11/04/2020 Mangaka Spotlight: Naoki Urasawa

Dearest Friends

We realise you might be getting a bit sick of manga assortments based around certain themes, so we've decided to do a little write-up about individual mangaka. It's just an introduction to the mangaka, and you can find it on Wikipedia, but we'll talk a little about what we feel about his/her work (to value-add a little).

Today, we've decided to write about Naoki Urasawa, who's gotten immense mainstream success, whose works have become bestsellers and been adapted into numerous TV series and even movies!

Naoki Urasawa (born in 2 January 1960) has been working since 1985. He started off as an illustrator for Pineapple Express (1985-1988). Shiota Nagisa's read what few chapters have been scanlated and says that it's pretty good. It follows a Japanese soldier who makes a living not by directly fighting others, but training his employers to fight for themselves. It's lighthearted and exciting, but the chapters are a little short and there's nothing exceptional about it. He also illustrate Master Keaton, which is pretty famous and follows an archaeologist/insurance investigator (odd combination) on his globetrotting adventures.

Naoki Urasawa would later start writing his own manga like Yawara! and Happy! (both pretty-girl-sports-manga) and then really came into his own element when he started writing grander manga with epic stories involving the fate of the work, or at least some elements of great conspiracies (Monster, 20th Century Boys, Pluto, Billy Bat, etc.) We've not read his more recent work, but we're sure that it's very good.

Before we talk about his work, a bit on his style.

In terms of art, he has a very clean style where the faces are not too detailed, a bit like a Disney hand-drawn show where the animators almost use "templates" to keep the character designs easily-distinguishable and easy to reproduce in many frames. The movements remind me a lot of what Stan Lee would describe as "dynamic movement" i.e. it would look very grand and epic, even if someone might not actually move like that while fighting/playing tennis etc. In fact, Naoki Urasawa's describe his work as being very cinematic (which it is) because the writing process is a bit like storyboarding a movie. That may be why his work lends so well to adaptation.

In terms of story, his more famous work usually involves some kind of conspiracy (Pluto, 20th Century Boys, Monster, Billy Bat). Sometimes, it might even involve changing the world order or some cosmic entity (Billy Bat, 20th Century Boys). Usually, these elements add a lot of mystery to the story, which is a big attraction for Urasawa's work. His earlier work usually focused on cute girls and romance and sports (Yawara! and Happy!). In fact, most of his stories have at least 1 long-hair cute girl who's drawn the same way (Yawara! and Happy! and Monster!) or a short-hair cute girl (the mega cute secondary lead character in 20th Century Boys).

A few of his works:

1) Yawara! is about Yawara, a high schooler who's a genius at judo because her grandfather made her train like crazy since she was young. However, she's not interested in that but she likes cute things like fashion and going out. However, she winds up in her grandfather's scheme to get her to the Olympics! She makes many friends along the way, especially a rich heiress (also a sports prodigy, but she's always 1 step behind Yawara and has taken it upon herself to be Yawara's rival), a judo coach (the handsome sophisticated gentleman type) and a sports journalist (rough type). This leads to a love-quadrangle (although it's really just a triangle between the two men and Yawara), which is serviceable. One selling point is how Urasawa focused on making sure Yawara was always dressed up! There are SO MANY cute outfits!!!

2) Happy! is largely the same thing, but with tennis. Miyuki really loves tennis but can't afford to play because her parents are dead and their family is heavily indebted to yakuza loan sharks. Cue her last-ditch attempt to make a fortune with tennis to avoid being sold into prostitution. There's the same deal with a sophisticated tennis player (handsome type), a yakuza loanshark (rough type) and a rich tennis pro (bitch-rival). The romance here is EXCEPTIONAL and we were thoroughly engrossed all the way to the end. However, we recommend skipping the final chapter because it ends horribly (it's a completely happy ending, just a very stupid one) and Miyuki ends up with the wrong man because Urasawa sometimes ends his stories horribly. Shiota Nagisa says, "I was physically sick from the ending and felt horribly betrayed. Just skip the ending and imagine your own happy ending!"

3) Monster

Psychological thriller - you've probably heard of the anime adaptation, which is extremely faithful to the manga, so you can watch that - about a Japanese brain surgeon in Germany who saves a little boy, only for that little boy to actually be a deranged genius serial killer! The surgeon resolves to undo his mistakes by killing the killer, but gets framed for some of the murders and goes on the run. Very thrilling murder-mystery, a bit like Hannibal Lecter mixed with Bourne Identity. There are a lot of interesting characters besides the surgeon and the killer, some of whom are only in the story for a short while but make a big impact on the story and your hearts.

4) 20th Century Boys

This was made into 3 movies, which did quite well at the box office, if memories serves me correctly. Some adults discover that their childhood games (involving a plot to destroy the world with viruses and robots) have come true and a mysterious cult has sprung up to enact those evil plans. The story follows their childhood in flashbacks to 1969, their attempts to stop the plot in 1999, future events in 2014 and a post-apocalyptic scenario in the future. The mystery is pretty exciting, but it was so convoluted and long that we're not sure if it was good or just confusing. There's a fair amount of action and plotting, which makes this a very exciting series!

5) Billy Bat

OK this is really weird... So a Japanese-American writer comes up with a popular comic series, Billy Bat (which is like Batman-Mickey-Mouse) and discovers that it was originally created in Japan. While he goes to Japan to ask the original creator for permission to use the character, he gets caught up in a big conspiracy and people start trying to kill him. Over the course of the story, we see different characters and discover a global (even cosmic) conspiracy around Billy Bat... we can't say more without spoiling it, but the story is super complex and it's very exciting.

6) Pluto

A remake of Astroboy, but focusing on a robot detective investigating why famous robots are being killed. It's an interesting examination of US foreign policy, particularly the Iraq war and how hate begets hate. The "murder mystery" here is exceptional, like movie-level good. The robot action is also super, super, super exciting. However, it's really sad when characters get killed, and it's a very emotional story, which actually shows how good the writing and storytelling is. A lot of the story is spent on the robots having feelings and it's a bit like Detroit: Become Human but it's not at all preachy and it's very, very, very heartfelt. For example, a robot constable is killed by a criminal and his family is obviously very sad about it but the wife refuses to wipe her memories of her husband even though it's very painful to remember him, which is a bit like dealing with grief in real life so it hit especially hard. This is our favourite Urasawa work.

We hope you enjoy Naoki Urasawa's works!!!