Having grown up as a fan of Rumiko Takahashi's work, particularly Mermaid Saga, Esuno started drawing manga at 15. After working for many years as an assistant, his first published work Tetsudo Tenshi won a prize in a Kadokawa manga contest in 2001.
Manga series by Sakae Esuno with pages on this wiki:
- Big Order (2011-2016)
- Future Diary (2006-2010)
- Hanako and the Terror of Allegory (2004-2005)
- Reign of the Seven Spellblades (adapted from the Light Novel series by Bokuto Uno, 2019-2023)
Tropes in Esuno's works:
- Ret-Canon: While writing the Reign of the Seven Spellblades manga adaptation, he originated the character design for Professor Luther Garland: Garland was only vaguely described in the novel text, and illustrator Miyuki Ruria loved Esuno's version enough to adopt it as canon, leading to Esuno's design being reproduced in the later anime adaptation.
- Yandere:
- He had a significant effect on the codification of this archetype with Future Diary's Yuno Gasai, the pink-haired knife nut with a mad crush on main character Yuki Amano. That said, she's very much an unbuilt example of the trope: her poor mental health is extremely plot-significant and Yuki's reaction to her is rather more realistic than in later examples—that is, he keeps her around mainly because he's more scared of their enemies than of her—and they eventually develop a more honest and mutual relationship after Character Development.
- He created a second Yandere with Big Order's Rin Kurenai. Throughout most of the first part of the story, she constantly switches between flirting with Eiji and trying to kill him.
- Nanao Hibiya in Reign of the Seven Spellblades is technically a third example, but Esuno only adapted the first three novel volumes, and Nanao's Yandere tendencies don't start to become apparent until much later in the source material.
