Yuki Hijiri was the professional pseudonym of Kiyotoshi Hasegawa, a Japanese manga artist and character designer born on December 21, 1949, in Shibata City, Niigata Prefecture. He began drawing manga in high school and became a member of the Sakuga Group, a circle for aspiring artists, in 1967. Hijiri made his professional debut in 1972 with the work Uchi no Aniki, and he continued to create manga across various genres for five decades until his death from pneumonia on October 30, 2022, at the age of 72. He had been public about his diagnosis with Parkinson's disease in 2020.

Hijiri is best known as the creator of the long-running science fiction manga series Superman Locke, which features an immortal esper with distinctive bottle-green hair. The character first appeared in a dojinshi in 1967 before being serialized in commercial magazines starting in 1977. The series became his signature work, spawning numerous sequels and side stories, and was adapted into an animated film in 1984, followed by several original video animations in subsequent years. Another significant original work is TWD Express, a space-faring adventure serialized in SF Animedia beginning in 1986. This series was adapted as an original video animation titled TWD Express: Rolling Takeoff, released in 1987, with Hijiri credited as the original creator and writer.

Beyond his original manga, Hijiri played a significant role in the anime industry as a character designer and original character concept artist. He provided the character concepts for several notable super robot anime series of the late 1970s, including Super Electromagnetic Machine Voltes V in 1977, General Daimos in 1978, and Future Robot Daltanius in 1979. He also worked on character design for the tokusatsu television series Ninja Captor and adapted several live-action series into manga form.

Hijiri’s artistic identity is closely tied to science fiction, often blending futuristic settings with a refined aesthetic influenced by his background in mechanical engineering. His work was noted for its sophisticated illustrations and a style that incorporated elements from both seinen and shōjo manga traditions. He maintained a keen interest in new artistic techniques, adopting digital tools in his later career. Throughout his decades of activity, Yuki Hijiri established himself as a foundational figure in Japanese science fiction manga and a respected contributor to the character design of classic anime from the 1970s.