Yana Toboso is a Japanese manga artist born on January 24, 1984, in Warabi, Saitama Prefecture, who currently resides in Yokohama. She made her professional debut in 2004 with the one-shot 9th, published in Square Enix's Monthly GFantasy magazine. Her first serialized work was Rust Blaster, a six-chapter story that ran from 2005 to 2006 and was later collected into a single volume.

Toboso is best known as the creator of Black Butler, known in Japanese as Kuroshitsuji. The manga began serialization in Monthly GFantasy in September 2006 and remains ongoing, with its chapters collected into numerous tankōbon volumes. The series is set in Victorian-era England and follows the young Earl Ciel Phantomhive and his demon butler, Sebastian Michaelis, bound by a Faustian contract. Toboso is known for her detailed historical research into the period, incorporating authentic elements of architecture, fashion, and social structures into the narrative. She has also woven the Japanese language of flowers, or hanakotoba, into the series as a layer of visual and thematic symbolism.

The success of Black Butler led to an expansive multimedia franchise with Toboso maintaining significant creative involvement. She has been credited as the original creator for numerous anime adaptations, including the original television series and subsequent projects that follow the manga more closely. These include the anime film Black Butler: Book of the Atlantic, the original video animation Black Butler: Book of Murder, and the television anime seasons Black Butler: Public School Arc and Black Butler: Emerald Witch Arc. Her involvement has extended to providing consultations on character designs, story arcs, and overall fidelity to her original work across these adaptations.

Beyond Black Butler, Toboso expanded her creative portfolio by collaborating with Aniplex and Walt Disney Japan on the mobile game Disney Twisted-Wonderland, which launched in 2020. For this project, she served as the original concept creator, main scriptwriter, and character designer, reimagining iconic Disney villains as students in a magical academy setting.

Under the pen name Yanao Rock, Toboso previously created works in the boys love genre, including the one-shot Glamorous Lips published in 2006. She has since ceased creating works in this genre to focus on her main series.

Toboso is a self-taught artist who did not attend university, developing her skills through persistent practice from a young age. Her artistic style is characterized by intricate line work, detailed costume and architectural rendering, and a gothic aesthetic. The meaning behind her pen name reflects her creative approach: Yana is derived from a Japanese word meaning unpleasant or detestable, chosen to signify her aim to create stories centered on themes opposite to dreams, hope, and friendship, while Toboso refers to a hinge, representing something essential. She is known to be a private individual who rarely makes public appearances and often represents herself in author notes with a small devil character.