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Kouta Hirano (平野耕太, Hirano Kōta) is a mangaka born on July 14, 1973 in Adachi-ku, Tokyo, Japan, most famous for his manga Hellsing. Hirano's name is romanized as Kohta Hirano in the English Hellsing manga, while in the English anime credits for Hellsing, his name is romanized as Kouta Hirano.
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 Kohta 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.
List of works
Works listed alphabetically.
- Angel Dust
- Arera no Shūmatsu
- Be Wild!!
- Count Pierre Eros' Gorgeous Daily Grind
- Coyote
- Crossfire
- Daidōjin Monogatari
- Deep
- Desert Schutzstaffel
- Front
- Gun Mania
- Hellsing
- Hi-Tension
- Hi-and-Low
- Ikasu Sōtō Tengoku
- Koi no Strikeback
- Muteki no Mahō Kyōshi Kawaharā Z
- Susume! Ikaryaku
- Susume!! Seigaku Dennō Kenkyū
- The Legends of Vampire Hunter
- The Weekenders
Trivia
- Hirano says that he enjoys Eiichiro Oda's series, One Piece. At the end of volume 5, he states that he'd like to feel up Nami, for instance.
- In a panel question at Anime Expo 2005, Hirano stated his favorites: his favourite male characters were Alucard and Alexander Anderson, and his favorite female character was Seras Victoria.
- Hirano is openly a fanboy of many anime and manga series, including Gundam, Saint Seiya, and One Piece, and describes his hobbies as "being annoying" and "beating off".