Kentaro Yabuki was born on February 4, 1980, in Kochi Prefecture, Japan. He is a Japanese manga artist and illustrator who began his professional career in the late 1990s. Yabuki has cited Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball as a major influence on his drawing style, and he was a mentee of Takeshi Obata, the artist behind notable series such as Death Note and Hikaru no Go.

Yabuki's first serialized manga, Yamato Gensoki, had a brief run in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1998. He achieved his first major success with Black Cat, which he both wrote and illustrated. The series was serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump from 2000 to 2004, sold over twelve million copies in Japan, and received an anime television adaptation by the studio Gonzo.

Following the conclusion of Black Cat, Yabuki began a long-term collaboration with writer Saki Hasemi. Together, they created To Love-Ru, which was serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump from 2006 to 2009, with Yabuki serving as the illustrator. The franchise continued with a sequel, To Love-Ru Darkness, which ran in Jump Square from 2010 to 2017. Both manga series have over sixteen million copies in combined circulation and were adapted into multiple anime television series and original video animations. Yabuki also worked as an illustrator on other projects during this period, including adaptations of the light novel series Mayoi Neko Overrun! and, later, the manga version of the original anime Darling in the Franxx.

After his work on the To Love-Ru franchise concluded, Yabuki returned to writing and illustrating his own original series. From 2020 to 2023, he created Ayakashi Triangle, which was published in Shonen Jump and its digital platforms. His broader body of work includes one-shot stories like Trans Boy and Futagami Double, as well as illustration work for light novel series such as Hatena Illusion.