Rei Akasaka

The End of Drawing and the Start of Scriptwriting

On November 2, 2022, Rei Akasaka decided that they would no longer draw professionally. It was an abrupt move that caught the industry off guard. After finishing Kaguya-sama: Love is War, they issued a statement explaining that their hands would no longer keep up with their mind. Weekly drawing takes a serious physical toll and is a meat grinder for authors in Japan, so they chose to save the storytelling.

They put down the pencil but kept the words.

Her career as an illustrator ended with a work that sold 22 million copies in circulation through the end of 2022. But the real structural earthquake came when she decided to hand the art over to others so she could focus exclusively on writing. In 2020, she began Oshi no Ko alongside illustrator Mengo Yokoyari. This partnership turned a story about fame into a global sales phenomenon.

Akasaka does not seek the reader's approval and prefers to dissect the miseries of entertainment. Throughout the years their main works were published, they showed an almost clinical fixation on mass psychology. That coldness in exposing the mechanics of success is what sets them apart from other writers of their generation.

An Inside Look at the Industry

In April 2023, the anime premiere of Oshi no Ko broke HIDIVE's platform records in its first week. Akasaka's script did more than tell a reincarnation story. It took direct aim at the talent agency system and social media harassment. The raw intensity of the 90-minute first episode changed how audiences viewed the idol genre.

And the gamble paid off.

After the massive success of the series, Akasaka launched a new project titled Renai Daikou in 2023, with art by Nishizawa 5mm. Here they returned to romantic comedy, but from a far more technical and cynical angle. Still, the work never matched the impact of its predecessors and ended its serialization in Young Jump in summer 2024.

This setback did not slow down Akasaka's scriptwriting for other media. Akasaka understands that the author's name is now a brand that can support several products at once. In 2024, they took part in supervising multiple adaptations and collaborations that expanded their creative universe beyond the manga panels.

The Leap to Live Action

The expansion of their stories into film and television accelerated with the live-action production of Oshi no Ko. Rather than guarding the original material with excessive zeal, Akasaka has let producers adapt their vision of the industry to the physical realities of filming. For them, a story is an organism that must change with its format.

Akasaka writes for an audience that no longer believes in happy endings by default.

In December 2024, the live-action series and film produced by Amazon and Toei premiered. The cast included figures such as Nagisa Saito and Asuka Saito, who brought their characters to life in a real-world setting. The budget for these productions exceeded the usual standards for manga adaptations in Japan.

Rei Akasaka's career is defined by a radical shift from the drawing board to the writers' room. In 2025, their name appeared in the production credits of three separate franchises that operate independently. The business generated by their scripts reached 30 million copies sold across all their active titles in 2024.