliance under the pseudonym Amami, the latter of which won the Drawing King Gold Award from Shueisha in 2019.
Miura launched the one-shot version of Blue Box in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 2020, which led to the full serialization of the series beginning in issue 19 of the same magazine in April 2021. Blue Box follows the story of Taiki Inomata, a badminton player at a competitive sports high school, and his romantic feelings for the older basketball player Chinatsu Kano, who comes to live under the same roof as him. The series blends elements of sports manga with romantic comedy and drama. It won the Global Prize at the 2021 Next Manga Awards and also placed eighth in the Best Print Manga category. The work has been noted for its beautifully drawn, clean, and realistic art style, which some critics have observed resembles shōjo manga more than a typical shōnen series, as well as for its grounded and detailed handling of romantic tropes. Miura has stated that she was inspired to become a manga artist after reading the series Bakuman in middle school, and she is also a graduate of the first term of Jump’s Manga School. Her work is recognized for its place within Weekly Shōnen Jump, contributing a prominent romance-focused narrative to the magazine's lineup.
Her first serialized story was Aozora Rubber, a sports-themed manga about table tennis that ran on the Manga Box app from 2015 to 2016. She gained significant attention with the one-shot I Love You, My Teacher, which won a contest on the Magazine Pocket website in 2017 before being published in Weekly Shōnen Magazine. Due to positive reader response that described the work as cute and erotic, it was serialized in the same magazine from 2018, later moving to Magazine Pocket for the remainder of its thirty-three chapter run. Following this success, she published several one-shots, including Haru's Repayment in Weekly Shōnen Magazine and Parasol Alliance under the pseudonym Amami, the latter of which won the Drawing King Gold Award from Shueisha in 2019.
Miura launched the one-shot version of Blue Box in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 2020, which led to the full serialization of the series beginning in issue 19 of the same magazine in April 2021. Blue Box follows the story of Taiki Inomata, a badminton player at a competitive sports high school, and his romantic feelings for the older basketball player Chinatsu Kano, who comes to live under the same roof as him. The series blends elements of sports manga with romantic comedy and drama. It won the Global Prize at the 2021 Next Manga Awards and also placed eighth in the Best Print Manga category. The work has been noted for its beautifully drawn, clean, and realistic art style, which some critics have observed resembles shōjo manga more than a typical shōnen series, as well as for its grounded and detailed handling of romantic tropes. Miura has stated that she was inspired to become a manga artist after reading the series Bakuman in middle school, and she is also a graduate of the first term of Jump’s Manga School. Her work is recognized for its place within Weekly Shōnen Jump, contributing a prominent romance-focused narrative to the magazine's lineup.