The Manga-ka Info Thread

[Arcanis]

Ok I had this idea where everybody can post the biographies and works of the diferent mangaka they like and feel should get some recognition, adding some pictures and stuff so that everyone can get to know the really genius writers and artists there are out there in the manga world, and also check out some other works they didn't know about a certain mangaka, or find out who did this and that, etc.

It'd be pretty nice to have something like an encyclopedia similar to The Encyclopedia of Manga that moe started a long time ago.

If you have some kind of suggestion you can PM me or a mod. And please don't spam.

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Biographies:

• Abe Yoshitoshi
  
  
• Adachi Mitsuru
  
  
• Akamatsu Ken
  
  
• Anzai Nobuyuki
  
  
• Aoyama Gosho
  
  
• Araki Hirohiko
  
  
• Asada Hiroyuki
  
  
• CLAMP
  
  
• Fujishima Kōsuke
  
  
• Fukumoto Nobuyuki
  
  
• Hiroaki Samura
  
  
• Hōjō Tsukas
  
  
• Hoshino Katsura
  
  
• Ikegami Ryōichi
  
  
• Inoue Takehiko
  
  
• Katsura Masakazu
  
  
• Kishimoto Masashi
  
  
• Kishiro Yukito
  
  
• Koike Kazuo
  
  
• Kojima Gōseki
  
  
• Kubo Tite
  
  
• Kurumada Masami
  
  
• Mashima Hiro
  
  
• Miura Kentaro
  
  
• Nagai Go
  
  
• Nihei Tsutomu
  
  
• Obata Takeshi
  
  
• Oda Eiichiro
  
  
• Oku Hiroya
  
  
• Ōtomo Katsuhiro
  
  
• Sadamoto Yoshiyuki
  
  
• Shirō Masamune
  
  
• Takada Yūzō
  
  
• Takahashi Tsutomu
  
  
• Takashi Rumiko
  
  
• Tezuka Osamu
  
  
• Togashi Yoshihiro
  
  
• Toriyama Akira
  
  
• Urasawa Naoki
  
  
• Watsuki Nobuhiro
  
  
• Yagi Norihiro

[Arcanis]

Masami Kurumada (車田正美 Kurumada Masami)



Kurumada Masami was born on December 6, 1953. He debuted in 1974 with Sukeban Arashi, the story of a teenage girl. But he didn't get his first hit until three years later when he published Ring ni Kakero, where he used for first time the things that will become his trademark. In 1986, he started his biggest hit ever, Saint Seiya, which lasted 28 volumes and span a 114 episode TV series and four movies.

He published exclusively for Shueisha (in their Shonen Jump magazine) until 1994. In 1996, he published Evil Crusher Maya as freelance in Enix's Shonen Gangan magazine before he went to Kadokawa Shoten, where he published his second best hit, B't X, in the pages of Shonen Ace magazine.

When B't X ended, Kurumada returned to Shueisha where he's publishing the sequel to Ring ni Kakero, simply called Ring ni Kakero 2.

Although his style has evolved significantly during his long career, it's still closer to the classic manga, specially in his faces, than to the modern stiles of today's hits.

One thing is sure: you won't have a problem figuring out his main characters. All of them (with the exception of two) are Seiya's twins.

Works:

Akaneiro no Kaze (1995)
Aoi no tori shinwa (1993)
B't X (1994 - 2000.02)
Evil Crusher Maya (1996)
Fuma no Kojiro (1982)
Jitsuroku! Shinwakai (1979)
Jitsuroku! Shinwakai II - Ring ni kakero (1980)
Jitsuroku! Shinwakai III (1983)
Kyôfu taiken (1993)
Mabdachi Jingi (1978)
Mikereko Rock (1975)
Otokozaka (1984-85)
Raimei no Zaji (1988)
Ring ni Kakero (1977-81)
Ring ni Kakero 2 (2000 ~)
Saigo no Jitsuroku! Shinwakai (1983)
Saint Seiya (1985.12 - 1991.12)
Shiroobi Taishoo (1979)
Silent Knight Shô (1993)
Sukeban Arashi (1974-1975)

[spinstate]

Kazuo Koike (小池一夫 Koike Kazuo)

Koike, along with artist Goseki Kojima, made the manga Kozure Okami (Lone Wolf and Cub), and Koike was also responsible for that series' film adaptation. Koike and Kojima became known as the "Golden Duo" because of the success of Lone Wolf and Cub.

Koike's other series, Crying Freeman, which he made along with artist Ryoichi Ikegami, was given a Hollywood adaptation.

Kazuo Koike started the Gekika Sonjuku, a college course meant to teach people how to be manga-ka.

Koike's works include:

* Crying Freeman, along with Ryoichi Ikegami
* Kozure Okami (Lone Wolf and Cub), along with Goseki Kojima
* The script to the 1973 film Lady Snowblood, along with Kazuo Uemura

See also:
http://www.koikekazuo.jp/english/profile_e.htm

Goseki Kojima (小島剛夕 Kojima Gōseki, November 3, 1928 - January 5, 2000)

Kojima was born on the same day that Osamu Tezuka was born on. After getting out of junior high school, Kojima painted advertising posters for movie theaters as his source of income.

In 1950, he moved to Tokyo. The post-World War II environment lead to forms of manga meant for impoverished audiences. Kojima created art for kamishibai or "paper play" narrators. Kojima then started to create works for the kashi-bon market.

In 1967, Kojima created Dojinki, his first manga for a magazine. In 1970, he collaborated with writer Kazuo Koike to create Kozure Okami (Lone Wolf and Cub), their most famous work. Koike and Kojima were dubbed "the Golden Duo".

Kojima died at 71 years of age.

Manga List

Lone Wolf & Cub
Samurai Executioner

[Arcanis]

Rumiko Takahashi (高橋 留美子 Takashi Rumiko)



Rumiko Takahashi was born in 1957 in Niigata, Japan. In her junior year of high school she had decided to make manga her profession and made her debut two years later with the story Katte Na Yatsura (Overbearing People) in the magazine that she would call home for the rest of her career, Shonen Sunday.

In 1978 Urusei Yatsura was released, which ran until 1987. Following Urusei Yatsura was another very successful manga, Maison Ikkoku. Maison Ikkoku was written with a young adult audience in mind, and was therefore puplished in Big Comic Spirits, rather than Shonen Sunday.

1987 was a big year in Takahashi's career because it saw the beginning and ending of her three most well known stories. Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku both bid their final farewells after 34 volumes and 15 volumes respectively. Both series did very well and saw Takahashi's writing and artistic abilities improve over the years.

As both series wrapped Takahashi began work on Ranma 1/2 a series about a teenaged martial artist named Ranma Saotome that has become cursed and transforms into a girl whenever he is splashed with cold water. Ranma 1/2 ran the longest of all of her series, 38 volumes, and came to an end early in 1996.

As she had previously done, Takahashi quickly began her next series, Inu-Yasha Sengoku Otogi Zoushi (Inu-Yasha A Feudal Fairytale) only a few months after the end of Ranma 1/2.

Takahashi has also had quite a few short stories over the years such as One or W, Maris the Chojo, and Firetripper (which have been collected in Rumic World and Rumic Theater) along with the more lengthy short works of the Mermaid Saga which deals with elements of immortality and One-Pound Gospel a love story focusing on a Catholic nun and a young boxer.

