15 Facts About Toshio Maeda

Toshio Maeda is an erotic manga artist who was prolific in the 1980s and '90s.

Toshio Maeda began reading manga when he was 5 or 6 years old, as well as American comics such as Mighty Mouse, Spider-Man and Batman.

Toshio Maeda was a reader of all genres of literature and has said that he read more than 10,000 books before he was 20 years old.

At 16 Toshio Maeda left Osaka to go to Tokyo as an assistant to a professional cartoonist.

Toshio Maeda worked as an assistant to fellow manga artist, Kenji Nanba, who himself was a disciple of Takao Saito and helped mentor Maeda into becoming a mangaka.

The reason for drawing tentacles in the story was that Toshio Maeda was not allowed to draw male genitals.

Toshio Maeda's best known series, Urotsukidoji, came out in 1986 and gained popularity abroad.

Toshio Maeda was working for an adult magazine at the time and wanted to create something different in terms of erotica.

Toshio Maeda has mentioned that since portraying genitals was illegal in Japan, artists would use any trick they could to get by the censors and he could say that a creature's tentacle was not a penis.

Toshio Maeda has embraced his role in popularizing the genre and in a blog interview stated that he would like "Tentacle Master" inscribed on his tombstone.

In 1999, Toshio Maeda collaborated with Phoenix Entertainment as an executive producer to work on a three episode OVA series, known as Kairaku Satsujin Chosakan Koji, known in the west as Demon Warrior Koji.

Toshio Maeda was a Guest of Honor at the Big Apple Anime Fest held in New York City in October 2001.

Toshio Maeda was the Keynote Speaker at the BAAF Symposium and introduced a retrospective of his work.

Toshio Maeda has made the opportunity available to the public to come stay at his apartment and have the opportunity to discuss manga, anime and Japan in general with him over a beer for a small fee, together with a tour of Akihabara and various otaku hot spots in Tokyo.

In 2016 Toshio Maeda appeared in the British horror film Spidarlings directed by Selene Kapsaski.