Gou Tanabe was born in 1975 in Tokyo. As a child, he became a fan of yokai (supernatural creatures from Japanese tradition) when his father bought him Shigeru Mizuki's classic manga GeGeGe no Kitaro, and by junior high he was already designing his own demons in sketchbooks. An encounter with the work of creature modeler Yasushi Nirasawa in Hobby Japan magazine started Tanabe's interest in horror movies and the special effects behind them as well.

Tanabe began his professional manga career with a short stint working as an assistant, but made his solo debut in 2003 with Sunakichi, published in Comic Beam magazine; the story won the magazine's New Faces Award, and Tanabe would soon become associated with Comic Beam, which began to regularly feature his Lovecraft manga staring in 2007 with an adaptation of the short story "The Outsider."

In addition to receiving nominations for three Eisner Awards and two Harvey Awards to date, Gou Tanabe has received critical acclaim in France, winning the prestigious Best Series award in 2020 at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, as well as in his native Japan with a Jury Selection Award at the 2018 Japan Media Arts Festival.