Kazuki Takahashi, creator of the global manga and trading-card sensation Yu-Gi-Oh!, has died in his native Japan, the New York Times reported Thursday. He was 60.
He had been snorkeling while on vacation alone in southern Japan, and his body was found off the coast of Nago, the Times reported, citing Japanese Coast Guard officials. A cause of death was still under investigation.
Takahashi worked as a manga artist since the early 1980s. His 1996 one-off story about a boy who duels challengers with magical abilities wound up running for eight years in popular comic magazines, inspiring several long-running anime series, motion pictures, books and video game adaptations. “Master Duel,” the latest game inspired by the series, was released earlier this year.
But it was the trading-card version, released first in Japan in 1999 and three years later in the U.S., that made Yu-Gi-Oh! an international sensation.
New card releases, regular appearances on bestseller lists and a new video-gamed version have generated billions of dollars in revenue for Konami.
Takahashi continued to supervise the franchise, while also creating other works like 2018’s “Comiq” series.
