Yumiko Ōshima

Yumiko Ōshima ( Japanese 大 島 弓子 , Ōshima Yumiko ; born August 31, 1947 in Tochigi , Japan ) is a Japanese manga artist whose works are aimed at girls and can therefore be assigned to the Shōjo genre. Like Moto Hagio and Riyoko Ikeda, she belongs to the group of 24s .

biography

She published her first manga as a professional draftsman in 1968 with the melodramatic short story Paula no Namida in a spring special edition of the manga magazine Margaret , for which Chikako Urano and Hideko Mizuno worked at the time. In the following years, she continued to focus on short works and published them in magazines such as Seventeen , Bessatsu Shōjo Friend , Bessatsu Shōjo Comic , Princess and Shōjo Comic , all of which are aimed at teenage girls of middle or high school age. She also created short stories for the first two Josei magazines, Funny and Papillon . Her short mangas, especially Tanjō about a pregnant teenager, were in the favor of critics and for Mimoza-yakata de Tsukamaete she was awarded the Japan Cartoonists Association Award in 1974.

Banana Bread no Pudding , which was first published in the Seventeen from 1977 to 1978, was one of her few longer works. In the more than 350-page story, she describes a girl who is always afraid of the coming of an evil clown at night and is initially "protected" by her older sister, who due to her marriage no longer has time for the girl. The girl then decides to marry a homosexual.

The author's breakthrough came with Wata no Kuni Hoshi , another longer manga series. Wata no Kuni Hoshi , which consists of over 900 pages, first appeared in 1978 in LaLa , a magazine for which Ryōko Yamagishi and Keiko Takemiya also drew. It's about the catgirl Chibineko , a girl with cat ears and a cat tail who wants to be understood by people. Instead of Chibineko's voice, they only hear meowing. The manga, which won the Kodansha Manga Prize in the Shōjo category in 1979 and was implemented as an anime film in 1984 , is, according to Masano Amano in the volume Manga Design , “not a nice animal story, rather psychological and mental sensitivities are presented in an extremely differentiated manner . ”After graduating from Wata no Kuni Hoshi in 1987, she drew for magazines such as Asuka and Young Rose .

In 1997 she was found to have ovarian cancer . She conquered the disease after an operation and wrote about this experience in her following works, essays in manga form, mostly about her cats, and a picture book about the protagonist of Wata no Kuni Hoshi . One of these essays, Gū-gū datte Neko de aru , was nominated for the Osamu Tezuka Culture Prize in 2001 and 2003 and was awarded the same prize in 2008.

Yumiko Ōshima not only influenced other manga artists such as Kyōko Okazaki , but also writers - including Banana Yoshimoto -, filmmakers and other artists such as the Japanese rock band Spitz . While her works are constantly being reissued in Japan, Ōshima was barely noticed outside of her home country. So far none of her comics have appeared in Europe. Some of her mangas have also been filmed, such as Akasuika Kisuika and Kinpatsu no Sōgen , directed by Isshin Inudō .

Works (selection)

• Paula no Namida ( ポ ー ラ の 涙 , Pōra no Namida ); 1968
• Tanjō ( 誕生 ), 1970–1971
• Mimoza-yakata de Tsukamaete ( ミ モ ザ 館 で つ か ま え て ), 1973
• Nazuna yo Nazuna ( な ず な よ な ず な ), 1974
• Ichigo Monogatari ( い ち ご 物語 ), 1975
• Freud-shiki Ranmaru ( F 式 蘭 丸 ), 1975
• Shichigatsu Nanoka ni ( 七月 七日 に ), 1976
• Banana Bread no Pudding ( バ ナ ナ ブ レ ッ ド の プ デ ィ ン グ , Banana Bureddo no Pudingu ), 1977–1978
• Wata no Kuni Hoshi (綿 の 国 星 ), 1978–1987
• Akasuika Kisuika ( 赤 す い か 黄 す い か ), 1979
• Sakura Jikan ( 桜 時間 ), 1972
• Kinpatsu no Sōgen ( 金 髪 の 草原 ), 1983
• Mainichi ga Natsuyasumi ( 毎 日 が 夏 休 み ), 1989
• Koi wa Newton no Ringo ( 恋 は ニ ュ ー ト ン の リ ン ゴ , Koi wa Nyūton no Ringo ), 1990
• Christmas no Kiseki ( ク リ ス マ ス の 奇跡 , Kuriszmasu no Kiseki ), 1995
• Gū-gū datte Neko de aru ( グ ー グ ー だ っ て 猫 で あ る ), since 1996

Web links

• List of some new editions of her works (Japanese)
• Yumiko Ōshima in the Comiclopedia (English)

swell

1. ↑ Masano Amano: Manga Design , ISBN 3-8228-2591-3 , p. 134