Over Takahashi's 20+ year career she has been considered the first major female to do work on boys comics, and has earned the title "The Princess of Manga". She won the Shogakukan sponsered "New Comic Artist Award" in 1978 and won the 1994 Inkpot Award in America.


Manga's:

InuYasha
Maison Ikkoku
Mermaid Saga (Mermaid's Forest, Mermaid's Scar, and Mermaid's Gaze)
One Pound Gospel
Ranma 1/2
Rumic Theater, her most recent work
Rumic World
Urusei Yatsura

[spinstate]

Masamune Shirow (士郎 正宗 Shirō Masamune)

If there were actually such an animal as a "Perfect Creator," Masamune Shirow is probably a short, evolutionary step behind it! In a synergistic dance of written word and visualisation, he weaves extraordinarily complex stories of vast character and subtle speculation. Born on November 23rd, 1961 in the Hyogo Prefecture of Kobe, Japan; the name ‘Masamune Shirow’ is a pseudonym.

Even while attending elementary school, Shirow’s interest in art was noted; working with water-colours and using the local mountains, seashore and illustrated reference books as inspiration. Although he did not draw much during Junior High and High School (concentrating more on sports such as judo); his fondness for art gave him the incentive to enter the Osaka University of Arts, where he studied oil painting (ironically Shirow finds he does not often use the skills he learned; having basically ‘self-taught’ himself into the art of manga.)

It was at college where he was introduced to manga by a friend and in 1983 he self-published the manga paperback Black Magic (in the Japanese manga fanzine Atlas). Shirow was 22 yrs. old at the time. Black Magic was noticed by Harumichi Aoki, president of Seishinsha, a publishing firm in Osaka. Mr.Aoki invited Shirow to make his official debut through his company; upon graduation in 1985, Shirow drew Appleseed specifically for Seishinsha, and made his commercial debut. (nb : This is very different from most manga artists in Japan, who first debut with a short work in a commercial magazine, and then serialise it.)

In parallel to the debut of Appleseed, Masamune Shirow also became a high school teacher. He taught for five years, but stopped due to dissatisfaction with the format of school education; at this time he started work on Ghost in the Shell and Orion for Seishinsha. (Orion came out in 1988, first published in Seishinsha’s monthly manga anthology COMIC GAIA, and then through DarkHorse comics.)

Masamune Shirow lives in Kobe. It is a long, narrow city hemmed in by mountains and the ocean, at the corner of an industrial region that stretches out from Osaka, Japan’s second largest metropolis. Kobe is the second largest port city next to Yokohama (historically it was an early port of entry for Western culture.) In Japan today, Kobe has a reputation of being a tourist city. The Hanshin earthquake unfortunately destroyed his home and studio; Shirow now lives in another section of the Hyogo Prefecture.

Of all the things that Shirow values highly, is his personal privacy. He lives in virtual isolation, working alone; his primary contacts being that of Harumichi Aoki (Seishinsha president) and long-time friend and editor Shigehiko Ogasawara. At one point he did have an assistant, Hagane Kotetsu, but in Shirow’s own words -- "I really couldn’t keep him busy. Since there aren’t too many artists here, the poor fellow would practically starve." -- Kotetsu is still a good friend.

Shirow’s primary influences were animation and T.V. dramas such as Gundam and Macross (many U.S. and U.K. productions.) Shirow also admits to influence from other artists’ styles -- "When I was working on the animated version of Black Magic M-66 I concentrated very intently on the techniques of Hayao Miyazaki. Looking back at Appleseed, I seem to find nuances strongly reminiscent of Katsuhiro Otomo; mainstream film industry would be Terry Gilliam and many others." -- Although Shirow considers all his works -- "my own children"--, Appleseed stands out the most.

Shirow's works reflects on his extensive reading and the huge influence of spiders and other crustacians is apparent in his designs. Medicine, general science, supernatural stuff, philosophy, military strategies, mythology, biology, nanotechnology, sword-fights, even comedy. In his spare time, Shirow enjoys taking care of his pet spiders and photographing them; he likes making paper-mache and reading (although he does not often get time for this). Since he has always loved to draw, it’s hard for him to differentiate between work and play. An intensely private man, images/photos of the artist are almost non-existent!

Info from: http://www.asgard.gen.nz/anime/shirow/whois.html

Manga List
Black Magic M-66 (1983)
Appleseed (1985-89)
Dominion (1986)
Ghost in the Shell (1991)
Orion (1991)
Intron Depot 1 (1992) (sci fi-themed color illustration artbook collecting his work from 1981 to 1991)
Dominion: Conflict 1 (No More Noise) (1995)
Intron Depot 2 - Blades (1998) (fantasy-themed color illustration artbook featuring female characters with armor and edged weapons)
Ghost in the Shell 2: Manmachine Interface (2001) (the "true" sequel to Ghost in the Shell, released in collected form in America on January 19, 2005)
Intron Depot 3 - Ballistics (2003) (military-themed color illustration and CG artbook featuring female characters with guns)
Ghost in the Shell 1.5: Human Error Processor (2003) (original version of Ghost in the Shell 2, scrapped when Ghost in the Shell 2 was collected in a single volume, but recently rereleased in Japan)
Intron Depot 4 - Bullets (2004) (color illustration artbook collecting his work between 1995 to 1999

[Kucheeky Badkuya]

Eiichiro Oda


Oda began his manga career at the age of 17 with his one-shot cowboy manga Wanted! won second place in the coveted tezuka manga awards. Oda went to work as an assistant to some of the biggest manga artists in the industry, inculding Nobuhiro Watsuki, before winning the Hop Step Award for new artists. His pirate adventure One Piece, which was debuted in Shonen Jump Magazine in 1997, quickly becasme one of the most popular manga in Japan

Works:

One Piece
Wanted!

[spinstate]

Katsuhiro Otomo (大友克洋 Ōtomo Katsuhiro)



Date of Birth: 14 April 1954
Place of Birth: Miyagi Prefecture, Japan

Alongside Hayao Miyazaki, Katsuhiro Otomo is the best known name in anime in the West, thanks to the phenomenal success of his 1988 epic Akira. However, to label Otomo purely as an anime director would be wrong as he has had less of an impact on the development of the form than one might expect - his contributions to the world of anime purely as a director have been surprisingly few and far between, but his influence as a writer and designer and the enormous impact that Akira made on Western anime fandom cannot be underestimated.

Otomo was obsessed with manga, film and television from a very early age and it was clear even early on that he wanted to forge a creer as a manga artist. After graduating from Sanuma High School, he headed for Tokyo to realise his ambition and was soon employed to adapt Prosper Merimee's short novel Mateo Falcone for the popular weekly magazine Action. The adaptation, retitled A Gun Report, first appeared in October 1973, and was the first of a series of self-contained stories that Otomo would create for Action, and in true manga fashion, he dabbled in many and various subjects.

Throughout the 70s, Otomo continued to hone his skills, graduating to headline stories and longer strips before embarking on the ambitious Fireball, a complex tale of mankind locked in a struggle with an all-powerful supercomputer. The story was never completed but it was important for many reasons, not least of which were the proto-cyberpunk leanings of its plot and for being Otomo's first sustained exploration of the interaction between Man and machine. It also featured government scientists locked in a struggle with terrorists for control of a devestating new technology, a theme that Otomo was to return to in his later work, Akira.

