Hiroaki Samura(沙村 広明Samura Hiroaki, b. February 17, 1970 in Chiba prefecture) is a Japanese writer/illustrator and creator of Blade of the Immortal, as well as several other short works. He has also done various illustrations for magazines and ero guro work. He has an ero guro book out that is mostly a compilation of some of the work he has created. His favourite bands are Queen, Black Sabbath and Jittarin Jin. He likes Black Sabbath so much he named one of his characters, Kuroi Sabato (literally a translation of Black Sabbath), in Blade after the band.