Yūji Aoki
Yūji Aoki ( Japanese 青木 雄 二 , Aoki Yūji ; born June 9, 1945 in Ōe , Kyōto Prefecture (now Fukuchiyama ); † September 5, 2003 in Kobe ) was a Japanese manga artist .
biography
Aoki worked from 1964 at the railway company San'yo Electric Railway . In 1969 he quit his job and worked in various professions, for example as an employee in a town hall and in a pachinko shop. He also drew comics. In 1970 he won a young talent award from the manga magazine Big Comic with the short story Yatai ( 屋 台 ) . Publications or a commercial debut as a manga artist did not materialize, however, as he devoted himself to work for a design company until it went bankrupt.
It was not until 1989 that he returned to professional comic drawing and took part in a comic book competition for young people organized by Afternoon magazine. He won it and received the Shiki Prize . He then had the opportunity to publish a work and did so in 1990 in Afternoon's sister magazine , Morning , which was aimed at an adult readership and had a circulation of over a million at the time.
This work was the first episode of his manga series Naniwa Kin'yūdō , on which he continued to work weekly for Morning until 1997 . The series, consisting of over 4200 pages, focuses on the young Tatsuyuki Haibara, who, after his previous employer went bankrupt, started working for a private credit company. The various dramas of the extremely poor borrowers are also portrayed. Naniwa Kin'yūdō developed into a great surprise success in Japan. His manga, written in the Kansai dialect , appeared in nineteen books, was implemented as a television series and was reprinted several times. Naniwa Kin'yūdō sold over thirteen million copies in Japan. In 1992 Aoki received the Kōdansha Manga Prize for the manga , and in 1998 the Osamu Tezuka Culture Prize .
After the completion of Naniwa Kin'yūdō , the author withdrew and did not draw another comic series. Instead, he wrote the story for the comic series Kabachitare! ( カ バ チ タ レ！ ), which one of his assistants then put into drawings and published essays. 1997 came out at Kōdansha the book Sasurai , in which some of his earlier short stories were printed.
Yūji Aoki died of lung cancer in 2003 at the age of 58 .
style
Aoki's character design is simple and cartoonish. His bizarre, block-like drawing style depicts backgrounds and objects in a detailed and realistic manner. The panel layout is conventional.
The manga artist was a supporter of Marxism and incorporated this worldview into his comics. One of his great inspirations for Naniwa Kin'yūdō was Fyodor Dostoyevsky's guilt and atonement . He said he read the novel at least five times before the series began. "Like a Dostoevsky, the author directs our attention to existences on the fringes of our society and shows that these people too have a complex history."
Works
- Naniwa Kin'yūdō (ナ ニ ワ 金融 道 ), 1990–1997
- Sasurai ( さ す ら い ), 1997
literature
- Frederik L. Schodt: Dreamland Japan. Writings On Modern Manga. Diane Pub Co., 1996, ISBN 0-7567-5168-3 , pp. 196-199 (English)
Web links
- Profile at the Osamu Tezuka Culture Prize ( memento from June 29, 2003 in the Internet Archive ) (Japanese)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Schodt, p. 104
- ↑ a b Masanao Amano: Manga Design . Taschen Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-8228-2591-3 , p. 22
- ↑ Schodt, p. 198
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Aoki, Yūji |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | 青木 雄 二 (Japanese) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Japanese manga artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 9, 1945 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Ōe , Kyoto Prefecture, Japan |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 5, 2003 |
| Place of death | Kobe , Japan |