Pages

New to the Site? Click Here for a Primer!

Monday, August 12, 2024

Masami Kurumada 50th Anniversary Trivia Track: Six Neat, Important, or Interesting Factoids

On "August 12, 1974" (or thereabouts) Issue #33 of Weekly Shonen Jump for that year saw the appearance of a one-shot manga in the third-to-last spot. This one-shot was titled Sukeban Arashi/Delinquent Storm & was made by a 19-year old newbie named Masami Kurumada, a resident of Tsukushima, Chuo, Tokyo (the alleged birthplace of monjayaki) who had previously worked as an assistant for artist Ko Inoue for the baseball manga Samurai Giants, which itself would end just nine issues later. It is now exactly 50 years since that date, and over the course of those five decades Masami Kurumada went from a simple delinquent-turned-"mangaya" to an iconic & influential mangaka who focuses primarily on making action-packed manga for male readers, but with a goal of also attracting a female readership by way of his art style, which by his own words (though the website that had it has unfortunately gone away) tries to "find a way to simultaneously express the dynamics & power of shonen manga with the elegance & fantasy of shojo manga".

"My characters will kick ass & bleed buckets,
but they'll also look utterly FABULOUS while doing so!"

While Sukeban Arashi wound up not becoming a hit by any means, Kurumada would go on to find great success with some of his later manga, namely Ring ni Kakero (1976-1981), Fuma no Kojirou (1982-1983), Saint Seiya (1986-1990), & B't X (1994-2000), becoming a mangaka who would later inspire others to become managka themselves, like Takehiko Inoue, CLAMP, Yun Kouga, & Tite Kubo, or influence his contemporaries to follow in his lead, like Yudetamago, Yoichi Takahashi, Tetsuo Hara, & Akira Toriyama. A ton of what makes shonen action manga such a popular & beloved genre around the world is owed, in part, to Masami Kurumada setting so much of it in stone with Ring ni Kakero, so much so that in 2014 Shueisha even promoted it for its digital re-release as the "Hot-Blooded Fighting Manga Bible", despite it technically being a boxing manga. Throughout this entire year I've been writing reviews & other pieces related to Kurumada's various manga to celebrate his 50th Anniversary year. However, for the literal day of the 50th Anniversary itself, let's take a look at six bits of fun and/or cool trivia I've managed to dig up regarding the man himself.


From Blue Ink to Confronting Jump's Editors
We'll go over these entries in chronological order, which means that we actually start with how exactly Masami Kurumada became a mangaka, in the first place. I've mentioned before that Kurumada was inspired to become a mangaka after he was introduced to Otoko Ippiki Gaki Daisho by Hiroshi Motomiya, the manga often cited as Weekly Shonen Jump's very first hit manga. Prior to that Kurumada was a delinquent of a kid who liked drawing, but felt that making manga professionally was beyond him, due to a misconception he had that mangaka all had some sort of special qualification to them, like Osamu Tezuka having a literal medical doctorate. When he realized that Motomiya was just a regular ol' ex-delinquent like him, though, Kurumada decided that making manga was what he truly wanted to do with his life, so he started drawing, despite not really knowing all of the ins & outs of what exactly he needed.

Now, it's often mentioned in English online that Kurumada's first ever manga one-shot was called "Otoko Raku" that earned him an award, but it's never been proven that such a thing ever existed. However, Kurumada did indeed make some amateur one-shots early on while he was in high school, but since he was new to it all he simply drew with whatever he had on hand... like using blue ink, rather than the standard black; whoops. While "Otoko Raku" likely doesn't really exist, there are four one-shots that DO exist, titled Ore wa Ano Musume ni Kari ga Aru/I Owe That Girl a DebtShiosai no Uta/A Poem for the Roar of the Sea, Uminari Taisho/General Mistpouffer, & Bangai Group/Extra Group. During his third year of high school, Kurumada decided to submit one of these one-shots as an entry for Weekly Shonen Jump's Young Jump Award (which today is now called the Jump New World Manga Award), but wound up not getting any accolades for his submission; it wasn't even given an Honorable Mention. However, since Jump's offices in Shueisha were located in Tokyo, which meant that it was local to him, Kurumada decided to head over to Jump's editorial department himself & ask the editors in person why his work was rejected, likely to learn what he needed to work on in the future; Shueisha actually allows artists to schedule appointments with its editors, so this wasn't out of the ordinary. Seemingly impressed with his go-getter attitude, Kurumada was offered the chance to become an assistant to Ko Inoue for Samurai Giants, and in 1972 that's exactly what Kurumada did at age 17, giving him his first step towards his eventual professional debut two years later.

