Kenmotsu Ryosei (りょせいけんもつ, Ryosei Kenmotsu) (born January 20, 1980) is a Japanese manga artist. He is well known as the creator of the hit manga series, Flow. He is a fan of old school hip hop and grew up listening to it. Flow, his hit series, is heavily influenced by hip hop culture overall.
Biography[]
Kenmotsu Ryosei was born and raised in Nara, Nara, Japan. Growing up Kenmotsu enjoyed writing poetry and eventually found himself into culture and arts. Kenmotsu enjoyed writing, drawing, and listening to music and eventually discovered hip hop and fell in love with it. Kenmotsu, in his teenage and young adult years, ound himslef listening to the hit gangsta rap of the 1990s. Soon, Kenmotsu himself longed to become a rapper and even had a short lived underground career. After quitting rap, Kenmotsu focused more on drawing and discovered that he was more skilled than what he had originally thought. He went on to publish early versions of Flow in various manga magazines till he published it in the form of a one-shot in the Weekly Shōnen Jump. The one-shot was very well recieved and the actual series began to serialize in the magazine in early 2006.
Works[]
| Name | Year | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Power of the Pal | 2003 | One-shot |
| Lost and Lost Again | 2003 | One-shot |
| Swept By the Wind | 2004 | One-shot |
| Call My Name | 2004 | One-shot |
| Flow (Early Versions) | 2004 | Short stories |
| Flow (Pilot) | 2005 | One-shot |
| Flow | 2006-present | 20 tankōbon volumes as of July 2011 |