Masamune Shirow

Masamune Shirow ( Japanese 士 郎 正宗 , Shirō Masamune ; born November 23, 1961 in Kobe ) is a Japanese manga artist who was best known for the series Ghost in the Shell .

The name Masamune Shirow is a pseudonym that actually designates a certain type of sword, the real name of the draftsman is Masanori Ōta . He came into contact with manga while he was still at school - although at that time he didn't read one of the many boys 'magazines, but Ribon , one of the most popular and, due to its quality, most respected girls' magazines.

While studying art in Osaka , he initially concentrated on oil painting until he published his first manga called Black Magic in February 1983 with the help of the Atlas fan association . In February 1985 the first volume of the Appleseed series was published by Seishinsha-Verlag. The second part of the Appleseed epic followed in November of the same year, and Black Magic was reprinted by Seishinsha at the same time. At the same time as his debut with Appleseed 1 , Shirow finished his studies and became a teacher at a high school for the next five years. During this time he brought out Dominion - Tank Police (1986), Appleseed 3 (1987) and Appleseed 4 (1989) before he gave up his teaching job and devoted himself entirely to drawing manga.

In 1991, Shirow published a milestone in manga history with Ghost in the Shell . Ghost in the Shell became one of the most successful and well-known manga of all time, and the 1995 Japanese cartoon ( anime ) of the same name by Mamoru Oshii became world famous. The story of the female cyborg and secret service officer Motoko Kusanagi and her hunt for the mysterious hacker “Puppet Master” has always had a significant impact on the genre of science fiction films . One of the best-known examples of this is the Matrix trilogy, the creators of which, the Wachowski siblings , expressed themselves as Shirow supporters and adopted many elements from Ghost in the Shell .

Other works

• Orion (December 1991)
• Intron Depot (July 1992), Artbook
• Neuro Hard (1993)
• Dominion Conflict
• Appleseed Hypernotes
• Dominion Calendar (1997)
• Cyberdelics Box (1997)
• Gemcat Calendar (1998)
• Illustrations for the novel Jashin Hunter (1998)
• Intron Depot 2: Blades! (1998) Artbook
• Illustrations Calendar (1999)
• Rebirth-1999 Calendar (2001)
• Intron Depot 3: Ballistics (2003), Artbook
• Intron Depot 4: Bullets (2004), Artbook
• Pieces (since 2009, 5 volumes)

Web links

• Literature by and about Masamune Shirow in the catalog of the German National Library