Even more ambitious was Domu [1980 - 1982], a huge horror story about psychics at war in a run down Tokyo housing complex. The story took two years to tell in the pages of Action and was a massive success, netting Otomo Japan's prestigious Grand Prix award for a Science Fiction story, the first time that a manga had been so honoured.

The early 80s were a boom time for Otomo who became increasingly prolific. The war story Kibun wa mo senso [an adaptation of Toshihiko Yahagi novel] and It's a Crazy, Crazy World quickly followed as did Otomo's first attempt at film-making, a 16mm film titled Give Us Guns. He also made his anime debut in 1982 when he was asked to contribute character designs to the epic Harmagedon: Genma taisen and the space opera Crusher Joe, both of which were released in 1983.

By the time the films were released however, Otomo had already embarked on his magnum opus, the ground-breaking masterpiece Akira. Taking eight years to run its course and published bi-monthly in Action, it grew into 2000 pages of art, subsequently collected in six volumes. The sprawling story made Otomo a superstar and was equally popular when it was translated into English and other languages.

As the story of Akira wound its ever-more-comlex way to its conclusion, Otomo took the reins for the first time as director when he helmed one segment of the anthology piece Meikyû monogatari [1987]. He followed this with work on another anthology, the highly regarded Roboto kânibauru [1987] before starting work on a big screen adaptation of Akira.

It's become de rigeur in some quarters to pillory Akira for being successful, to dismiss it as somehow not "real" anime and even to claim that its success has somehow "damaged" anime. All nonsense of course. It's a staggering achievement and its arrival in the West ignited fandom like no other film or TV show had managed before. It remains the high water mark for anime and is one of the truly great SF movies - animated or not.

Akira pretty well ended Otomo's work in manga. The Otomo scripted The Legend of the Mother Sarah was serialised in Young magazine and it proved to be his final work for the print medium. Instead, Otomo concentrated on movies - Warudo apaatoment hora was his first attempt at a live-action film and he soon became popular as a collaborator in many capacities, as script-writer, character designer and the, more cryptically, "supervisor".

A decade after the global success of Akira, Otomo announced that he would be returning to anime to write and direct Steamboy, a project that endured many tribulations and took years to get to the screen. At the time of writing [February 2004], the film is finally due for a release in July 2004. Whether it has the same impact as Akira remains to be seen.

Manga List
Akira

[spinstate]

Yuzo Takada (高田裕三 Takada Yūzō)

Yuzo Takada was born on March 21, 1963 in Tokyo. The first appearance of his work was in November of 1983, in the Biweekly Young Magazine. The piece was called Shuushoku Beginner. From December 1983 to February 1985 he ran his first series, Tokonatsu Bank, in Young Magazine). Apparently some of his earlier works were somewhat pornographic, at the insistence of his editor (^-^;), but what Takada really wanted to do was a story about the supernatural. Takada drew several more titles, including Tour Conductor, Nikumori, and finally created his first supernatural manga, the popular 3x3 Eyes, which is still going today. Yuzo Takada is also well-known for creating All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku, Genzou Hitogata Kiwa, and of course, Blue Seed.

Manga List

Shuushoku Beginner (1983)
Endless Summer Bank aka Tokonatsu Bank (1984-85)
Tour Conductor, Nikumori (1985-86)
Sportion KIDs (1986-87)
Every Day is Sunday (1987-89)
3x3 Eyes (1987-ongoing)
Toritsuki-kun (1989-91)
All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku (1990)
Blue Seed (1992-95)
The New All-Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku (1997-98)
Genzou Hitogata Kiwa (1998 - )
Tsukumo Nemuri Shizume (2004 - )
Little Jumper (2004 - )

[spinstate]

Hiroaki Samura (広明)

Date of birth: 1970-02-17

Like fine literature and cinema, the medium of comic books can be a powerful vehicle for storytelling when it's done right. As Louis L'Amour depicts the adventures of the American West with fluid prose, and John Woo stages gorgeously choreographed shootouts in films chronicling a mythical Asian crime underground, so does Japanese writer/artist Hiroaki Samura elegantly and boldly tell the story of an angry young orphan who, in ancient Edo, seeks an immortal samurai's help avenging her murdered parents in his amazing comics series, Blade of the Immortal. Samura has been recognized by a wide variety of organizations - from the Japanese Government's Ministry of the Arts to the comics industry's annual Harvey Award Committee - for his groundbreaking contributions to graphicstorytelling. Publications from The Washington Times to U.S. News and World Report have included Blade of the Immortal on their recommended-reading lists.

Samura's art is instantly recognizable and without peer in his native Japan - from his expositional development of subtle plot features, to the gorgeous, and often graphic, details of brutal fight scenes between honorable ronin and renegade sword students. For storytellers like Hiroaki Samura, art is a striking and powerful tool, and the gut-wrenching drama it depicts inspires a great range of emotions - most typically, heart-rending empathy for the young heroine, Rin, as she struggles between wanting to be a good person and wanting a rogue band of killers to suffer as her parents did.

Manga List

Blade of the Immortal
Ohikkoshi

[CABLE]

Nobuhiro Watsuki



(actual pictures of him are rare but he does many self portraits like this one)


In Tokyo, Japan, on May 26, 1970, Nobuhiro Watsuki was born. As a young child, Nobuhiro Watsuki practiced Kendo constantly at school. Unfortunately, though, he was not really good at it and never won his games. But at his high school, Nagoka High, Watsuki won the Pop Step Award for the manga, "Podmark". He had been influenced by his older brother, Osamu Tezuka and other artists like Fujiko Fujio in becoming a mangaka (manga artist).
Nobuhiro Watsuki assisted Takeshi Obata (Mangaka for Hikaru No Go) and has had many now known artists as assistants such as Eiichiro Oda (One Piece) and Hiroyuki Takei (Shaman King). He helped produce Arabian Lamp- Lamp and Chikara Mito Denzetsu. Around this time, Shueisha Jump were looking for some talent. As many might know, Shueisha has a tendency to take new artists and turn them into something big. They did just this in 1992 when Watsuki gave Shueisha a 31-page prelude to our Rurouni Kenshin. The excerpt was called Rurouni: The Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story then from there on, Watsuki became famous.
In drawing Rurouni Kenshin, Nobuhiro Watsuki used various ideas in history and even in his own life. The series, as we know, is based on the Meiji Era and so Watsuki bases most of characters upon former soldiers and figures in this time period. Watsuki uses himself as a character somewhat also. His favorite character, Myojin Yahiko, symbolizes his own childhood along with the frustrated feelings he felt during his Kendo classes.
Watsuki is a normal person. He likes to play video games like Vampire Hunter and Samurai Showdown. His favorite anime would be Neon Genesis Evangelion and Kodomo no Omocha. He likes reading some American comics like Spiderman and X-Men. He likes action movies too such as Die Hard, Midnight Runner, and Back to the Future.
As for other works, Watsuki has worked on Gun Blaze West and his most recent work Buso Renkin began publication on June 2003 in Shueisha Jump.

