Takeshi Obata, the artist of Death Note, said that he had "no trouble" designing Light as the character description presented to him, "A brilliant honors student who's a little out there," was "clear and detailed."
Watsuki describes Sanosuke's visual motif by referring to his design model, Lamp, the main character of Takeshi Obata's Mashin Bōken Tan Lamp-Lamp.
Takeshi Kitano | Takeshi Okada | Takeshi's Castle | Takeshi Obata | Gyo Obata | Takeshi Kaneshiro | Takeshi Yoshida | Takeshi Terauchi | Takeshi Okumura | Takeshi Mori (voice actor) | Takeshi Morishima | Takeshi Kimura | Toshishiro Obata | Takeshi Yamamoto | Takeshi Ueda | Takeshi Tsuruno | Takeshi Kato | Takeshi Ito | Takeshi Araki | Takarabe Takeshi | Hellmuth Obata + Kassabaum (HOK) |
Although rejected, the same idea was used in the smashhit manga Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata.
Because of the nature of his series, he has often written Bo-bobo version parodies of other authors' manga, including Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball, Yudetamago's Kinnikuman, Kazuki Takahashi's Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Tsugumi Ohba's and Takeshi Obata's Death Note.