is a Japanese

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 manga artist

Mangaka

is the Japanese word for a comic artist or cartoonist. Outside of Japan, manga usually refers to a Japanese comic book and mangaka refers to the author of the manga, who is usually Japanese...

. In June 2000, his debut work, , began serialization in the Comic Flapper manga magazine.

"The Fireworks of 2015" would serve as a prequel to his later and most notable work, Twin Spica

Twin Spica

is a Japanese seinen manga series written and illustrated by Kou Yaginuma. The "realistic, slice-of-life science fiction series" tells the story of a group of Japanese high school students training to become astronauts in the early 21st century after the country's first human spaceflight launch...

, which began serialization in September 2001 in Comic Flapper. Twin Spica was adapted in 2003 into an anime

Anime

is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....

 television series, animated by Group TAC

Group TAC

Group TAC was a Japanese animation and computer graphics studio located in Shibuya, Tokyo, and founded in 1968. They have worked on movies, videos, TV shows, and commercials, and have contributed to all stages of the process, including planning, production, sound effects, and so on...

 and directed by Tomomi Mochizuki

Tomomi Mochizuki

, sometimes incorrectly romanized as Tomomichi Mochizuki, is an anime director and producer. He is married to animator Masako Gotō and sometimes uses the alias when writing screenplays or working on storyboards...

, which premiered in Japan on NHK

NHK

NHK is Japan's national public broadcasting organization. NHK, which has always identified itself to its audiences by the English pronunciation of its initials, is a publicly owned corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee....

.

Works

• Twin Spica
  Twin Spica
  is a Japanese seinen manga series written and illustrated by Kou Yaginuma. The "realistic, slice-of-life science fiction series" tells the story of a group of Japanese high school students training to become astronauts in the early 21st century after the country's first human spaceflight launch...
  
  (2001–2009)
• Hoshi no Koe
  Voices of a Distant Star
  is a Japanese anime OVA by Makoto Shinkai. It chronicles a long-distance relationship between two close friends who communicate by sending emails via their mobile phones across interstellar space...
  
  (2002), novel illustrations
• Gunryoku no Jiu (2010–present)

External links