In 2015, as part of his 40th Anniversary celebration, Masami Kurumada made Ai no Jidai -Ichigo Ichie-/Indigo Period -Once in a Lifetime-, a one-volume manga about a young man who decides to try his hand at becoming a mangaka after reading Otoko Ippiki Gaki Daisho, and while the exact path of events don't 100% match up with real life it's obvious that Kurumada based the manga's plot on his own early days. In 2017 Akita Shoten decided to bundle a booklet into that year's October issue of Champion Red magazine titled Ai no Jidai Begin. A companion piece to the 2015 short manga, this booklet includes an interview with Kurumada where he talks about his early days & features reprints of his four original one-shots which I mentioned earlier; to my knowledge, this is the only time Kurumada has ever ever officially published his amateur work. Unfortunately, I don't currently own a copy of Ai no Jidai Begin, as I didn't learn of its existence until a couple of years after it came out, but it's definitely something I'd love to get my hands on, one day.


Getting a Second Chance at a First Impression... Because of the First Oil Crisis
Everyone knows the old saying "You never get a second chance to make a first impression", which obviously means that it's imperative to make yourself look your best when introducing yourself, whether that's personally, professionally, or even via something like a silly blog about obscure & forgotten anime, manga, games, media, etc. Admittedly, though, manga can sometimes go against that adage, as there have been numerous instances of a mangaka making their debut with a failed work, only to then see success later on, i.e. they had another chance (if not multiple ones) to make a first impression, and examples of that include legends like Tetsuo Hara, Tite Kubo, Takeshi Obata, Kazuki Takahashi, & (naturally) Masami Kurumada. However, Kurumada in particular is an especially interesting example, because while it does certainly apply to him from an overall perspective, since his first hit manga Ring ni Kakero was his second serialization, it also applies directly towards Kurumada's debut serialization itself, 1974's Sukeban Arashi. The manga detailed the high school life of Rei Kojinyama, a rough, tough, & all-too-ready-to-get-violent female delinquent who initially tries her hardest to leave behind her old attitude so as to honor the memory of her deceased mother, but eventually would find herself in a bit of a rivalry with a well-to-do rich girl transfer student. It didn't last long, running for only 26 chapters (including the one-shot) before getting cancelled in late 1975, and the manga wouldn't even get collected into tankouban form until mid-1977, once RnK started finding some momentum with readers. However, the actual serialization history of Sukeban Arashi isn't all that straightforward, and it all comes down to a real life financial crisis going on at the time around the world.

