Artist/author Kazuki Takahashi first tried to break into the manga business in 1982, but success eluded him until Yu-Gi-Oh! debuted in the Japanese Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in 1996. Yu-Gi-Oh!'s themes of friendship and fighting, together with Takahashi's weird and imaginative monsters, soon became enormously successful, spawning a real-world card game, video games, and three anime series (two Japanese Yu-Gi-Oh! series and Yu-Gi-Oh! GX). A lifelong gamer, Takahashi enjoys Shogi (Japanese chess), Mahjong, card games, and tabletop RPGs, among other games.