is a Japanese 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...

, best known for his samurai

Samurai

is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...

-themed series Rurouni Kenshin

Rurouni Kenshin

, also known as Rurouni Kenshin and Samurai X, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Nobuhiro Watsuki. The fictional setting takes place during the early Meiji period in Japan. The story is about a fictional assassin named Himura Kenshin, from the Bakumatsu who becomes a wanderer to...

. He once worked as an assistant for his favorite author Takeshi Obata

Takeshi Obata

is a Japanese manga artist. He works as the artist in collaboration with a writer. He has also mentored several manga artists, including Kentaro Yabuki of Black Cat fame, Nobuhiro Watsuki of Rurouni Kenshin and Busou Renkin, and Yusuke Murata of Eyeshield 21.He originally became noticed in 1985...

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When Watsuki was in middle school, he practiced kendo

Kendo

, meaning "Way of The Sword", is a modern Japanese martial art of sword-fighting based on traditional Japanese swordsmanship, or kenjutsu.Kendo is a physically and mentally challenging activity that combines strong martial arts values with sport-like physical elements.-Practitioners:Practitioners...

. He still drew Manga but also enjoyed sports. Watsuki admits that he was "So weak in fact, that I was an embarrassment to my 183 centimeters of height" (about 6 feet). Watsuki never won a kendo match. He was once chosen to be a starter after a teammate was suspended for causing an uproar.