Kouta Hirano

Kouta Hirano

is a mangaka born in Adachi-ku, Tokyo, Japan, most famous for his manga Hellsing.

Starting his career first as a mangaka's assistant (self-described as "horrible" and "lazy" in said assistant position), and later an H manga artist, he went on to enjoy somewhat limited success with other relatively unknown manga titles such as Angel Dust, Coyote, Gun Mania and Hi-Tension. His first major success came with his manga series Hellsing, which got its start and was subsequently serialized in monthly manga magazine Young King OURs towards the latter half of 1997.

However, Hellsing was not the earliest Hirano series to be published in Young King OURs monthly. In 1996, the very same year Hellsing's precursor, The Legends of Vampire Hunter, was first released as a single hentai short story in Heavenly Pleasure (a monthly hentaicentric manga magazine), another WWII-based short story was being published in Young King OURs by a then lesser-known Kouta Hirano. The story takes place primarily at a train station in Russia and features two female characters that are strikingly similar to Heinkel and Yumiko/Yumie in Crossfire; and who are, in actuality, undercover Axis spies in-league with one another for a common purpose: the success of Operation Barbarossa. However, this story only saw ink in one issue of OURs before being discontinued in favor of Hellsing itself.

A decent number of Hirano's older works are now considered collector's items due to the small number of them that exist. Many characters from Hellsing appear in his previous works and, as mentioned above, there is a rare hentai prototype of Hellsing titled The Legends of (the) Vampire Hunter.

Naming

Hirano's name is usually romanized Kouta Hirano. However, it is occasionally romanized Kohta Hirano (e.g. the cover of Dark Horse's version of Hellsing).

List of works

Works listed alphabetically.
Angel Dust
Arera no Shūmatsu
Be Wild