Kotaro Takata is a Japanese manga artist known primarily as the illustrator of the popular zombie apocalypse series Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead. The series, which began serialization in Shogakukan's seinen manga magazine Monthly Sunday Gene-X in October 2018, is a creative collaboration where Haro Aso serves as the writer and Takata provides the artwork. The narrative follows Akira Tendo, an exploited office worker who, upon the outbreak of a zombie pandemic, experiences liberation rather than fear and creates a bucket list of one hundred things to accomplish before becoming a zombie himself.

Before his work on Zom 100, Takata created the manga Hallelujah Overdrive!, which was serialized in Monthly Shonen Sunday from 2009 to 2015. His artistic identity is marked by a distinctive and vibrant use of color, particularly the use of bright, neon tones that stand out within the horror genre. In an interview, Takata has stated that he was influenced by the color aesthetics of the series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and aimed for a pop culture approach on the first volume cover of Zom 100 to strike a balance between being scary and approachable, deliberately omitting zombies to appeal to a broader audience including women.

The character designs in Zom 100 reflect Takata's iterative creative process. The protagonist Akira Tendo was initially envisioned with sharper eyes that gave him a scheming impression, but Takata redesigned the character with rounder eyes to better convey a nice and optimistic personality. This adjustment ultimately made Akira the easiest character in the cast for him to draw, in contrast to the muscular Kencho, whom he has cited as his favorite character to illustrate. Regarding the depiction of the zombies themselves, Takata has drawn inspiration from the movements of the undead in the Korean film Train to Busan, finding those movements interesting to capture in a static manga format.

The significance of Zom 100 extends beyond its source material. The manga has been adapted into an anime television series produced by Bug Films that aired from July to December 2023, as well as a live-action film that premiered on Netflix in August 2023. Takata has expressed appreciation for the anime adaptation, noting how the characters closely resemble his artwork and commenting positively on the dynamic movement and colorful depiction of the zombies. He specifically looked forward to the adaptation of a scene involving a shark, which he found interesting in both its anime and live-action versions. The official website for the anime lists both Haro Aso and Kotaro Takata as the creators of the original work.

Takata has shared that he maintains a personal bucket list, though it does not contain one hundred items. Examples from his list include making fresh soba, putting on a Captain America shield, and riding the Batmobile from the Robert Pattinson version of the film. He credits the core charm of Zom 100 to writer Haro Aso's message about life's brevity and the importance of taking risks, encapsulated in the quote that there is never enough time to do all desired things whether one dies today or sixty years from now.