Kunihiko Ikuhara
The success of "Sailor Moon" significantly influenced the development of "yuri", and by the mid-1990s, anime and manga featuring intimate relationships between women enjoyed mainstream success and popularity. "Sailor Moon" director Kunihiko Ikuhara went on to create "Revolutionary Girl Utena" (1997–1999), a "shōjo" anime series with female same-sex relationships as a central focus. This period also saw a revival of the Class S genre through the best-selling light novel series "Maria-sama ga Miteru" (1998–2004) by , which by 2010 had 5.4 million copies in print. Another prominent author of this period is , active since the early 1990s, with works involving love stories among women. The first Japanese magazines specifically targeted towards lesbians, many of which contained sections featuring "yuri" manga, also emerged during this period. Stories in these magazines ranged from high school romance to lesbian life and love, and featured varying degrees of sexual content.