Minato Koio is a Japanese manga artist and original creator born on May 12, 1968 in Gifu Prefecture, Japan, and currently resides in Tokyo. He is male and has worked under the name 恋緒みなと (Koio Minato) as well as the all-kana version こいおみなと. Koio is best known for his work as a manga author and illustrator, though his career has also extended into character design for video games and serving as the original creator for anime productions.

His career as a manga artist began in the late 1990s. One of his earliest credited works is the manga series Ringo, which was published by Kodansha starting on March 24, 1997, and ran for three volumes. This was followed by the manga IO in 2000 and Nippon Furusato Chinbotsu in 2006. In 2007, he created the manga Alto, which has been noted for its historical and school settings. Beyond his own original series, Koio has worked on adaptations of video game properties, including illustrating the manga adaptation of Star Ocean: The Second Story in 1998.

Koio is credited as the original creator of the anime Mahō no Shiho-chan, a two-episode original video animation (OVA) released between 1996 and 1997. In addition to providing the original work, he also wrote the screenplay for the second episode of this OVA. The title is one of the few anime productions directly associated with his manga work.

In the video game industry, Koio began working as a character designer in 1998 on Star Ocean: The Second Story, a role he reprised for subsequent versions of the game, including Star Ocean: Second Evolution and Star Ocean: The Second Story R. Through this work, he collaborated with development studios such as Tose, Tri-Ace, and Gemdrops, as well as publisher Square Enix. This facet of his career highlights a versatility that spans both print and interactive media, establishing him as a creator whose artistic identity is closely tied to the late 1990s and early 2000s era of Japanese pop culture.