Keisuke Itagaki is a manga artist and writer who is best known for creating the Baki the Grappler series. He is a practitioner of both boxing and Shorinji Kempo, Itagaki channeled his life-long passion for the martial arts into Baki, which is widely regarded as one of the most influential fighting manga ever made. Itagaki’ s works have made him into one of Japan’ s best-selling and most respected creators, with Baki being frequently cited as the direct inspiration for countless movies, anime and video games that followed it.