Kaoru Tada

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Tada made her debut in 1977, when still a high-school student, on Shueisha's "Deluxe Margaret" magazine. Tada's stories belong to the shoujo genre of manga and feature love stories centered around young female characters and their love interests. The storylines include comedic moments and are characterised by essential and sharp drawings. Some of Tada's most popular works are Aishite Knight, Itazura na Kiss and Kimi no Na wa Deborah.

Aishite Knight portrays the Japanese rock music scene of the early 1980's. The anime series based on Ai Shite Knight was the first ever to feature original songs performed within the episodes. Another of Tada's works, Miha Paradise is also set in the rock 'n' roll world.

Her work "Itazura na Kiss" is a gem to the shoujo demographic, as it is the mother of a lot of cliches found in today's shoujo series. Despite the fact that it is 2 decades old, it still stands out as unique for it has the series follow the main characters well into their life, over a span of 10 years. It was so popular it inspired popular series like Marmalade Boy and Fruits Basket.

However, the author had an accident while she was moving homes with her son and husband, and passed away a few months later, leaving her popular manga forever uncompleted. It was adapted into a popular Taiwanese drama under the title "It Started With a Kiss", and it even earned sequel. It was also adapted as a short Japanese drama in 1996, and an anime series in 2008, with the anime portraying the author's planned ending.