Hayashiya Shizuru

Hayashiya Shizuru (林家志弦) is the author and illustrator of Hayate X Blade.

Style
While Hayashiya has a wide and varied oeuvre, the signature style of her later works is blending the yuri genre with elements of slapstick and absurdist comedy. Despite the overwhelming preponderance of her characters (and protagonists) being female, she often works within shounen demographic publications, and there are certain (limited) shounen influences evident in her art and story themes.

Games
Hayashiya's early work was primarily in computer games, doing graphics and character designs for "bishoujo" adventure games. Note that these were mostly adult games ("eroge"). The first release over which Hayashiya had a large measure of creative control was Birdy Soft's Old West-themed Joker (1991). This featured a storyline and characters entirely of her own creation, permitting her to display her talents in crafting unique, distinctive personalities. She continued her efforts in this field, including contributions to some console games later in the 90s, until around 1998. Ayana's habit of playing dating-sims may hark back to this period in her career.

Manga
The earliest known manga work by Hayashiya is a doujinshi (self-published manga) titled "Peace" from 1989. She continued to write doujinshi and contribute illustrations to various publications throughout the 90s, working under an array of pen-names: Yoshioka Tsukasa, Hayashiya Baa, Yoshioka Shiori, Oda Mei. She did not settle on the pen-name "Hayashiya Shizuru" until around 1994. Her favorite subject for her derivative works was the series Sailor Moon.

Around 1998, Hayashiya wrote a game-themed four-panel gag manga named Himawari Jigoku, "Sunflower Hell," for serialization in a video game magazine (the Game Review). These were collected and released in July 1998 as Hayashiya's first tankoubon anthology. Her next serialization, beginning in December 1998, was Engeki Shoujo Inochi, "Thespian Girl Inochi," for Dengeki Daioh (the Japanese title is a play on the magazine's name). This continued through January 2000, and was released as a single tankoubon volume in April 2000.

Hayashiya continued with several other series in Dengeki Daioh: Sister Red (two tankoubon releases: 2001, 2003), The Fabulous Fairy Pisachi (no tankoubon release), a manga adaptation of the anime Onegai Teacher (two tankoubon releases: 2002, 2003), and finally, beginning serialization in November 2003, Hayate X Blade. Hayate X Blade continued in Dengeki Daioh until May of 2008, when it migrated to Ultra Jump, where it has remained since (into its second series). It has become by far her longest and most involved work, being the only series to extend beyond two tankoubon volumes.

The two most important side works Hayashiya has produced during her time writing Hayate X Blade have been two yuri romance-comedies: Strawberry Shake Sweet for Yuri Hime (two tankoubons: 2006, 2009), and science-fiction themed Puberty Organism Vega for Rakuen (one tankoubon, 2013).