Nio Nakatani

Nio Nakatani first began drawing in her elementary school years, though she described her early drawings as derivative of existing works.[6] In an interview, she stated that she had performed in a concert band as a student, playing the trombone and tuba while in middle and high school, respectively.[7]

Nakatani's first complete project was produced around the time of her high school graduation, after which she continued drawing until her art met a professional standard.[6] She submitted some of her work to art exhibitions, but found being a "proper" artist boring. After recalling her childhood memories of being told she could draw manga when she got older, she decided to pursue it seriously. According to Nakatani, she found it funny that it "took 20 years for me to believe it".[6]

Nakatani became known as a manga artist through her work on doujinshi, especially those based on the Touhou Project series,[8] which she published under the pseudonym "Rireba" (リレバ).[lower-alpha 2][9] Nakatani's professional pen name, Nio, is the Japanese term for little grebe, which is the official bird of her home prefecture of Shiga. As the little grebe is known as a long-lived bird in Shiga, she stated that she hopes it will grant her a "long and successful career." However, Nakatani admitted that in reality, she came up with "Nio" by scrambling her real name, and the relation to the bird was a coincidence.[10]

According to Nakatani, she became first interested in drawing manga about girls when reading Yun Kōga's manga Loveless, "which has no girls in it" and led her to realize "I might like stories about girls."[11] In 2014, Nakatani submitted her one-shot work Farewell to My Alter, which she had previously self-published, to the Dengeki Daioh magazine.[12][13] Farewell to My Alter appeared in the magazine in October of 2014 as Nakatani's professional debut, winning her a Gold award in the 21st Dengeki Comics Grand Prize contest.[14][15][8] Nakatani created one additional one-shot work for the magazine, Tear-Flavored Escargot, which appeared in the December 2014 issue prior to her first serialization.[13]

Because her works were primarily about relationships between girls (a fact which Nakatani attributed to the Touhou series' almost entirely female cast), she gained a reputation as an author of yuri manga.[10][7][8] This surprised Nakatani, as she had not intentionally set out to write yuri nor considered her works as such, saying that her primary interest was to depict complex human relationships that interested her.[10][7][8] However, as she nonetheless was interested in the yuri genre, she became interested in drawing an unambiguous love story between girls.[8][16] When Tatsuya Kusunoki, an editor of the manga magazine Dengeki Daioh (in which she had professionally debuted with their publication of her previously self-published short story Farewell to My Alter)[17][18] approached her at a doujinshi convention to ask if she wanted to draw a yuri series for the magazine, Nakatani accepted the offer, and went onto create Bloom Into You for the magazine.[10][8]

Bloom Into You began its serialization in Dengeki Daioh on April 27, 2015[19] and concluded on September 27, 2019, after a 45-chapter run.[20] The series had over 1,000,000 copies in print in Japan as of 2019,[21] and placed 4th in the 2017 Next Manga Awards from Niconico and Da Vinci.[22] It has been adapted into an anime series[23] and a stage play,[24][25] and received spinoffs in the form of light novels[26] and anthology comics.[27]

After the completion of Bloom Into You, Nakatani expressed that she wanted her next work to be of a genre other than yuri, as she felt she had already written the yuri story she wished to write.[8] However, she said that she would likely revisit the yuri genre in the future.[8][28] Nakatani's current work, Kami-sama ga Machigaeru, was announced in Dengeki Daioh on September 26, 2021, and began serialization on October 27, 2021.[29][30] It is being simultaneously published digitally in English by Yen Press under the title God Bless the Mistaken.[4][31]

Nakatani has collaborated as an illustrator with light novel writer and Adachi and Shimamura author Hitoma Iruma, first on the Bloom Into You light novel spinoff series Regarding Saeki Sayaka,[32] as well as his original novels End Blue and Shoujo Mousou Chuu.[8][33][34][35]

• Official website (in Japanese)
• Official site for Nakatani's doujinshi works (in Japanese)
• Nio Nakatani on Anime News Network Encyclopedia