Kazuma Kaneko

Kazuma Kaneko (金子一馬, Kaneko Kazuma) is a Japanese illustrator and employee of Atlus. While working for the same company, he has also done work for Capcom and Konami, designing characters for the video games Devil May Cry 3 and Zone of the Enders 2, respectively. He is best known for his work in the Megami Tensei series of video games.

Clarification
Kazuma is primarily a concept artist. Most of the concept illustrations from the Megami Tensei II and Shin Megami Tensei I&II days he produced with pen and ink and probably little to no assistance. The Devil Summoner series however began introducing graphical techniques largely dependent upon image processing software and later production artwork would incorporate very sophisticated vector graphics suites utilized in very time consuming ways. It is a common misconception Kazuma is solely responsible for most of the artwork that appears in artbooks published under his name. In reality (though difficult to say in terms of degree) he is largely responsible for compositions and roughs, and probably solely responsible for the overall design of these pieces - however when it comes to technical skills and shear man hours required by production pieces chiefly accredited Kazuma, it should be undrstaood the greatest amount of credit belongs to the art staff on Atlus payroll during production.

Kazuma has been on record stating over the years his involvement in the artwork has become less and less, and since Nocturne he feels he is becoming more of a director than an artist, and has even been asked to envision scenarios and even whole games for Atlus.