During the 1970s there was what's now known as an "energy crisis" based around oil shortages in the Western part of the world, with two specific individual crises coming about from this; in Japan, this is known as the "Oil Shock". The first one was the 1973 oil crisis, which came about due to OPEC instituting an full-on oil embargo against any & all countries that supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War earlier that year, and one of the countries that got hit hard with this embargo was Japan, which at the time imported 90% of all its oil from the Middle East. This would actually play a major role in Japan shifting its economic investments towards electronics, which has since become what the country is best known for. Even Japanese car manufacturers benefitted from this, since their fuel-efficient cars were now much more appealing than American-produced "gas-guzzlers". How this relates to manga is that the 1973 oil crisis also resulted in a paper production shortage in Japan, with even the Japanese populace going into a literal self-inflicted "Toilet Paper Panic" over this, so magazines across the board had to find ways to save on costs, and for manga this meant that the individual issues had to feature fewer pages for a time. This would continue throughout 1974, so when Masami Kurumada's original one-shot for Sukeban Arashi appeared in Issue #33 that year it was in an issue that was as readily available to the public, so two weeks later it actually got reprinted in Issue #35. Not just that, but it seemingly did well enough to get greenlit into a proper series, but the production problems meant that only five chapters wound up getting serialized before Jump had to put it on hold in late 1974, after Issue #43. These chapters, plus the original one-shot, wouldn't get collected until 1983, when they were bundled with two later one-shots & released as a collection of Masami Kurumada's early one-shots; also, I believe the collected release shifted around the order of the Sukeban Arashi chapters. It's usually stated online in Japanese that this was an irregular run, despite the chapters having had a normal weekly run (as short as it was), so it's possible that Jump also reprinted these chapters here & there in the interim as one-shots, likely in an attempt to make sure readers didn't forget about the series . In fact, the oil crisis may be the reason why Barefoot Gen's original run in Jump ended in mid-1974, as its final Jump chapter appeared in the same exact issue as Sukeban Arashi's first weekly chapter.

Luckily, eight months later Sukeban Arashi returned in Issue #22 of 1975, where it was pretty much treated as a full-on, brand new serialization, even getting the cover & full-color opening pages; this would be the point where Rei's rival would be introduced, as the prior chapters were mostly episodic. Unfortunately, this second chance at a first impression (or would it be a third chance, at this point?) would only last for 20 chapters before Jump cancelled the series, though Kurumada was at least able to finish up the storyline with Rei & her rival; still ran longer than Silent Knight Sho did, 17 years later. Still, the fact that Kurumada was allowed the chance to be given another opportunity to make a first impression with the same exact debut manga, all because of a real-world oil crisis, is certainly a hell of a way for him to start his career, isn't it?


"You Can Turn Your Enemy Into Your Ally"
As mentioned, the impact & influence Masami Kurumada has had on manga, both in terms of the kinds of stories that have been told as well as the various mangaka his works have effected in some fashion, is honestly a bit incalculable, because of the decades of manga that you can trace their elements of back to Kurumada, in one way or another. However, there is one confirmed example of a manga that Masami Kurumada literally helped stave off cancellation & renew reader interest in! Born in Higashinaruse, Akita on September 15, 1953 (the same year as Kurumada, but a few months earlier) Yoshihiro Takahashi would eventually find his way to Tokyo to follow his dream of becoming a mangaka, even finding himself as an assistant to Kurumada's idol, Hiroshi Motomiya. While Takahashi would later achieve his most iconic status when he debuted Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin in Jump in late 1983, the man had already seen success long before the first in what would become his legendary Ginga Series. Namely, in 1976 Takahashi debuted two manga more or less simultaneously, with Monthly Shonen Jump playing home to Shiroi Senshi Yamato (his OG dog manga that ran until 1989 across 26 volumes!), while Weekly Shonen Jump was the home to his first weekly serialization, Akutare/Rowdy Giants. Unlike his usual penchant for manga starring dogs, Akutare Giants was a school baseball manga starring Akira Murase, who pitches a strong fastball for his Young Giants team but has little control, and after meeting ace pitcher Makoto Hiramatsu from the Kawasaki Whales finds the drive to become a better pitcher, with his little buddy "Kabo" becoming his catcher, as he's the only one who can handle the force of catching all of Akira's fastballs.

