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Dogasu's Backpack | Manga Guide | Pocket Monsters Special

| Story Synopsis | Viz Edits | Characters | About the Author |

Satoshi Yamamoto (left) and Hidenori Kusaka (right) at an autograph event in France.

Pocket Monsters Special is written by Hidenori Kusaka (日下秀憲). It was drawn by Mato (真斗) for the first nine volumes before being handed over to Satoshi Yamamoto (山本サトシ).

Hidenori Kusaka

Kusaka Hidenori

Hidenori Kusaka (日下秀憲) has been in charge of writing Pocket Monsters Special since it started back in 1997. He uses a Marumine as his avatar. He was awarded Comic-Con International's Inkpot Award in 2016.

His X (Twitter) profile can be found here, though he seems to have stopped updating it back in 2017.

Mato

Mato

Mato (
真斗) was the artist for Pocket Monsters Special for the series' first nine volumes. She was born on November 27th and comes from the Aichi prefecture.

Before her debut, Mato worked as the assistant for Katayama Shuu (片山愁), the author of the series Dragon Fist (ドラゴンフィスト). During this time, she was credited as "Assistant M" (アシスタントM). She began using the pen name "Mato" sometime in 1983.

Mato made her official debut in 1993 with the series New Year X-Mas (ニューイヤーXマス), which ran in Weekly Shonen Sunday. She has worked on a Mobile Suit Gundam Wing parody manga named The Whereabouts of the Wind (風の行方), a manga based on Florence Nightingale called The Character Study Manga - Nightingale (学習まんが人物館 ナイチンゲール), and The Tale of Hachiko - The Dog Who Kept Waiting (ハチ公物語 -待ちつづけた犬-).

She started working on Pocket Monsters Special in 1997. While working on the Gold / Silver / Crystal chapters, she became ill and was no longer able to fulfill her illustrating duties. Satoshi Yamamoto took over for her after the ninth volume.

Currently, Mato provides illustrations for the Niihama City municipal government. Examples of some of the work she's done for the city can be found in the PDF documents located here.

Mato's official website can be found here.

Satoshi Yamamoto

Yamamoto Satoshi

Satoshi Yamamoto
(山本サトシ, though the 山本智 spelling was used early in his career) is the current artist for Pocket Monsters Special. He is from Kyoto.

His debut was 1993's The Warrior with the Face of a Devil (鬼 面戦士), which ran in Weekly Shounen Sunday. After that, he worked on a number of series for the magazine. The first work of his to be collected in graphic novel format was The Wind of Fight (風の伝承者) which was also published in Weekly Shounen Sunday. The series ran from 1998 until 2000. 

About a year after the end of The Wind of Fight, Satoshi Yamamoto took over the art for Pocket Monsters Special after Mato fell ill. His first contributions to the series began in the April 2001 issues of the Shougakukan Gakunen series of magazines. He has been doing the artwork for Pocket Monsters Special ever since.

His X (Twitter) profile can be found here.




| Story Synopsis | Viz Edits | Characters | About the Author |


 

 

 

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