Charlie Nozawa

Charlie Nozawa—born Tamakichi Sakura in 1961—is a manga artist best known for illustrating *Super Mario Adventures*, the comic serial that ran in *Nintendo Power* during the early 1990s. His work on that series, credited across 14 issues from 1992 to 2018, made him a familiar name to North American Nintendo fans, though his career in Japan began earlier. Nozawa’s style blends energetic, cartoonish linework with a keen sense of motion and expression, perfectly suited to adapting video game characters into sequential art. His collaborations with *Nintendo Power*’s editorial team and writers brought Mario, Luigi, and the Mushroom Kingdom to life in a way that felt both faithful and fresh. While *Super Mario Adventures* remains his signature achievement, his contributions as artist, colorist, and inker across the magazine’s run helped define the look of Nintendo’s official comics during the 16-bit era. Nozawa’s later work is less documented, but his legacy endures among fans of classic game-related comics. He has not received major industry awards, but his influence is felt in how later artists approached licensed video-game adaptations.