Manga creator Momoko Sakura, best-known for her long-running manga Chibi Maruko-chan, passed away on August 15, 2018 (the news was released by her office on August 27) after a battle with breast cancer. She was 53 years old.

Sakura made her manga debut in 1984 when she was still in college, and Chibi Maruko-chan entered serialization in Ribon magazine two years later. The manga, which ran from August 1986 to June 1996, is loosely based on Sakura’s own childhood, and follows the third grade student Maruko in her everyday life. The manga has sold about 32 million volumes worldwide.

The manga was adapted into an anime twice – once from 1990 to 1992 for 142 episodes, and again beginning 1995, with the second series still ongoing today. The 1,000th episode of this series aired in 2012, and the Chibi Maruko-chan anime has been consistently the No. 2 rated anime series in Japan (after Sazae-san). The series was also turned into a live-action television show in 2007.

Her work on Chibi Maruko-chan earned Sakura the Kodansha Manga Award for shojo manga in 1989.

Sakura also published a fantasy series, Coji-Coji, from 1994 to 1997. This too would be adapted into a lengthy anime series in the late 1990s, and also received a video game based on the show for the Sega Dreamcast.

More recently, Sakura published a four-panel (“4koma”) version of Chibi Maruko-chan that ran as a comic strip in numerous Japanese newspapers. In 2005, she also contributed to the Xbox 360 game Every Party as the character design artist.