(taken from the-oro.com)

Mangas

Rurouni Kenshin(1992)
Gun Blaze West(2000)
Busō Renkin(2003)

[spinstate]

Akira Toriyama (鳥山 明 Toriyama Akira, born April 5, 1955)


He debuted in 1978 with the Wonder Island story published in Weekly Shonen Jump, and gained fame for Dr. Slump, serialized weekly in Shonen Jump from 1980 to 1984.

He is probably best known for the Dragon Ball series (the second part of the manga in the United States is known as Dragon Ball Z to reduce confusion for American audiences). This series was one of the linchpins for what is known as the Golden Age of Jump. Its success "forced" Toriyama to work on Dragon Ball from 1984 to 1995. During that eleven-year period, he produced 42 volumes. Each volume has an average of 200 pages, so the entire Dragon Ball storyline extends to almost 9,000 pages. Moreover, the success of Dragon Ball led to an animated television series, feature-length animated movies, video games, and mega-merchandising.

His clean line and design sense led to jobs designing characters for the phenomenally popular Dragon Quest series of role-playing game (called Dragon Warrior in the United States). He has also served as the character designer for the Super Famicom and SNES RPG Chrono Trigger and the popular fighting game Tobal No. 1 for the PlayStation, and continues to produce the occasional manga story. His works after Dragon Ball were short (100-200 pages) stories, including Cowa!, Kajika, Sandland, and one-shots, like the spoof Neko Majin Z.

Manga List

Akira Toriyama Sakugekijou
This consisted of two books, with each one having a set of short stories, written between the times of Dr. Slump and Dragonball. They were both published by Shuiesha (Jump Comics)

Akira Toriyama Laboratory
This book was co-written by a man named Akira Sakuma. It is about Toriyama in a robot form, teaching how to draw manga, using examples from Dr. Slump. It did quite well, and was another innovative idea.

Dr. Slump 1-18
This was a masterpiece, and one of Toriyama's most successful pieces. It tells the story of a little robotic girl named Arale, working hard to stay on top in a crazy world, living in the penguin village. This was hailed by critics worldwide, and was what made Toriyama famous in the first place.

Dragon Ball 1-42
Easily Toriyama's best work. The fantastic story of Dragonball was his most successful piece, and is still loved by millions world-wide today. This is what emphasized his fame, and showed that he really is one of the best manga creators in the world today. Appeared in Shonen Jump 1985-1994.

Dabu and Peter
This was an on-going colour story about racing cars in V-Jump, a monthly computer games magazine. It was stopped though, because the quality was fairly lackluster. Most of the V-Jump stories were done by Toriyama's Bird Studio assistants.

Go Go Ackman!
Another colour story, this time starring a young demon boy who bared a sword, published monthly in a computer games magazine. From my sources, I have been told that this was so popular that computer games were based on it!

Kajika
Kajika is a anoying little child, for his sorroundings. One day he passes the line, and kills a fox. The dead fox's spirit casts a curse over Kajika, so he turns into a fox-human. The curse makes his village he lives in, to banish him, and Kajika must now go a journey to save 1000 peoples life to break the curse. He meets a girl, (cant remember her name) who's on the run from the mafia. She has a dragon egg, and thoose who drinks of a dragons blood will gain massive strength. And so Kajika must help the girl (she looks alot like Bulma), from the mafia.

New Dr. Slump
This was continuing Dr Slump, this time in colour, in V-Jump, the monthly magazine. I know very little about this though, so not much can be said for it.

[Arcanis]

Masashi Kishimoto ((岸本斉史 Kishimoto Masashi)



Born in the Okayama Prefecture in 1974 as the older of two twins. As a pre-schooler Masashi Kishimoto was fixated with the TV show "Doraemon", all of his friends at the time were in to the show as well, and everyone would draw pictures of the characters. Kishimoto was always the perfectionist, pointing out obvious mistakes in other people drawings and showing them the way to draw it.

In his elementary days, Masashi Kishimoto was obsessed with drawing, he filled his notebooks with drawings, and he even would draw while playing hide and seek with his friends while he waited to be found. Doraemon was always the anime of choice for him until one day he saw an incredible show on TV, Mobile Suit Gundam, all his drawing time was now dedicated to drawing characters from that.

After awhile of drawing Mobile Suit Gundam characters, Kishimoto once again found a new anime, Akira Toriyama's famous creation: Dr. Slump. Masashi Kishimoto recalls how he couldn't believe how "super duper good" the art was and he began to draw the Dr. Slump characters and even submitted a crayon drawing of Arale-chan to a contest.

In his latter Elementary school days, Akira Toriyama's most famous creation, Dragonball became an anime and for Kishimoto this spawned a whole new interest in Manga and Shonen Jump.

Near the end of Elementary school, Masashi Kishimoto was strictly a Dragonball fan, he recalls how he was so obsessed with Akira Toriyama, "He was like a god to me, I was constantly drawing characters that appear in Dragonball."

It was at this stage in his life that Masashi Kishimoto made a decision that he is not regretting now, and many of his fans are thankful for. He started to think to himself that "Manga sure is great" and that he wanted to become a famous Mangaka like Akira Toriyama. Kishimoto created his first manga around this time entitled "Hiatari-kun", a story revolving around a "Shadow ninja boy".

Still in elementary school, Kishimoto was still obsessed with Akira Toriyama and would spend all of his extra time making his drawings look exactly like his idols. It was then that he saw a game that Akira Toriyama helped develop called "Dragon Quest". The drawings were amazing, but unfortunately for Masashi Kishimoto he did not own a Famicon. It was then that his twin brother devised a plan to get a Famicon from someone else, but could someone willing to give away something worth 10,000 Yen possibly exist, he did and Masashi Kishimoto began to view this friend as a god.

Masashi Kishimoto finally recieved the game "Dragon Quest" the first game he had ever owned and the first time he had played an RPG game.

In Junior High School, Kishimoto began to focus on things other then drawing. Baseball had become a big part of his life, and there was alot more studying to do, which meant little time for drawing. He pondered to himself if he was "Too old to draw", at this point an unbelievable event occured in his life. As he walked home from school he saw a movie poster, one of the best drawings he had ever seen, how could a person draw this good? The drawing was for Katsuhiro Ootomo's "Akira". This drawing rekindled the flame and passion to draw, and to this day he continues to draw continously in hopes of one day getting close to that picture.

After he learned of "Akira", Masashi Kishimoto's drawings changed in a big way. He spent hours studying and trying to understand the style of Ootomo, but couldn't. He then had a revelation that this was totally original, and nothing else was like this. It would be impossible to copy, much like a persons DNA. He couldn't understand what was great about the drawings of both Ootomo and Toriyama, but there was a few things he could understand. The effects, designs, every small detail was perfect and different from other artists. Kishimoto then began thinking to himself that an attractive picture is an original one, learning how to copy other artists was pointless.

Kishimoto began to try and create his own style, but he found himself always copying someone elses style to some extent, finding or creating an original style would be very rare and near impossible. With this new belief, and the thought that Ootomo's style was unbeatable, Kishimoto began to try and make his drawings look exactly like his.

In the Eleventh Grade, Kishimoto created his first 31 page manga, he couldn't tell if it was any good so he showed it to his brother. "Great isn't it?!!" he asked. Only to get a reply of "This sucks!!", naturally he couldn't take his brothers word so he showed his father, and got the same reaction. Up until then Kishimoto had been really excited about submitting it for a Jump Magazine Award, but after that he lost the nerve and that manga will forever sit in the bottom of his desk drawer.

