Naoki Urasawa

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Naoki Urasawa 2012

Naoki Urasawa ( Japanese 浦 沢 直樹 , Urasawa Naoki ; born January 2, 1960 in Fuchū , Tokyo Prefecture , Japan ) is a Japanese manga artist .

Career

Urasawa studied economics at Meisei University . After graduating in 1982, according to his own statements, he applied to the Shogakukan publishing house as a manga artist and won a young talent award for the short story Return . However, the story was not published, but was only included in the N • A • S • A short story collection in 1988 .

Urasawa's first published work, the short story Beta !! , appeared in 1984. He drew other short stories until 1986, when he began his first series. Pineapple Army was created in collaboration with the scenario artist Kazuya Kudō and was published until 1988. His first major success was the manga Yawara! , which he started with shortly after Pineapple Army was first published. Yawara! , which was also filmed into a popular anime series, tells the story of a girl who is an extremely talented judoka , but who really just wants to be a normal girl. The next success followed in 1988 with the crime drama Master Keaton , which was also converted into an anime and is considered one of the most popular his manga of the 1980s.

Until the mid-1990s, Urasawa published other episodes of Yawara! and Master Keaton . After the end of Yawara! he started in 1993 with Happy! another sports manga that ran until 1999. Monster appeared from 1994 . The crime thriller set in Germany was his international breakthrough and also appeared in the form of an animated series. His next manga, 20th Century Boys, was equally successful with both readers and critics.

In 2007 Naoki Urasawa completed 21st Century Boys, the sequel to 20th Century Boys , in just 2 volumes.

Until February 2009 he was working on Pluto , a remake of an episode from Osamu Tezuka's classic Astro Boy , which appeared in branches of Big Comic magazine.

From 2008 to 2016 he worked with the scriptwriter Takashi Nagasaki on Billy Bat , the story of a comic book writer who travels to Japan to track down a 2,000 year old cartoon.

Between October 2017 and February 2018 Urasawa published the manga Mujirushi, conceived as a miniseries , in a total of nine chapters, which were later collected in one volume. Mujirushi was created in cooperation with the Louvre and included crossover elements with the manga Osomatsu-kun . Urasawa has been working on his latest series Asadora since October 2018 ! , which is about the entire lifespan of a girl, bridging the gap between the 1964 Olympics and the 2020 Olympics .

style

Urasawa's manga are aimed at adult men ( his own ). The proportions of his figures are usually very close to reality; There are also detailed backgrounds that he sometimes draws from photos. Urasawa often does extensive research. For example, he drew the society and culture of Germany in monsters through knowledge that he acquired from books.

His comics are set in different scenarios. While the stories of 20th Century Boys and Yawara! Acting almost exclusively in Japan, the main character of Monster travels around Central Europe and Keaton Taichi Hiraga from Master Keaton ends up in his investigations all over the world.

Urasawa has drawn exclusively suspense thrillers since Monster . Humorous sports manga like Yawara! are absent in his more recent work.

Awards

Urasawa has received numerous awards for his manga series, including the following:

Works

  • Pineapple Army (パ イ ナ ッ プ ル ARMY), 1986–1988, together with Kazuya Kudō
  • Yawara! , 1986-1993
  • Odoru Keikan ( 踊 る 警官 ), 1987, collection of short stories
  • N • A • S • A , 1988, collection of short stories
  • Master Keaton (MASTERキ ー ト ン , Master Kīton ), 1988–1994, together with Katsushika Hokusei
  • Shiro wa Shinanai ( シ ロ は 死 な な い ), 1990, together with Kenzo Kitakata; not a manga, but a children's book with illustrations by Urasawa
  • Jigoro! , 1994, short story collection
  • Happy! , 1993-1999
  • Monster , 1994-2001
  • Keaton Dōbutsuki ( キ ー ト ン 動物 記 , Kīton Dōbutsuki ), 1995, together with Katsushika Hokusei
  • Shoki no Urasawa ( 初期 の URASAWA ), 2000, collection of short stories; contains the content of Odoru Keikan (1987) and N • A • S • A (1988) as well as four other short stories
  • 20th Century Boys ( 20 世紀 少年 , 20-seiki Shōnen ), 1999–2006
  • 21st Century Boys ( 21 世紀 少年 , 21-seiki Shōnen ), 2006–2007
  • Pluto , 2003-2009
  • Billy Bat , 2008-2016
  • Mujirushi (夢 印 , Mujirushi ), 2017–2018
  • Asadora! (あ さ ド ラ！ , Asadora! ), Since 2018

Web links

Commons : Naoki Urasawa  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Naoki Urasawa, in: Shoki no Urasawa , 2000
  2. ↑ Lambiek: Naoki Urasawa
  3. ↑ Namely from "The biggest robot on earth", published in Astro Boy 3
  4. ^ Internationaler Comic Salon Erlangen 2014, laudation Billy Bat , accessed on July 14, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Urasawa, Naoki
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 浦 沢 直樹 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese Mangaka (comic artist)
DATE OF BIRTH 2nd January 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Fuchu (Tokyo) , Tokyo Prefecture , Japan