The fireball
Der Feuerball (Original title: Fireball ) is a 52-page manga short story by Katsuhiro Otomo , which was first published in 1979.
The fireball is a forerunner of Otomo's longest work, Akira . There it is also about people who are psi- gifted and groups that stand up against the state. Otomo remembered on the occasion of the English first edition of the story in the anthology Memories that he had come up with the idea for The Suicide Paradise (童 夢 dōmu) while working on Fireball .
action
Insurgents fight against the state. They suspect that the government is using the giant computer Atom to conduct experiments on people with supernatural abilities. On the side of the state, a policeman with psychic powers fights the insurgents, which also includes his beloved brother.
The policeman ends up on Atom's operating table and is dismantled there. When the brother of the psi-gifted man dies on the discovery of Atom , he wakes up from anesthesia thanks to his supernatural powers and begins to destroy Atom's system.
Emergence
Originally, because of his joke story After the Dew , Otomo was asked to contribute a new story for the young magazine Action Deluxe (ア ク シ ョ ン デ ラ ッ ク ス). Ultimately, however, he was able to persuade his editor to allow him to write a completely serious science fiction story.
Until the end, Otomo struggled with the plot of the story, which became more and more complex during the realization. In the end, Otomo saw the story as incomplete, which is why he wanted to rewrite it over and over again, which, at least since his work on Akira, was no longer possible for him.
Even the end of the story was rewritten: Originally, during a fight between the computer and the policeman, the policeman's younger brother was supposed to develop psi powers at the last moment and combine them with those of his brother. In the last scene, both of them were supposed to look at the earth from space and meanwhile talk about old times.
Publications
The fireball appeared in Japan in January 1979 in the manga magazine Action Deluxe , a sister magazine of the Manga Action . Originally, the last two pages were not included because Otomo's deadline was exceeded . In 1990 the Kōdansha publishing house brought out the volume Kanojo no omoide ... (彼女 の 想 い で ...), which contains Otomo's other short stories and The Fireball . This volume was also translated into English under the title Memories by Mandarin Paperbacks in 1994 with the assistance of Simon Jowett and Jo Duffy .
In 1994, Carlsen Verlag published two volumes of short stories, Otomos, in German, Buried in the Sand and The Ball of Fire . In the latter volume, in addition to The Fireball , the stories The Martian (1977), Chronicle of the Planet Tako (1981) and Chronicle of the Planet Tako - How It All Began (1982) are printed.
swell
literature
- Katsuhiro Otomo: The fireball . Carlsen Publishing House. ISBN 3551718423 .
- Katsuhiro Otomo: MEMORIES . Mandarin Paperbacks (imprint of Reed Consumer Books Limited) / MASH * ROOM Co., Ltd. / Equinox, Equinox Manga. Hong Kong. ISBN 0-7493-9687-3 .
- Katsuhiro Otomo: 彼女 の 想 い で… . Kōdansha. April 1990. ISBN 978-4063131451 .