while working on Space Battleship Yamato, he visited Leiji Matsumoto who told him that manga artists could use brushes too. Yasuhiko made his manga debut with Arion (1979–1984). In 1981 he won the Seiun Award in the art category. Yasuhiko turned Arion into an animated film that he directed and co-wrote in 1986. That same year, he began the manga Venus Wars (1986–1990), which he also later adapted into a film. Yasuhiko became a full-time manga artist in 1989. He serialized Namuji from 1989 to 1991. It won an Excellence Award at the 1992 Japan Cartoonists Association Awards. In the mid 1990s, Yasuhiko created works such as Joan, a three-volume story of a young French girl living at the time of the Hundred Years' War, whose life parallels that of Joan of Arc; and Jesus, a two-volume biographical manga about the life of Jesus Christ. Yasuhiko created Ōdō no Inu from 1998 to 2000. In 2000, it earned him an Excellence Prize at the Japan Media Arts Festival. Yasuhiko serialized Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin for ten years, from 2001 to 2011. He stated that, in his mind, "Gundam" is only the original 1979 anime series and that it is the only one that he takes responsibility for. The artist also said that subsequent installments in the franchise focused more on the "Newtypes" seen in the series, which lead to critics and otaku misunderstanding the theme of Gundam. Yasuhiko further stated that the perpetrators of the Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 were "undoubtedly familiar" with Gundam and the "Newtypes". As such, "I had to do another job to correct the distortions in understanding 'Gundam'--, which was why I ended up drawing 'The Origin' in response to Sunrise's request." The manga has over 10 million copies in circulation, and earned him the 2012 Seiun Award in the comics category. He returned to animation in the 2010s to direct Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origins anime adaptations. Yasuhiko then created Ten no Ketsumyaku, about a student in Manchuria on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War, for Monthly Afternoon between January 2012 and September 2016. In 2015, he won a special award for lifetime achievement at the Animation Kobe Awards. Yasuhiko began Inui to Tatsumi -Siberia Shuppei Hishi- in Monthly Afternoon on September 25, 2018. The historical series set during the Siberian Intervention was announced as being his last serialized manga. He was