Haruhiko Mikimoto

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A character designer, illustrator and mangaka. He was mostly active in the '80s and '90s, during which he rose to prominence and got recognized as one of the pre-eminent character designers of his time.

Mikimoto attended university at the same time as mangaka Fujihiko Hosono, as well as Shouji Kawamori and Hiroshi Oonogi, both of whom he would later collaborate with on the creation of Macross - perhaps Mikimoto's most famous work.

At the time of his debut, he was a fan of Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's and it was showing in his drawings. After a colleague had pointed this out it started bothering him and he went through great effort to gradually establish his own unique visual style which he is known for today. His career as an animator was short-lived as he realized that he was more interested in just drawing pictures rather than moving them around, and naturally shifted his activities from animation to illustrations and manga.