Wataru Watanabe is a Japanese manga artist best known as the creator of the long-running cycling manga Yowamushi Pedal. Born in Nagasaki Prefecture in 1971, Watanabe first gained recognition early in his career when, at the age of fifteen, his work received an honorable mention in Shueisha’s 22nd Hop☆Step Manga Award. Throughout the early 1990s, he continued to receive recognition in awards such as the Akatsuka Award, though he did not immediately achieve serialization.

Before finding success with his own series, Watanabe briefly worked as an assistant to Hirohiko Araki, the creator of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, during the publication of Vento Aureo. Following a period where he stepped away from pursuing a manga career to work as an illustrator for a broadcasting company, he later returned to Tokyo to focus on being a manga artist. He began publishing under the pen name Wataru Watanabe in 2002 with the series Seifuku Nuidara. In the years that followed, he created several other works, including the manga adaptation of Densha Otoko: Demo, Ore Tabidatsu yo and the fantasy comedy series Majimoji Rurumo.

Watanabe launched his most significant work, Yowamushi Pedal, in 2008, serializing it in Akita Shoten’s Weekly Shōnen Champion magazine. The series follows Sakamichi Onoda, a shy otaku who discovers his natural talent for cycling and joins his high school’s bicycle racing club. Yowamushi Pedal became a commercial and critical success, winning the 39th Kodansha Manga Award in the shōnen category in 2015. The series has since expanded into a media franchise with multiple anime television series adaptations, original video animations, animated films, live-action television dramas, and a live-action feature film.

As the original creator, Watanabe is credited for his work as the basis for these adaptations. For the anime Yowamushi Pedal and its sequels, including Yowamushi Pedal: Special Ride, the series is consistently credited as being based on his original manga. He is also credited for the anime Ani × Para: Anata no Hero wa Dare Desu ka, though specific details on his contribution to that particular project are less prominently documented. Beyond Yowamushi Pedal, his other notable manga works include Majimoji Rurumo and its subsequent sequels, as well as the spin-off series Yowamushi Pedal: Spare Bike, which focuses on supporting characters from the main story.

Watanabe’s artistic identity is closely tied to his personal passion for cycling, a theme that is central to his most famous work. His dedication to the subject is recognized beyond the manga industry; in 2015, he was named a Bicycle Master by a Japanese study group for the promotion of bicycle usage. He continues to publish Yowamushi Pedal, which has been compiled into numerous collected volumes and remains a defining work in the sports manga genre.