Kishimoto did not lose sight of his dream and thought to himself that if he wants to win the contest he will have to just keep creating mangas. His thinking may have been odd then, but looking back on it he reflects how it made excellent practice. After a few more manga projects, and being told that "This is no good" he began to wonder to himself why his mangas weren't? What made other peoples better!?

Dedicating all of his time to figure this out, Masashi Kishimoto graduated high school ranked 38th out of 39th in his class, it quickly became obvious that with grades like this, he wouldn't be getting into any college. No good at manga, no good at school, what would he do in life? Masashi Kishimoto didn't give up, he got right back to drawing Manga, and inspiring to become a Jump mangaka.

Today everything has worked out for Masashi Kishimoto, his dreams of becoming a famous Jump mangaka have come true, his story about that shadow ninja boy, Naruto has become one of the best selling and most popular mangas worldwide.

Manga works:

Hiatari-kun
Karakuri
Naruto
Mario (for the future though..)

Credits: www.narutofan.com

[Arcanis]

Yoshihiro Togashi(冨樫 義博 Togashi Yoshihiro)



He is the manga-ka who draws/writes HunterxHunter. This will be a (brief) biography of him, his relations, and his various other works which you might want to check out.

Togashi was born on April 27, 1966, in Yamagata, Japan. He wrote in some notes in the HxH manga that he had, since his childhood, wanted to be a manga-ka. He drew a lot as a child, and started drawing manga since elementary school. Togashi had an younger sister, and an older brother, who is also a manga-ka and his inspiration.
As an adult, his favorite food is rice with curry, he enjoys bowling, video-games and scary movies (which were the inspiration for YYH). Togashi described himself as a messy otaku gamer-type.

He married Naoko Takeuchi (famous for Sailor Moon) on June 6th, 1999, and so far has one child with her (a boy). Their wedding in Japan was actually a big event, and a small doujinshi was published by them both for the occassion.

Manga Togashi wrote:

* Tonda Birthday Present (1986) this was his premier work.
* Tende Showaru Cupid (1989, 3 volumes)
o a manga that won the "new talent competition" in Shounen Jump Weekly, this story is basically a romance. It's about a succubus who is accidentaly discovered by a boy, and follows him home to molest him. The love story evolves from there.
* Okami Nante Kowakunai! (1989, 1 volume)
o About a teenage werewolf signing up to basketball camp to impress a girl. Now he has to juggle getting through basketball practice, which happens to be on the full moon, and wooing the girl he likes.
* Yu Yu Hakusho (1990, 19 volumes)
o A boy who died is revived again to become a "spirit detective", fighting the evil demons from the spirit world with his group of friends.
* Level E (1996, 3 volumes)
o A series of stories about an alien prince's visit to earth.
* Hunter X Hunter (1998+)

All of his manga were published by Shounen Jump magazine.

So far, Yuyu Hakusho is Togashi's most popular work. It's been widely sold all over the world, in North America alone the sales rose up to 40 million, some of the most popular manga exported from Japan.

Courtesy of http://www.dreams.9esolution.net

[spinstate]

CLAMP



Clamp is a group of four remarkably talented women - Nanse Ohkawa, Mokona Apapa, Mick Nekoi, and Satsuki Igarashi - who started out as doushinji artists, but developed into one of the most popular shoujo manga artists in Japan.

Big eyes, lithe bodies, intricate costumes, and twisted plots strewn with religious connotations are distinct norms for Clamp. Avid fans can easily recognize the Clamp eye, be it drawn Nekoi or Apapa styled. Many other artists have taken up the general style of the Clamp eye, but the original is hard to imitate.

Similarly, most Clamp characters (even the more masculine ones) are drawn lithely, slimly, focusing more on ethereal, feminine aspects than brute, masculine force. For this reason, Clamp characters seem much more fantastic and otherworldy, even their interpretations of girls-next-door.

Costumes, of course, help to add to the atmosphere of surrealism. All Clamp series have costumes and designs that are distincly Clamp. Intricate details on armor, weapons, clothing, headpieces, and jewelry are expected. The series most famous for cutesy costumes is Cardcaptor Sakura, since one of the main characters insists on changing the lead character into different outfits for each escapade. However, we mustn't forget the other series, where costumes are a hybrid of ancient cultures and Clamp imagination.

Cultures in costumes sometimes directy translate into some of Clamp's many religious themes. Many manga plots, such as X and Wish rotate around the central theme of the Judeo-Christian religion. X and Tokyo Babylon are most famous for Clamp's religious fascination, with their plots, art, and characters focusing on direct quotes from the bible. Other series use religions or religious references as a backdrop, such as RG Veda, Angelic Layer, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Magic Knight Rayearth.

Along with their apparent art, Clamp has many distinct symbols, the most noted one being the famous Clamp curled wings (dc.org's favicon), which shows up in some form or another in almost every series I've ever read or seen (the exception being Shirahime Shou). Other well-known symbols include their massive use of feathers or sakura-petals, a flying egg (sometimes with a golden "C" and crown), and the fast food store, Duklyon Café.

Most Clamp works in the U.S. are published by TokyoPop, but other companies have published Clamp works in the past. Viz-Animerica have been publishing X (they have changed the name to X/1999 for obvious reasons), while Mixx published the first editions of Magic Knight Rayearth (now TokyoPop does). Angelic Layer, Clover, Wish, and Cardcaptor Sakura are also published by TokyoPop. Upcoming TokyoPop releases are Clamp School Detectives, Clamp School Defenders: Duklyon, Miyuki-chan in Wonderland, Shirahime Syo - Snow Goddess Tales, and Man of Many Faces. Obviously, I am very much looking forward to these new publications as they will be formatted in the traditions manga style (opening from right to left) and thus much cheaper than other companies.

Clamp Members

Ageha Ohkawa
大川緋芭 (Ōkawa Ageha), formerly Nanase Ohkawa (大川七瀬, Ōkawa Nanase)
the lady with bunny ears and braids, is the leader of Clamp, and often the writer for Clamp stories. I find that Ohkawa's job must be the most difficult, since Clamp's storylines are so accurate to their religious references. Ohkawa is the woman who needs to have a strong hold on ancient cultures and she is also the one that changes old themes like love, God, and the apocolypse into new, interesting storylines.

Mokona
もこな (Mokona), formerly Mokona Apapa (もこなあぱぱ, Mokona Apapa),
the short-haired kitty, is the artist responsible for the signature Clamp character art. She is the lady responsible for all the gorgeous artwork that Kiara drools over day-in, day-out! Apapa's art is usually very intricate, filling up entire pages and sometimes two-page spreads with extreme attention to detail.

Tsubaki Nekoi
猫井　椿 (Nekoi Tsubaki), formerly Mick Nekoi (猫井みっく, Nekoi Mikku),
often depicted as a puppy in chibi form, usually does the final editing, background art, and the chibi characters you usually find at the end of the earlier novels. However, in works such as Wish and Lawful Drug, she is the lead artist. Her art is very distict from Apapa's, taking the bold approach instead of the detailed one.

