Tsutomu Nihei was born on February 26, 1971, in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. His background in architecture, which he studied in the United States at the Parsons School of Design in New York, profoundly influenced his artistic style. After working in construction, he returned to Japan to pursue a career in manga, initially serving as an assistant to the manga artist Tsutomu Takahashi.

Nihei made his professional debut with the one-shot Blame, which won the Jiro Taniguchi Special Prize in the Afternoon Four Seasons Award in 1995. He launched his first major series, Blame!, in Kodansha’s Monthly Afternoon magazine in 1997. The series, a science fiction narrative set within a virtually infinite and heavily architectural megastructure, established his reputation for a distinctive style that combines detailed, often wordless visual storytelling with cyberpunk and post-apocalyptic themes.

Following Blame!, Nihei created several other manga series, including NOiSE (a prequel to Blame!), Abara, and Biomega. In 2004, he worked on Wolverine: Snikt!, a five-issue limited series for Marvel Comics, and later contributed to the Halo Graphic Novel, the only Japanese creator to do so. His work Knights of Sidonia, serialized from 2009 to 2015, marked a shift toward more character-driven storytelling and became his most commercially successful series, winning the Kodansha Manga Award in the general category in 2015.

Nihei’s works have seen significant adaptation into anime. Knights of Sidonia was adapted into an anime television series beginning in 2014, and a theatrical film, Knights of Sidonia: Love Woven in the Stars, was released in 2021, with Nihei serving as chief supervisor. Blame! was adapted into a theatrical anime film released in 2017. Nihei was the original creator and writer for the original anime project Kaina of the Great Snow Sea, which premiered as a television series in 2023 and was followed by a sequel film, Kaina of the Great Snow Sea: Star Sage.

A recurring element in his work is the appearance of the fictional Toa Heavy Industries, a corporate entity that appears across multiple series. His architectural training is consistently reflected in his work through the depiction of massive, intricate structures and environments. His artistic influences include French artist Jean Giraud, known as Moebius, Swiss artist H.R. Giger, and films such as Blade Runner. In 2016, Nihei received an Inkpot Award for his contributions to the fields of comics and science fiction.