is a Japanese manga artist. He is best known for Co-creating the post-apocalyptic martial arts series Fist of the North Star (1983–1988) with writer Buronson, which is one of the best-selling manga in history with over 100 million copies in circulation. Early life Although born in Tokyo, Hara lived in Matsubara-danchi in Sōka, Saitama. He is a cousin of comedian Ryo Fukawa. Hara began drawing characters from Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy and Jungle Emperor Leo, as well as Ikki Kajiwara and Naoki Tsuji's Tiger Mask in first and second grade. In third and fourth grade he was obsessed with Shotaro Ishinomori's Kamen Rider manga, while the work of Fujio Akatsuka showed him how diverse the medium could be. Hara had decided to become a manga artist by second and third grade. In middle school he read manga about becoming one, as well as autobiographical manga, and studied yonkoma to improve his sequencing. He then entered the design program at his high school, joined the "manga gekiga club," and submitted entries to manga competitions run by magazines. Hara also found inspiration by visiting the workplace of Osamu Akimoto, who was an alumnus of his high school. Career He worked as an assistant to manga artist Yoshihiro Takahashi after graduating. As an amateur, he won the first prize of the 33rd Fresh Jump award for his boxing short story Super Challenger. Hara's professional career began with his first published work: Mad Fighter in 1982. His first serialized work in the Weekly Shōnen Jump was the Iron Don Quixote, a motocross manga which lasted only ten weeks in serialization. He achieved fame after the publication of Fist of the North Star in 1983, which he co-created with Buronson and ran for six years in Weekly Shōnen Jump. His next long-running serial was Keiji, a period tale loosely based on a novel by Keiichiro Ryu, which was published in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1990 to 1993. It was through Kazuhiko Torishima that Hara received the offer from Capcom to create the character designs for the 1993 video game Saturday Night Slam Masters. Hara would go on to produce several shorter serials and one-shots for Shueisha until departing from the company in 2000. In 2001, he became one of the founding members of the manga editing company Coamix and would go on to illustrate Fist of the Blue Sky, a prequel to Fist of the