Satsuki Igarashi
いがらし寒月 (Igarashi Satsuki), formerly Satsuki Igarashi (五十嵐さつき, Igarashi Satsuki),
the wavey-haired err... whatever she is, is the assistant designer and production coordinator. Mostly, companies that want to produce animes based on Clamp series go to this fine lady

Note:- These names are recent: In 2004, as part of CLAMP's 15th Anniversary, CLAMP's members changed their names from Nanase Ohkawa, Apapa Mokona, Mick Nekoi, and Satsuki Igarashi, respectively. The August 2004 issue of Newtype USA, a magazine specializing in events of the anime and manga subcultures, reported that the members of CLAMP simply wanted to try out new names.

CLAMP works (courtesy Wikipedia.org)

Credits to:-
http://wikipedia.org
http://duklyon-cafe.org

[Kucheeky Badkuya]

Naoki Urasawa


A commentary with Urasawa:

http://www.comicbookgalaxy.com/comme...ak_010305.html

[Seibikou]

Ken Akamatsu (赤松健 Akamatsu Ken) is a manga artist, born in Kanagawa prefecture, Japan, on July 5, 1968. Most of his works involve ecchi, often having a male protagonist being surrounded by numerous girls.

Biography:

Full name: Ken Akamatsu
Job: Tentatively, cartoonist
Height: 168 cm.
Weight: 50 kg.
Blood type: B
Education: Department of Literature country literature course graduate of Chuo University
In his teenage years, Ken failed the entrance exam to Tokyo University, and applied for Film Study instead, (it is speculated, in fact, that this is where Ken got his idea for Love Hina). Eventually, he became famous as an illustrator featured in Comiket (short for Comic Market, a comic convention bi-annually held in Japan). He used the pen name Awa Mizuno - poor and unfortunate but full of hopes and dreams. Ken, still in college, then proceeded to win the Weekly Shonen magazine awards twice. His "A Kid's Game for One Summer" was awarded the coveted 50th Shonen magazine Newcomer's Award soon after he graduated.

After a big hit with A.I. Love You, Ken finally made a grand success with his new manga, Love Hina. The series appeared in Shukan Shonen magazine and has been collected in eleven volumes (with fourteen volumes in total), which have sold over 6 million copies in Japan. Ken had added elements of his own life experiences to the story, and this was said to have induced an unique feeling to the manga especially for western readers, whose lack of familiarity with Japanese culture for the most part added to the effect. The series, published in America in 2002, was especially well received in many overseas countries - Ken was surprised that even foreign readers found Love Hina to be "cute" and to their liking.

Ken is now currently working on his latest manga series, Negima: Magister Negi Magi, which has also been made in to an anime series.

AI Love You

Love Hina

Negima

(Couldn't find original japanese release dates)

[spinstate]

Adachi Mitsuru


Adachi-sensei was born on February 9, 1951. A very well known author of many shonen stories that focus on sports with romance on the side. His first work was a short comic titled Kieta Bakuon in 1970 that was published in the magazine called, Deluxe Shonen Sunday . But his first manga, titled Ace of Hearts wasn't published until 1975. Although he has done previous illustrations for other artists such as Yamasaki Juro and Sasaki Mamoru before Ace of Hearts.

Touch, which began in 1981, was his most famous work, spanning 26 volumes. However, if you can get the "wide" version of the manga series it goes up to 11 volumes.

Many fans of Adachi loved the Touch series because of its great understanding of the character's thoughts and feelings, especially the character of Tatsuya. Adachi made us all care for the characters through all the defeats, through all the sorrows, the happiness, and finally through the victories.

That scanned picture of Adachi-sensei shown above was taken around 1986 but the recent images of him shows that he hasn't changed at all. The glasses and the clothes may have changed (of course) but he looks exactly the same. He still has the same hairstyle. Another interesting thing about Adachi, although if you are a Touch fan and the many other works already know is that he owns a baseball team. Surprise, surprise. His team is called Vitamin A

Adachi, is one of the very few people to have reached the landmark of selling 100,000,000 copies of their work. Yes, more than 100 million. Another manga-ka to do that is Takahashi Rumiko, who thinks of Adachi as a mentor to her. How cool is that, huh? Takahashi, if you're not familiar, is the author of Ranma 1/2, Inuyasha, Maison Ikkuko and other stories. I mean Tacchan was succumbed to go to the baseball club because of a signed picture of Lum of Urusei Yatsura by Takahashi herself. On that note Koutarou tried to give Tacchan a signed picture of Punch signed by Adachi so he can get out of the baseball club but Tacchan tore it up saying he hated manga artists... haha...

The List of all Adachi-sensei's works. Not only shonen but shoujo too!


~1970 ll Kieta Bakuon

~1975 ll Ace of Hearts

~1978 ll Nine
This work really started it all for Adachi. Reading Nine, you can clearly tell where the ideas of his later stories came from. From the title, you can tell already that it's a baseball manga. It's a very innocent story that I really got into for awhile. It's a little similar to Hiatari Ryoukou. It was made before I was born for goodness sakes and though it's a little old fashioned, it still has that Adachi touch to it that make you want to read more and more.

~1979 ll Oira Hokago Waka Taisho

~1980 ll Hiatari Ryoko (shoujo)
Ah! I truly LOVED this story. I can't believe I was only a year old when this was released. Yet, it seems like it was written in the present. This story is about a girl named Kasumi who goes to stay at the house of her widowed aunt during her high school years and realizes that her aunt has taken in four other students as boarders who all go to the same high school. All of them male of course so you can just see a comedy coming on right? The first meeting between Yuusaku (one of the roomates) and Kasumi is classic. And Yuusaku is soo (yes, he deserves another "o") cool. I totally loved his character from the very beginning. Such a happy go lucky guy whose goal was to get into the cheer squad in high school because he likes to cheer people on. I recommend this one a lot. It's quite old but give it a chance.

~1980 ll Miyuki
This one is pretty interesting. When I read this story I had all kinds of different feelings about it. It's sad, it's funny, it's weird and it's strange. This story is about a boy named Masato who has a step sister named Miyuki and who has a girlfriend also named Miyuki. So it's basically his story about how he feels for both of them... Who will he choose in the end? Masato has a very strange fetish (although I guess since he's a man, it's not that strange) and I was kind of put off by that fact but then this other side of him comes through also which is likable. He struggles to hold on to his feelings for both of these women but though he tries to hide his feelings for one, it's not hard to notice it. Then there are the 3 other characters that are chasing after his sister and well.... I don't really know how to describe it. In some ways it's sad. Sad in a way that I feel sorry for him and sad because this story left me feeling "funny". Urr. It's nice nonetheless but I think if people read this story everyone will interpret it in very different ways.

~1981 ll Touch

~1986 ll Slow Step (shoujo)

~1987 ll Rough

~1988 ll Short Program (shoujo)
This manga is a compilation of Adachi's short stories collected between 1986 - 1988 (I believe). This collection along with Short Program 2 are the only series of Adachi's that are translated into English and you can still order it in Viz's website. The many stories in here focus on ordinary life. Some of them are cute, some of them are twisted, some of them are unexpected. I really like it. Adachi likes to put a lot of his more popular stories in his other works (just like CLAMP does sometimes) so the short story, "The Intersection" has the characters in a restaurant where the radio is announcing the Koshien game between Meisei and Sumiko and that ace hitter Nitta!