Initially, Akutare Giants was a successful enough baseball manga in Jump (& this was during the time when the magazine could have anywhere between three or four of them running simultaneously, so uniqueness was imperative), but after a little over two years the manga was starting to lose its momentum, and it looked as though Takahashi's first weekly manga was on the verge of getting cancelled in mid-1978. In the July 2018 issue of the magazine Bubka, which featured an interview with Yoshihiro Takahashi done by Go Yoshida, Takahashi admitted that Masami Kurumada offered him an idea during this point: "You Can Turn Your Enemy Into Your Ally". With nothing left to lose, Takahashi decided to give Kurumada's idea a try, having Hiramatsu join Akira & Kabo in forming a new "Giants Jr." team, with Hiramatsu now acting as Akira's catcher, and a new goal of defeating the Hanshin Jr. team at Koshien. The idea would revitalize Akutare Giants, with readers interested in seeing how Akira & Hiramatsu would work together, after having seen them compete as rivals, and the manga would run for nearly two more years before ending in early 1980 after 204 weekly chapters & 22 volumes. Yes, Akurate Giants (& Shiroi Senshi Yamato, for that matter) ran for longer than Gin, yet today is mostly forgotten, which I do find interesting; I imagine it essentially having an official license for the Yomiuri Giants is part of the reason, though. Without Masami Kurumada offering his advice to Yoshihiro Takahashi, Akurate Giants would have likely ended right after Akira defeated Hiramatsu in mid-1978, only totaling somewhere around 13 or so volumes, and would have likely fallen into ever further obscurity than it already has.

However, what's most shocking about Kurumada offering this idea to Takahashi is that when you look at what was happening in Ring ni Kakero around the same time in mid-1978... Kurumada himself hadn't even tried his own idea out yet!! Yeah, Issue #25 of 1978, which was the point where Akutare Giants was as its lowest, seemingly on the verge of cancellation, and just before it jumped back up in popularity? Over in RnK the Champion Carnival hadn't quite started yet, and Ryuji Takane still hadn't even learned the Boomerang Hook! That means that Kurumada had the idea of turning Ryuji's future rivals in the Champion Carnival into his friends to form Golden Japan Jr. after the tournament, but decided to let Yoshihiro Takahashi pull it off in HIS manga first!! I seriously can't tell if this was a case of Kurumada honestly just wanting to help a friend out by sharing an idea he had in mind, but wasn't quite at the point in his own manga to execute it yet, or if Kurumada was simply using Takahashi & Akutare Giants as a test bed for himself & Ring ni Kakero. Regardless, this is a fascinating story that I came across and honestly was the entire springboard for me doing this trivia track, because I just had to share it.


Masami Kurumada... Renaissance Mangaka?
When it comes to defining Masami Kurumada as a creative mind, it becomes very easy to see that (despite his early history as a delinquent) he's a shockingly... refined person, in some ways. His works often have a penchant for quoting philosophy. He's big on using scientific concepts (or, at least, based in part on science) to help explain how some of the various attacks seen in his manga work. He likes to utilize various religions, beliefs, & mythologies in various ways, whether that be merely for aesthetic, to help emphasize a theme of a certain work, or even to seemingly showcase the flaws within them. Pretty much, what I'm trying to get at is that Masami Kurumada's works on the surface look to be rather straightforward & action-focused, but when you actually dig into most of his works there's always that little bit more to them, and that kind of also applies to the man himself... because he's not just a manga writer & author.

A perfect example of that is the fact that Kurumada is also a song writer, or at the very least a lyricist. The first sign of this I can find is in the afterword for Volume 14 of Ring ni Kakero back in 1980, which sees mangaka Tsukasa Tanaka (Kasai Chousakan) describe Kurumada as someone who'd "grab his guitar and compose a song and lyrics for you on the spot" (see this collab with shmupulations for the entire afterword), but in July 1987 we'd see the first proper example of Kurumada actually writing a song. With the Saint Seiya TV anime becoming a fast hit, & the theme songs by Make-Up becoming instantly iconic anison in their own right, it was decided that more vocal tracks were to be produced that would essentially act as image songs. Kurumada himself would write the lyrics for two of these, both of which were performed by Make-Up; Kurumada even shares a photo during the recording on his website. Ten years later Kurumada would write the lyrics for two more songs for the Saint Seiya 1997 ~Shonen-ki~ album, which were sung by Hironobu Kageyama & Masaaki Endoh, respectively. Then, during the 00s, Kurumada would write the lyrics for four more Saint Seiya songs (this time alongside co-lyricist Koji Matsuo), & these would act as the OP & ED themes for the Saint Seiya Hades Inferno & Elysion OVAs, as well as the ED for the OVA adaptation of Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas. Kurumada even earned himself a composing credit for Hades Elysion's ED "Kami no En ~Del Regno~" by Yuko Ishibashi, which he did alongside production partner Hirofumi "Kacky" Kakigawa, the singer for Marina del ray (i.e. the group that's performed ~40% of all the songs Kurumada has written).

