Born in 1954 in Okayama Prefecture, Atsuko Asano is a Japanese writer whose decades-long career has included penning the children's series Telepathy shojo ran and the manga series The Manzai Comics. Her book series, Battery, received the Noma Prize for Juvenile Literature in 1997, the Shogakukan Children's Publication Culture Award in 2005, and a film adaptation in 2007.