Yuu Watase was born on March 5, 1970, in Kishiwada, Osaka. She is a Japanese shōjo manga artist. Watase received the Shogakukan Manga Award for shōjo for Ceres, Celestial Legend in 1997. Watase debuted at the age of eighteen with the short story "Pajama de Ojama" ("An Intrusion in Pajamas"), and has since created more than 80 compiled volumes of short stories and continuing series. In October 2008, Watase began their first shōnen serialization, Arata: The Legend in Weekly Shōnen Sunday. In May 2019, Watase came out as x-gender, a Japanese non-binary gender identity. Watase developed an interest in drawing manga at a young age. However, Watase did not receive any formal training until after high school when they went to a private art school. There they were taught how to draw manga, but because their first short story, "Pajama de Ojama", had already debuted, Watase quit in the middle of it. Watase prefers to work with more traditional methods, because they feel the traditional methods have more feelings. Despite finding new media jarring, Watase has expressed a desire to work with new media as well. While Watase mostly works with colored inks and markers, they have used digital programs such as Photoshop to enhance traditional work. In a blog post, Watase detailed some of the issues that they faced as a manga artist. A former editor for Arata: The Legend continuously asked Watase to redraw scenes that he did not like or understand. It got to the point that Watase was doing redraws all day and pulling late nights just to meet the next morning's deadlines. Because of the constant cycle, Watase began to lose interest in working on the manga for the fans or even the story. They were simply working to try and get it approved for the weekly publication.