However, it's not just Saint Seiya that Masami Kurumada has acted as a lyricist for! In fact, the first anime to ever feature OP & ED songs written by Kurumada would be 1992's Fuma no Kojirou: Fuma Hanran-hen OVA. Kurumada would then write the lyrics for four of B't X's character songs (i.e. songs about specific characters sung by their respective actors), specifically the ones for Teppei, Kotaro, Karen, & Major Aramis. However, the anime that Kurumada wrote the most lyrics for would be Ring ni Kakero 1, as he (alongside Koji Matsuo) would write the OP theme used across all four seasons, all but the first season's ED theme (that one was by Psychic Lover), an insert song used in Season 2, an insert song solely used for some of the pachislot machines, & five character songs (for Ryuji, Kiku, Kenzaki, Ishimatsu, & Kawai), resulting in a total of 11 songs, beating out Saint Seiya's eight; surprisingly enough, the lyrics to Shinatora's character song were only written by Matsuo. All of the Seiya, FnK, B't X, & RnK1 songs mentioned would then be collected across two albums in 2005 & 2013, both of which using the Kurumada: The Complete Works moniker, with the first album also including a titular bonus song for Otoko Zaka. That's STILL not all, however, as Kurumada would later write the lyrics for a second song for Otoko Zaka in 2014, a new song for B't X in 2013 to go with a pachinko machine, & in 2016 co-wrote the lyrics for four new songs for Fuma no Kojirou to go with a pachislot machine; astonishingly enough, you can actually buy the FnK pachislot songs as MP3s over on Amazon, & I don't just mean in Japan! As of this piece the FnK songs in 2016 are the last time Kurumada has acted as a lyricist, but that's not to say that he'll never do it again, I'm sure.

In total, so far, that's 32 different songs that Masami Kurumada has written the lyrics to (& one of them he even co-composed), so I think it's fair to say that the man himself might just be a bit of a renaissance mangaka, i.e. a polymath, and I'm not even including that one time he did a voice cameo in the very first episode of the Ring ni Kakero 1 anime. Sure, there are other mangaka who have written lyrics related to their works, but none of them have done it nearly as extensively as Masami Kurumada.


(Allegedly) Getting a Star or Minor Planet Named After Him
OK, this is a bit of a weird one because while its source should be somewhat legitimate, seeing as it's from Shueisha itself, I can't find actual proof of it happening in the one primary place where it should be provable, without a shadow of a doubt. When it comes to all matters regarding how to define objects in space, the International Astronomical Union is the organization that makes all those decisions. Generally the IAU tends to operate without much fuss, but in 2006 things were thrown for a loop when the IAU made big changes in how it defines what a "minor planet" is, which included downgrading Pluto from being the ninth planet in our solar system to being simply one of five definitively defined "dwarf planets", alongside Ceres, Eris, Haumea & Makemake. The IAU's Minor Planets Center is the entity that approves the naming over various minor planets that are discovered, and has been such since its founding in 1947. The reason I bring this all up is so that you can understand where I'm coming from as I go over this story.

