Post by Kentaru on Nov 30, 2006 8:18:54 GMT -5
"Who the heck is Naoki Urasawa? (Western name order)" you might ask.
The answer is quite simple: he is one of the finest manga-ka Japan has produced within the last two decades or so. Seriously. The guy won Shogakukan's manga prize (several times, once the same year Gosho won one for Detective Conan), the Tezuka Osamu award and and Alph Art in France, if that means anything to you *grins*. Most of his manga are scanslated. Below follows an introduction to some of the more popular manga titles he has authored:
[Note: the list is not complete. However it's chronological, meaning the manga series are put in the order they were published. Although the publication of later series sometimes overlap each other.]
YAWARA (sports manga, 29 volumes)
It's about a girl who wants to be like every other girl, however her grandfather (he's named after the founder of Judo btw.) wants her to become a professional judoka. This manga's drawings are a bit crude compared to his later series. However it generated a very popular anime series that was -nearly- as popular as Dragonball (the original series), and it even sometimes beat it in the T.V. ratings, during it's first run in Japan.
HAPPY! (sports manga/soap story mix, 23 volumes)
Umino Miyuki (Japanese name order) is a poor girl who raised her three younger siblings after their parent's death. One day their older bother returns home with presents for them. However we later find out he was tricked into a scheme by some Yakuza and now has a debt of 250 million Yen! The guy disappears. So the debt collectors try to make his sister pay off his debt by working for a Soap land. Miyuki escapes and she decides to earn the 250 through tennis. This series is a soap. The title is paradoxical because you rarely see the main character happy. It was never adapted into an anime, but recently it was adapted into a J-dorama (better than the J-dorama adaptation we got of DC *cough*).
MONSTER ('Fugitive' look-alike thriller, 18 volumes)
If you haven't heard of Monster, you've been living beneath a rock for the past 2-3 years.
The anime to this manga was very, very popular in the fan-sub world. Recently, the rights to Monster were bought by Viz and an American studio is considering making a movie based on this!
For those of you who don't know the basic storyline: Tenma is a successful neurosurgeon (a doctor who operates inside the patient's brain) in West Germany. After saving a little boy instead of the city's mayor he is suspected of killing his superior. The little boy and his twin sister disappeared. Years later Tenma meets the boy again, and he murders before his eyes. Once again, Tenma is suspected of having committed the murder. He decides to hunt down the boy before he takes anymore lives. The rest of the manga is like "the Fugitive".
20TH CENTURY BOYS (Science-Fiction/whodunit/shonen parody, +22 volumes)
All kids dream of 'saving the world' at some point. Kenji and his friends are no different. Years later Kenji works in a combini (24 hour store) and takes care of his niece after his sister disappeared. He finds out one of his friends, Donkey, committed suicide. However Kenji later discovers Donkey knew something he shouldn't have known about a mysterious sect, so they pushed him off a building. This sect also uses the symbol Kenji and his friends used when they were kids. Their leader calls himself "Tomodachi"(friend). Kenji now tries to find out who Tomodachi is. 20th CB makes an exemplary use of flashbacks and flash-forwards. It's best summed up as: a mix of the whodunit genre and wannabe-shonen heroes in the real world.
PLUTO (Science-Fiction thriller)
Have you heard of Astro Boy? This manga is an adaptation of Tezuka's popular shonen. Rather, one of it's story arcs known as "The Greatest Robots on Earth". The main character in this series isn't Astro Boy. It's Gesicht, a robot-investigator. Pluto can also be seen as a thinly-veiled caricature of the main actors in the Iraq war. Namely, Bush and Hussein. However that is a minor part of the manga. It won the Tezuka prize. It's probably not a coincidence, considering it's an adaptation of a Tezuka title. However the quality of this manga is genuine, like all the latest titles by Urasawa.
The answer is quite simple: he is one of the finest manga-ka Japan has produced within the last two decades or so. Seriously. The guy won Shogakukan's manga prize (several times, once the same year Gosho won one for Detective Conan), the Tezuka Osamu award and and Alph Art in France, if that means anything to you *grins*. Most of his manga are scanslated. Below follows an introduction to some of the more popular manga titles he has authored:
[Note: the list is not complete. However it's chronological, meaning the manga series are put in the order they were published. Although the publication of later series sometimes overlap each other.]
YAWARA (sports manga, 29 volumes)
It's about a girl who wants to be like every other girl, however her grandfather (he's named after the founder of Judo btw.) wants her to become a professional judoka. This manga's drawings are a bit crude compared to his later series. However it generated a very popular anime series that was -nearly- as popular as Dragonball (the original series), and it even sometimes beat it in the T.V. ratings, during it's first run in Japan.
HAPPY! (sports manga/soap story mix, 23 volumes)
Umino Miyuki (Japanese name order) is a poor girl who raised her three younger siblings after their parent's death. One day their older bother returns home with presents for them. However we later find out he was tricked into a scheme by some Yakuza and now has a debt of 250 million Yen! The guy disappears. So the debt collectors try to make his sister pay off his debt by working for a Soap land. Miyuki escapes and she decides to earn the 250 through tennis. This series is a soap. The title is paradoxical because you rarely see the main character happy. It was never adapted into an anime, but recently it was adapted into a J-dorama (better than the J-dorama adaptation we got of DC *cough*).
MONSTER ('Fugitive' look-alike thriller, 18 volumes)
If you haven't heard of Monster, you've been living beneath a rock for the past 2-3 years.
The anime to this manga was very, very popular in the fan-sub world. Recently, the rights to Monster were bought by Viz and an American studio is considering making a movie based on this!
For those of you who don't know the basic storyline: Tenma is a successful neurosurgeon (a doctor who operates inside the patient's brain) in West Germany. After saving a little boy instead of the city's mayor he is suspected of killing his superior. The little boy and his twin sister disappeared. Years later Tenma meets the boy again, and he murders before his eyes. Once again, Tenma is suspected of having committed the murder. He decides to hunt down the boy before he takes anymore lives. The rest of the manga is like "the Fugitive".
20TH CENTURY BOYS (Science-Fiction/whodunit/shonen parody, +22 volumes)
All kids dream of 'saving the world' at some point. Kenji and his friends are no different. Years later Kenji works in a combini (24 hour store) and takes care of his niece after his sister disappeared. He finds out one of his friends, Donkey, committed suicide. However Kenji later discovers Donkey knew something he shouldn't have known about a mysterious sect, so they pushed him off a building. This sect also uses the symbol Kenji and his friends used when they were kids. Their leader calls himself "Tomodachi"(friend). Kenji now tries to find out who Tomodachi is. 20th CB makes an exemplary use of flashbacks and flash-forwards. It's best summed up as: a mix of the whodunit genre and wannabe-shonen heroes in the real world.
PLUTO (Science-Fiction thriller)
Have you heard of Astro Boy? This manga is an adaptation of Tezuka's popular shonen. Rather, one of it's story arcs known as "The Greatest Robots on Earth". The main character in this series isn't Astro Boy. It's Gesicht, a robot-investigator. Pluto can also be seen as a thinly-veiled caricature of the main actors in the Iraq war. Namely, Bush and Hussein. However that is a minor part of the manga. It won the Tezuka prize. It's probably not a coincidence, considering it's an adaptation of a Tezuka title. However the quality of this manga is genuine, like all the latest titles by Urasawa.
Three of Urasawa's most popular manga:
A preview for Pluto:
(Gesicht meets Astro Boy)