Akira Creator Working on a new Manga

[The Wooster]

Akira Creator Working on a new Manga

Legendary mangaka, Katsuhiro Otomo, is working on his first long-form manga in more than twenty years.

Since Akira finished its eight-year run in 1990, Otomo has stuck to directing and producing the occasional one-shot manga. In an interview with Japanese mag, Geijutsu Shincho, Otomo unveiled his most recent short manga - a full-colour science fiction short called DJ Teck's Morning Attack - and mentioned he's working on a new long-form manga.

Otomo didn't give away any details about the title, save that it's set in the Meiji Era of Japanese history (1868-1912) and it's going be in the shonen genre. For those of you unfamiliar with manga terminology: Shonen manga (shōnen or shounen, if you're anal, or would that be shonen-ai? Congratulations to all three of you who got that joke) generally refers to action-packed nonsense like Bleach, One Piece, Dragon Ball Z, which are designed for boys between the ages of six and fifteen. Otomo's previous work, with its complex characters and their propensity to die horribly at the tip of a hat, generally falls into the more serious "seinen" genre. That being said, a lot of his work does happen to star young men determined to succeed against seemingly impossible odds, a staple of the shonen genre. Naruto creator, Mashashi Kishimoto, has cited Akira as one of his major influences.

The last time Otomo penned a long-form manga, the result was a seminal work that is still influencing comic writers around the world, and a film that pretty much single-handedly established anime as a legitimate, "grown-up" medium in the west. I'm excited to see what he does next.

Source: Crunchyroll [http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2012/03/25/creator-of-akira-reveals-new-shonen-manga-serialization-plans]

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[Therumancer]

Interesting, but to be honest whenever someone says they want to write in the Meiji period it tends to amount to one of two things. One... they really want to rip off Rurouni Kenshin/Samurai X/whatever you want to clal it, or two... they want a platform to express a massive hate-on for the west without the "confusion" of World War II getting involved.

We're dealing with a generally good writer, but I'd really need more details before I could say if this is a good thing or a bsd thing.

Any way it goes, him going with the "Shonen" genere, and being someone who knows that distinction better than we do, does tend to mean that his major selling points up until this point aren't going to apply, as the things that he's famed for would generally wind up having his work put into another catagory entirely (Seinan as was pointed out).

 

[Lord Beautiful]

The writer of Akira is making a shonen manga.

 

[Wintermoot]

this it going to be interesting I,m really curious what his new work is about.
and I got the shonen-ai joke.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

]http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/249/605/25e.jpg

That's quite the image to post right after a lame shonen-ai joke. Your body is ready, indeed.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The last time Otomo penned a long-form manga, the result was a seminal work that is still influencing comic writers around the world, and a film that pretty much single-handedly established anime as a legitimate, "grown-up" medium in the west. I'm excited to see what he does next.

Uhm, yeah, but a lot of time has passed since then.

And it's not like Otomo has shown any of his talent in the last 15 years or so.

The fact that he's making a shonen would suggest that he's not as hardcore as he used to be, probably due to age. It would be great if we got a grand epic masterpiece of the same quality as Akira, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Coincidentally, I'm re-reading Akira right now after many years.

 

[trollnystan]

Heh, I got the shonen-ai joke too, cough >_>

Sounds interesting. Haven't read much of his previous work - tried to slog my way through the first volume of Akira when I was 12 but didn't have the patience for it - but I like the Meiji era as a setting so maybe I'll pick this up? At the very least it's a future Christmas present for my brother-in-law =)

 

[TheLastSamurai14]

snip

You deserve all the internets. That was awesome.

 

[Dresos]

This certainly sounds very interesting.

 

[The Wooster]

The last time Otomo penned a long-form manga, the result was a seminal work that is still influencing comic writers around the world, and a film that pretty much single-handedly established anime as a legitimate, "grown-up" medium in the west. I'm excited to see what he does next.

Uhm, yeah, but a lot of time has passed since then.

And it's not like Otomo has shown any of his talent in the last 15 years or so.

Really? You didn't like Steamboy, Neo Tokyo or Freedom? The dude's arguably a better director than he is a mangaka.

 

[Kajin]

Your joke was terrible. That being said, it got a laugh out of me.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The last time Otomo penned a long-form manga, the result was a seminal work that is still influencing comic writers around the world, and a film that pretty much single-handedly established anime as a legitimate, "grown-up" medium in the west. I'm excited to see what he does next.

Uhm, yeah, but a lot of time has passed since then.

And it's not like Otomo has shown any of his talent in the last 15 years or so.

Really? You didn't like Steamboy, Neo Tokyo or Freedom? The dude's arguably a better director than he is a mangaka.

I didn't like Steamboy. It wasn't necessarily bad, just very forgettable as well as overly depended on somewhat poorly implemented CGI.

If by Neo-Tokyo you mean the compilation of three anime shorts, of which Otomo made Order to Cancel Construction, then yes, I did like that very much. But he made that before Akira (the movie).

As for Freedom, I never saw it. But from the clips I have seen, it looks like very awkward and wooden cellshaded animation. I know Otomo has always been very keen on experimenting with the newest forms of animation - this is what made Akira such a visual masterpiece to begin with - but this odd CGI masquerading as traditional animation really doesn't work at all.

But Otomo isn't the only one not being great anymore. One wonders what Koji Morimoto and Yoshiaki Kawajiri have been up to.