On February 15, 1989 Bandai released Famicom Jump: Hero Retsuden for the Nintendo Famicom, a Tose-developed RPG celebrating Shonen Jump's 20th Anniversary the year prior where you could interact with & fight alongside characters from 33 different Jump manga (&, unlike any of the more modern Jump crossovers, this actually reached all the way back to 1968), though only characters from 16 specific series could actually be recruited as part of your party. Naturally, this included manga by Masami Kurumada, namely Ring ni Kakero & Saint Seiya. However, what I want to focus on is a supplemental released by Shueisha, Famicom Jump: Hero Retsuden - Yume no Daisakusen!!, which came out on April 25, 1989. This booklet would help introduce the various manga featured in the game, as well as gave some details regarding their respective mangaka. Apparently, in this booklet it says that when a new star was located within the region of the constellation Sagittarius in the late 1980s it was allegedly named the "Kurumada Masami-sei/Masami Kurumada Star". From what I can tell, this booklet is the only actual source of this info, as if you go to literally any list of minor planet names (& there are a number of them online, including ones that let you search or simply organize by first letter) you will not find a single one named "Masamikurumada" or "Kurumadamasami", as those would be the way it'd be written, in accordance with the IAU & MPC's rules. Doesn't matter if you search "Masami", "Masa", "Kurumada", or "Kuru" (so as to get the best, most comprehensive results), you can't find any proof of this having happened, and if you search the Japanese "車田正美星" you either get Saint Seiya results or you simply loop back to the Famicom Jump booklet, which is not a good thing when trying to verify something.

In my opinion, I think Jump editorial more than likely was telling porky pies when it came to this alleged star naming, making up a story simply for the sake of it sounding cool. Either that, or the discovery wasn't an actual discovery at all, resulting in the IAG & MPC denying the naming privilege. Unfortunately, while 12408 Fujioka & 12796 Kamenrider are both actual minor planets, and have been since 1995, there doesn't look to actually be one for Masami Kurumada.


Bin Shimada & Takehito Koyasu: Kurumada's Favorite Voice Actors?
I did want to feature six bits of trivia regarding Masami Kurumada himself for this piece that I felt were especially notable, & not rather basic, but in the end I could only come up with five so let's end off with something fun & especially trivial. Naturally, as a mangaka, Masami Kurumada himself normally wouldn't have much direct input on something like casting voice actors for anime adaptations of his various manga. In fact, the only known time Kurumada has gotten directly involved in casting in any truly notable fashion was when he asked for all of the iconic original actors of the five Saint Seiya leads to be recast, except for Tohru Furuya, following the Hades Sanctuary OVA & Heaven Chapter movie in the early 00s, as Kurumada felt that their voices had aged too much since the 80s, though this move also resulted in Furuya himself declining to return, in solidarity. However, there are two Japanese voice actors who might be able to lay claim (even if only jokingly) that they could theoretically be Kurumada's personal favorites, if only because they're the only ones to have had roles in all four of Kurumada's manga that have been adapted to anime: Bin Shimada & Takehito Koyasu.

Of the two, Bin Shimada has been in the industry for longer, with his debut role being Yuga in Daikengo in 1978. Shimada would make his Kurumada anime debut in Saint Seiya TV by voicing Beta Merak Hagen during the anime-only Asgard Chapter, and would return to the franchise multiple times later on, voicing Frog Zelos in Hades Sanctuary, both Caelum Michelangelo & Wolf Nachi in Saint Seiya Omega, & finally Tatsumi in the Legend of Sanctuary CG movie. After Seiya TV, though, Shimada would then voice Shion in Fuma no Kojirou: Seiken Sensou-hen, B't Halloween in B't X Neo, & finally complete the quartet by voicing Rokusuke "Rock-san" Ohno in Seasons 3 & 4 of Ring ni Kakero 1 in 2010 & 2011. Meanwhile, though Takehito Koyasu didn't get his start as a voice actor until 1988 he actually was the first to complete the quartet! His Kurumada anime debut was voicing Shura in Fuma no Kojirou: Seiken Sensou-hen (one of his earliest notable roles), while his second was Black Knight Mira in B't X TV. Koyasu would then get his Saint Seiya role in 2002 when he voiced Wyvern Rhadamanthys in Hades Sanctuary (& later Hades Inferno), before completing the quartet in 2004 by voicing Black Shaft in Ring ni Kakero 1, a role he'd reprise for Season 2 in 2006. Koyasu would then later voice Nasu Veronica in the second season of the Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas OVAs. To this day, no other Japanese voice actor has managed to complete the Kurumada anime quartet, so one could argue that while Kurumada himself may not have had any say in why Shimada & Koyasu were cast so often (even if both have at least one role that was only for a literal single episode), they could very well be Kurumada's "favorites", in some sense.

