Yoshikazu Yasuhiko

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Yasuhiko Yoshikazu (安彦良和 Yasuhiko Yoshikazu, born December 9, 1947) is a well-known animator and mangaka in the anime industry.

Yasuhiko dropped out of Hirosaki University and was hired by Osamu Tezuka's Mushi Productions in 1970 as an animator. He later went freelance and worked on various animation productions for film and television. In 1981 he won the Seiun Award in Art category. He began working as a manga artist in 1988. In 1992 he won the Nippon Manga-ka Kyokai (Japan Cartoonists Society) Award. He is also known as a novelist and science fiction illustrator. Some of his most notable works as character designer and director are Reideen the Brave, Combattler V, and Mobile Suit Gundam. Less well known is the fact that he was the original character designer for the Dirty Pair, long before their first anime or manga appearance, when he was illustrating the Haruka Takachiho short stories that became the 1980 fixup novel Great Adventures of the Dirty Pair.

In recent years he has branched out artistically, creating such works as Joan, a three-volume story of a young French girl living at the time of the Hundred Years' War, whose life parallels that of Joan of Arc; and Jesus, a two-volume biographical manga about the life of Jesus Christ.

Yasuhiko signs his artwork as "YAS".