~1990 ll Niji Iro Toogarashi

~1992 ll H2
H2 was first serialized in Shonen Sunday in 1992 but came out in manga format in 1993. This is Adachi's longest series and is up there with Touch in its popularity. Unlike Touch though which I think focuses more on the drama part of life, H2 is more on the comedic side. I really like the use of Adachi's inside jokes in here. Some of them are so ridiculous it cracks me up. You'll know what I mean if you read it. Check out my small H2 info. page in the "Fun" section for more about it.. I enjoyed reading this manga but I prefered the comedy side to it much more than the sports side. It's more suited for a male audience most definitely I think.

~1992 ll Jinbee
Jinbee is a short 1 volume manga about a daughter and her step father who are living alone together after her mother died. The step father cares very much for his adopted daughter who is not afraid to tell him her loving feelings for him. I read this story and thought it was very good. The relationship between these two characters are taboo but the way Adachi writes this tale is very much realistic and sentimental. This story was so popular that it was made into a live action tv movie. Although it's only in one volume it ran in Big Comics Special between 1992-1997 (one chapter every year)

~1996 ll Short Program 2 (shoujo)

~2000 ll Itsumo Misora

~2001 ll Katsu
This story is funny. It's about these two guys one named Katsu, who sign up for boxing in order to get closer to this girl, also named Katsu, whose dad is the owner of the boxing building. I only read up to the third manga but it's really very interesting.

Taken from :

[spinstate]

Pen name Tite Kubo, also Kubotite (久保 帯人 Kubo Taito), real name Noriaki Kubo (久保 宣章 Kubo Noriaki, born June 26, 1977).

He started drawing manga in High School, where he was a member of his Anime Club. It was in High School that he originally wrote his first manga, "Zombie Power," and had a few editions published. Later in his career, Kubo created a new manga, called Bleach, and submitted it to Weekly Shonen Jump in hopes of having it published. Bleach was originally rejected from Shonen Jump due to similarties to another manga being serialized in the magazine, known as Yu Yu Hakusho. Although Bleach did extraordiarily well when presented to a control group of readers, Kubo was disheartened by the rejection of his manga. This all changed, however, when Akira Toriyama, creator and artist of the manga Dragonball, sent him a letter of reassurance and inspiration. Bleach was eventually serialized by Weekly Shonen Jump, and has currently exceeded over one hundred chapters.

Kubo's works include:

* Bleach, his latest series, which is still ongoing in Japan and quite popular, being made into an ongoing anime TV series.
* Zombie Powder, which is a 4 volume series that was stopped by Shonen Jump due to lack of popularity

[spinstate]

Kentaro Miura (三浦 健太郎)



Kentaro Miura was born in Chiba, Japan on the 11th of July 1966.

In 1976, in primary school and being only ten years of age, Miura was already working on a manga. This first work titled "Miuranger" was said to be made for his class mates, and appeared in some of the school’s publications and books. As time progressed, "Miuranger" ended up finishing at around 40 volumes. A year later, Miura was working on his next work entitled "Ken e No Michi" or "The Way Of The Sword" - his first work drawn using indian ink. By 1979 and in middle school, Miura had began using rasters for his work, and had oriented himself to use professional drawing methods.

In 1982 he enrolled in an artistic curriculum in high school, where together with his friends and class mates they had their work published in school booklets, as well as having his first dojinshi published in a fan produced magazine.

Busy times for Mr. Miura in 1985. Miura applied for, and was accepted into an art course at the Niho Daigaku University. Two more works are started this year also, "Futanabi" and "Noa" - which may have been the work he showed to gain entry to the University in the first place. "Futanabi" and "Noa" where also submitted to the Shonen magazine, the magazine awarding Miura a prize for the best new author for "Futanabi", and they actually published "Noa" in their magazine towards the end of that year. However the publications were short lived; Miura had a difference of opinion with one of, or the editor, and no further work was published. This apparently starts some hard times for Mr. Miura.

With 1988 came the first appearance of his "Berserk". The 48 page manga - which we know today as the "Berserk Prototype", it was sort of a preview of things to come, but not quite the Berserk we know and love today. Still, it wins Miura a prize from the Comi Manga School and things start to look up.

Having finished his course, receiving a doctorate, in 1989 sees yet another work, entitle "Ohroh" or "The Wolf King" which is based on a script written by Yoshiyuki "Buronson" Okamura, creator of "Hokuto no Ken", of Fist of the North Star fame. "Ohroh" is published in the monthly Japanese Animal House magazine, in issues 5 and 7 for that year. The 10th issue of Animal House that year saw the first ever, and only publication for that year of Miura's solo work "Berserk". The year ending with "Ohroh" being released as a stand alone manga volume.

From the 2nd to the 6th issues of Animal House in 1990, a follow up to "Ohroh" is published. Entitled "Ohrohden" or "The Legend of the Wolf King", it too is based on a script by Okamura. "Ohrohden" receives a stand alone volume release that same year, but more importantly the first volume of what we know today as "Berserk" was released, though it only enjoyed limited success. It isn’t until a whole year later, with the release of the story arc entitled "The Golden Age" did "Berserk" find a degree of popularity and success.

Yet another joint effort between Miura and Okamura in the 1992 work "Japan", appearing in issues 1 through to 8 of Animal House for that year, again with stand alone manga volumes following later in the year. The year ends with "Berserk", currently only being released in volumes, again being taken up, but this time by the Japanese magazine Young Animal where it has enjoyed serialization ever since. That year, Miura decides to dedicate himself solely to working on "Berserk".

1997 saw the release of various art books and supplements by Miura based on "Berserk" as well as Miura overseeing the production of a 25 episode animated series based on his "Berserk" to be aired on Nihon TV in Japan. Since then in more recent times, the manga has made its way to 26 released volumes, 27 just around the corner and it is still going strong and with no end in sight, as well as having picked up a cultural award, second place supposedly, for Miura in 2002 earning him one million yen. The series has also spawned a whole host of merchandise, both official and fan made, ranging from statues, actions figures to key rings, video games, and a trading card game.

Both the manga and the anime have had success outside Japan, with both already available throughout Europe having been translated into various other languages from its original Japanese. America has just been privy to the release of the anime resulting in a push for more to be created, and possibly indirectly bringing about an official English release of the manga, the first three volumes available for purchase in the States as of now.

Taken from: http://www.thespectrum.net/berserk_info_biography.shtml

Kentaro Miura's projects:

* Miuranger.
* Ken e No Michi (The Way Of The Sword).
* Futanabi.
* Noa.
* Berserk Prototype.
* Oh Roh (The King Of Wolves).
* Berserk.
* Oh Roh Den (The Legend Of The Wolf King).
* Japan.

[spinstate]

Ryoichi Ikegami (池上遼一 Ikegami Ryōichi, born 1944)



In an interesting moment in Seijin Suzuki's 1965 classic yakuza/camp film One Generation of Tattoos, a young gambler realizes that he has unwittingly drawn his sensitive younger brother into the shady underworld. Looking intently at his baby brother, the yakuza admonishes him, "This is no place for you. Go back to school!" Suddenly the angle of the camera swings underneath the older brother's face until his tortured visage looms painfully close to the viewer. Surprisingly, his face looks hauntingly like the face in a Ryoichi Ikegami illustration for SANCTUARY. This particular drawing depicts the expression on the face of teenage gangster Akira Hojo as he bids his companion Chiaki Asami farewell. They are parting company to pursue their dreams. Just as Suzuki uses unusual editing and camera techniques to make an otherwise drab gangster story visually punchy and dynamic, so Ikegami manages with inks and brushes to pull all the emotions inside his characters right out into their faces.