However, that's not to say that others aren't close, especially if we include all of the Seiya movies & spin-off anime! Takeshi Kusao, for example, is only missing a role in B't X, but still has a quartet of his own by voicing Sho Takeshima in 2017's motion comic adaptation of Otoko Zaka's final weekly chapter from the original Jump run; yeah, that's more of a technicality, but still. Meanwhile, Issei Futamata, Naoki Tatsuta, Nobuyuki Hiyama, & Shinichiro Miki all missed out on Fuma no Kojirou (though Hiyama only counts here because he voiced Shinatora in the Manga DVD adaptation of Ring ni Kakero), while Kenyuu Horiuchi, Sho Hayami, Toshihiko Seki, & Yasunori Matsumoto all missed out on Ring ni Kakero 1. Then there's Toshiyuki Morikawa, who like Takeshi Kusao missed out on B't X. Finally, if I'm going to count the Otoko Zaka motion comic for Kusao, then Masakazu Morita, Hikaru Midorikawa, & Kazuya Nakai all also have three Kurumada roles, including that. However, all three of them missed out on both Fuma no Kojirou & B't X, though in this case Morita didn't debut until 2002, while Nakai didn't debut until 1995 (& was literally voicing Witz Sou in Gundam X while B't X was airing).

Still, just the fact that so many voice actors even have roles in at least three of Kurumada's works indicates a sort of stalwart dedication to Masami Kurumada from these actors, even if only incidentally, and if any of Kurumada's non-Seiya work was to ever get a new anime adaptation I think it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect at least one or two of any of these actors to find themselves cast in a role.


And with that we bring an end to this Trivia Track, one to celebrate the exact day (or thereabouts, at least) that Masami Kurumada made his official debut as a professional mangaka 50 years ago. Whether it's his own origins when it came to becoming a part of the industry, the unique situation his debut manga had because of a worldwide financial crisis, his (seeming) selflessness when it came to helping out one of his fellow Jump mangaka, his penchant for helping create some (admittedly catchy or even great) songs, him (allegedly) getting a star named after him, or even his (kind-of-sort-of-maybe-but-probably-not) seeming preference for two specific voice actors, Masami Kurumada himself can sometimes be just as interesting of a man to look into as it can be to read his manga. While he certainly won't be around for another 50 years the fact that he's made it this far & continues to make manga is a testament to his staying power.

Happy 50th Anniversary, Masami Kurumada!

Ai ni Jidai Begin © Masami Kurumada
Sukeban Arashi © Masami Kurumada
Akutare Giants © Yoshihiro Takahashi
Kurumada: The Complete Works: Seisei Ruten ℗ 1992 Aniplex ℗ Columbia Music Entertainment ℗ Universal J, A Universal Music Company ℗ Wave Master © Masami Kurumada/Kurumada Production
Kurumada: The Complete Works 2: Doujo Raiden  Marvelous   Nippon Columbia   TMS Music   Toei Animation Music Publishing   Wave Master ©℗ Masami Kurumada/Kurumada Production
Kurumada Masami Nekketsu Gadou 40 Shunen Kinen CD ℗ 2014 Nippon Columbia
CR Fuma no Kojirou Soundtrack © 2016 MDR Sound Production © Masami Kurumada/Shueisha

No comments:

Post a Comment