Ryōichi Ikegami (池上遼一) is a manga artist. He was assistant to manga artist Shigeru Mizuki in 1966. In 2001, he won the Shogakukan Manga Award for general manga as the artist of Heat. He became a professor at Osaka University of Arts in 2005. Ikegami has worked on several popular series, such as Mai, the Psychic Girl with writer Kazuya Kudo, Crying Freeman, with writer Kazuo Koike, as well as Sanctuary and Heat with writer Sho Fumimura. He also wrote and drew Spider-Man: The Manga, a manga version of Spider-Man and collaborated with Garon Tsuchiya for the manga BOX (BOX 暗い箱). His most recent work is Lord currently serialized in Big Comic Superior.

Buronson (武論尊, Buronson), also known as Sho Fumimura (史村翔, Fumimura Shō), is a Japanese manga writer most known by his famous work Hokuto no Ken, known in English as Fist of the North Star. In 2002, he shared the Shogakukan Manga Award for general manga for Heat with Ryoichi Ikegami. Buronson was born as Yoshiyuki Okamura (岡村善行, Okamura Yoshiyuki) on June 16, 1947 in Saku, Nagano. He graduated from the Japanese Air Force Training School in 1967 and served as an Air Force radar mechanic. In 1969 he was discharged from the Japanese Navy and was soon hired by Hiroshi Motomiya as a manga assistant. He started his manga writing career when he wrote the script of Pink Punch: Miyabi in 1972, drawn by Goro Sakai. In 1975 Buronson wrote his first big hit The Doberman Detective, drawn by Shinji Hiramatsu. The famous Hokuto no Ken made its debut as Buronson's greatest hit in 1983, drawn by Tetsuo Hara. In 1989 his story Ourou was released as a manga serialized in Animal Magazine, drawn by Kentarō Miura, and in 1990 a sequel entitled Ourou Den was released by the same manga artist. Okamura also collaborated with the manga artist Ryoichi Ikegami in many works as Strain, Odyssey and the famous Sanctuary. Among his other major works are Phantom Burai, with art by Kaoru Shintani. The pen name Buronson is a tribute to the American actor Charles Bronson, whose mustache Buronson imitated.