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Hajimete no Kōshien Manga Creator Masaki Himura Passes Away

The editorial staff of Square Enix's Gangan Online web magazine announced on Thursday that manga creator Masaki Himura (also known by the pen name Yuki Shinkiba) passed away on June 17 after a long battle with an unspecified illness.

The editorial staff also said that Himura wanted to pen one last message to readers in a manga before passing away, but was not able to accomplish it. However, the editorial staff also said that they had discovered unpublished chapters of Himura's currently running Nyūin Note (Hospitalization Notebook, pictured below left) manga, and that, with the permission of Himura's family, they would publish the chapters.

Himura's first manga short was "Kazoku Mono," which Square Enix published in its Monthly Shonen Gangan magazine in 2002. Himura continued the series of shorts irregularly until 2004. In 2006, Himura published a one-shot manga in Monthly Shonen Gangan titled "Hajimete no Kōshien," which Himura eventually turned into a series (pictured at right) that ran until 2009. In 2011, Himura launched a new manga titled Shindere Shōjo to Kodoku na Shinigami with artist Yoshie Katō on the Gangan Online website. This would be the first time Himura would write under the Yuki Shinkiba pen name. Himura used the pseudonym again for the manga adaptation of the Ike! Danshi Kōkō Engeki-bu live-action film in March 2012, which Himura wrote with artist Chika Hanazawa.

Himura was diagnosed with cancer in January 2013. In March of that year, Himura announced that Shindere Shōjo to Kodoku na Shinigami would go on indefinite hiatus as of its 20th chapter. Himura then launched the Nyūin Note (Hospitalization Notebook) series on the Gangan Online website in May 2013. The work chronicles Himura's own experience being hospitalized, and it remains unfinished.

Update: While "Masaki" is usually a male name, Square Enix, Yahoo! News, and Sponichi do not specify Himura's gender in their obituary articles. This article was therefore reworded to omit a gender. Additionally, Himura did not draw Shindere Shōjo to Kodoku na Shinigami or Ike! Danshi Kōkō Engeki-bu, but he wrote the two manga with separate artists who drew the two series.