Ikegami's first hit, drawn in 1974, was about a high school gang, tough punks who attended a school replete with guns, gangsters, terrorists, and even some very cute girls. GALLANT GANG may appear somewhat crudely drawn when compared to Ikegami's later work, but even its over-the-top story becomes believable when the artist breathes such vivid life into his creations. The hero of the story, emerging from a fight covered with blood and flexing his muscles despite razor blades stuck in his arms and face, still manages to look tough. In an interview printed in ANIMERICA, Anime & Manga Monthly Vol. 1, No. 7, Ikegami said that when GALLANT GANG first appeared in a weekly manga magazine, it "really stood out... All the other manga were so stylized and cartoony." While the comic's premise is rather farfetched, it nonetheless doesn't look corny. Characters are variously handsome or grotesque, but they look like real people.

Ikegami's next big hit starred a young girl gifted with shocking psychic powers. MAI, THE PSYCHIC GIRL , published in English by Viz Comics in 1987, was unique at the time because it was one of the first mainstream comics for boys to feature a female protagonist. Mai is a pretty Japanese teenager forced to battle evil organizations that seek to exploit her powers. One of her greatest nemeses is a young German psychic named Turm. Ikegami's illustration of icy Turm is chilling; her eyes are drawn in such a way that she looks vastly more threatening than innocent Mai.


MAI, THE PSYCHIC GIRL was a success with both young and older readers, but Ikegami next ventured into drawing comics definitely oriented towards adults. WOUNDED SOUL was an action-adventure series which put its female heroine into some very uncomfortable situations involving a large insect and a tree trunk.... Then came CRYING FREEMAN , an enormously successful, long-running series which masterfully depicted both extreme violence and sex. [This month the graphic novel CRYING FREEMAN PERFECT COLLECTION: PORTRAIT OF A KILLER (re-releasing the first two volumes of the CRYING FREEMAN series) goes on sale!-AR] While many of the sexual encounters in the FREEMAN series are rooted in violence, the relationship between the central character, Crying Freeman, and his wife, Emu, is always very tenderly portrayed. In context, their consensual sexual encounters look perfectly natural. But, as Ikegami points out: "If you only concentrate on bits and pieces, it's going to look lurid." Attempts to censor FREEMAN were made in both Japan and the United States, where, in spite of the "For mature readers only" warning on all the covers, it has stirred up quite a bit of controversy.

In Ikegami's next major work, he took a 360-degree turn from the fantasy world of FREEMAN. SANCTUARY is a series about two young men who attempt to change a relatively realistic, contemporary Japan. One joins the yakuza, the Japanese crime syndicate, and the other runs for political office. Ikegami's readers expect handsome men in his manga, and he comes through with dashing Akira Hojo, a rising Mafia don, and the bookish, yet hunky, Chiaki Asami, a political up-and-comer. Ikegami is a genius at depicting the unique faces of the old men who control the Japanese government. Isaoka, the nemesis of our young heroes, has a face straight out of the Tokyo daily papers: a mass of heavy eyebrows, artful wrinkles, sneaky eyes, and poker-faced expressions which explode into fierce anger. Ikegami's ideal as an artist is to draw a manga that "makes it seem as though [the story] could happen in 'real life' ".

Ikegami is currently illustrating an even more shocking, semi-realistic story, one that may be a little too much for some audiences to stomach. THE ACCIDENT is the story of Kyoko, a young Japanese woman who is raped by a group of American soldiers. A young African-American soldier rescues her, and as their relationship evolves, she falls in love with him. When he is killed, she begins a quest to avenge his murder.

What makes THE ACCIDENT so gripping is Ikegami's ability to portray the faces of the American G.I.'s and the young Japanese woman with equal accuracy. One has to imagine that Ikegami has spent tremendous amounts of time sketching the vast variety of American faces to so accurately depict them on paper. Even in SAMURAI CRUSADER (currently appearing right here in MANGA VIZION!) the face of legendary writer Ernest Hemingway is drawn with close attention to his outrageous public persona.

In Shonen Sunday Manga College, a Shogakukan, Inc. publication about Manga artists at work, I saw a photograph of Ikegami's workplace and drawing tools. The image that lingers in my mind is a close-up of Ikegami's drawing hand. The calluses on his fingers are enormous, thickened and hardened from the years he has spent creating characters for his fans all over the world. Imagining the sheer number of hours he's spent coming up with such a bevy of images is absolutely humbling to any aspiring manga artist or writer. When it comes to depicting characters and scenes that are both photorealistic and vividly imaginative, nobody has a more natural gift the Ryoichi Ikegami. With SANCTUARY having ended in Japan, we say "domo arigato," and look forward to Ikegami's next gripping work.

Works of Ikegami Ryochi

Debuted in 1971 with Aiueo Boy, written by Koike Kazuo. One of the famous and influential realist/violence artists. He has long since given up trying to draw his own stories. Ikegami's art has been especially influential in Hong Kong and Taiwan. (Curiously, Ikegami once drew a version of Spiderman.)

Mai[aka Mai the Psychic Girl] -
Story about a young, psychically gifted girl, and people who try to kidnap, kill or exploit her. (The director Tim Burton was involved in an attempt to bring a musical version of Mai to the big screen.)

Crying Freeman - written by Koike Kazuo
About a killer for the triads who cries whenever he kills someone. Ikegami's most best-known recent work; it's been adapted for various anime and movies.

Sanctuary
Story about two young men working together to change the shape of Tokyo's politics - one by becoming a politician, and the other by becoming a Yakuza. Doesn't pull any punches.

Strain - written by Buronson

Offered - written by Koike Kazuo
The main character is an "offered" of Gilgamesh, (Gilgamesh preserved his semen in an iceberg...so it survived. The grandfather of the main character for some reason was able to gain the semen..) so he goes on this trip to Agartha, where all the secrets of his birth lie.

Ouritsuin Kumomaru no Shougai [aka Samurai Crusader: The Kumomaru Chronicles] - written by Hiroi Ooji
In the early 1930s, the son of a Japanese noble family travels to Europe to seek his fortune. But he soon becomes embroiled in the militarist conspiracy, running up against the militarists' ninja Juuzou, Chinese demons and fleets of zeppelins. Ikegami's art is as good as ever, but its awkward story proved unpopular and it ended prematurely.

Other major works:
Nobunaga
I Katsuotoko Boi
Otoko Gumi (aka Gallant Gang)
Kyoko
Odyssey
"Sense of Guilt" in Goro.
"Tracker" in Shonen King magazine.
"Rin Alone" in Shonen magazine.
Otoko Ozora (aka Blue Sky Gang).
Kizuyoi Bito (aka Wounded Soul).
"The Red Dove".
"The Wounded Man".
Mazo (aka The Magic Image) [1st work].
Karate Man.
Seiken Wolf (aka Wolf).
The Real Man