Masanori Morita

Blood type: O

Birth place: Rittou, Shiga Prefecture, Japan

Twitter :

https://x.com/HITMANmorita

Morita Masanori used to be Hara Tetsuo's assistant.

He made his debut in 1984 in Fresh Jump magazine with *It's Late*, the pilot chapter of Rokudenashi Blues.

This story won the Tezuka Excellence Award from publisher Shueisha.

After high school, he became an assistant to Tetsuo HARA (Hokuto no Ken) and simultaneously published several short stories in special issues of JUMP magazine.

In 1987, he launched his first series, Bachi Atari Rock.

He began publishing the Rokudenashi Blues series in 1988 in Weekly Shonen Jump.

He captivated his readers with a passionate and lively narrative, a wide variety of characters, and excellent artwork.

As a result, the series became a long-running hit that continued for eight years.

As soon as his hit series ended, Morita turned his attention to baseball with another successful work in Jump, Rookies (24 volumes), which, while it did not achieve similar fame, was adored and arguably more accomplished in terms of both story and artwork.

By the time Rookies ended in 2003, Morita was 37 years old.

The weekly schedule wore him down, the limitations of shōnen frustrated him, and he dreamed of something else, yet he remained under exclusive contract with Shueisha, which insisted he stay put in Jump and continue drawing shōnen.

A fan of manzai (Japanese stand-up comedy), he created a new work about the meteoric rise of a comedy duo: Beshari Gurashi.

Morita published nearly 30 chapters in Jump... before it became clear to the magazine's editors that this manga and the increasingly edgy themes it explored were better suited to a seinen publication. The series then moved to a bimonthly schedule in Young Jump.

Beshari Gurashi ran for 19 volumes until 2015.

But in 2019, Morita picked up the story where he left off to draw a few additional chapters compiled into a 20th and final volume, to accompany the marketing campaign for the work’s adaptation into a TV drama.

Morita stated that Beshari Gurashi would be his final manga and that it was his life’s work.

However, in 2022, he began a new manga titled Zashisu, a horror/thriller series running from 2022 to 2024. It consists of 3 volumes.

Masanori Morita is a fan of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team.

His assistants include: Kishi Daimurou, Tsuruoka Nobuhisa, Iwata Yasuteru, Son Yoshihito, Ito Makoto, Sonoda Tatsunosuke, Oota Fumihiko, Tanaka Akira, and Nagatomo Kenji.

Oh!Great has applied to become his assistant.