However, there is one absolute icon of manga, right up there with the likes of Osamu Tezuka, Shotaro Ishinomori, & Shigeru Mizuki in how influential he was on manga, who has yet to be officially published in English, so let's start the second half of this list with him!
Born on June 18, 1934, Mitsuteru Yokoyama was inspired to become a mangaka after reading Tezuka's Metropolis back in the 40s, & after graduating high school worked at both the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation & later a movie company in his hometown of Kobe while making manga on the side. Yokoyama would then hit it big in 1956 with Tetsujin 28, which would become one of the most popular of its era (rivaling the popularity of Tezuka's Tetsuwan Atom/Astro Boy) & the anime adaptation by TCJ (now Eiken) in 1963 would then get released around the world, where it took the name Gigantor. Tetsujin 28 is also generally considered the modern origin of the mecha genre, especially for anime, & the idea of creating (or at least solidifying) entire genres would become a common thread for Yokoyama. Aside from mecha Yokoyama is also associated with helping define magical girls with Sally the Witch, establish some of the earliest framework of battle manga with Babel II, help solidify ninja manga with both Iga no Kagemaru & Kamen no Ninja Akakage, create one of the earliest manga & TV "media mix" franchises with Giant Robo, & pushed forward the idea of manga as a form of literary adaptation with conversions of classics like Water Margin & Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the latter of which would be Yokoyama's longest single work at 60 volumes. Sadly, on April 15, 2004 a fire broke out in Yokoyama's home, with Yokoyama suffering severe burns & falling into a coma, and he'd pass away later that same day from his injuries at the age of 69; Yasuhiro Imagawa's TV anime reboot of Tetsujin 28 had debuted only a little over a week prior.
I honestly had thought that some part of the original Tetsujin 28 manga had been released in English at some point under the Gigantor name, but in reality that was an American comic book interpretation that was published by Antarctic Press in the 00s, so that doesn't count. Therefore, I think it's fair to say that Mitsuteru Yokoyama is the most iconic & influential mangaka to have never been officially published in English, as of this point at least, which in some way sounds insane since he's technically been a part of English pop culture ever since the 60s via Gigantor & Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot, the localization of the Giant Robo tokusatsu series. However, long-running manga actually didn't tend to be Yokoyama's forte, as beyond of his manga adaptation of Romance (at 60 volumes) & Tetsujin 28 (24 volumes in its "Complete Edition") he works rarely tend to enter double-digits, with the most notable exceptions beyond the aforementioned two being Babel II at 12 volumes & Iga no Kagemaru at 15. Giant Robo & Akakage are both only three volumes, Sally the Witch is only a single compiled book, & even Yokoyama's Water Margin manga is no more than eight. Obviously, the age of his works is the big hurdle, but if I had to pick just one Yokoyama manga to bring over for English release, one that's both exemplary of his legacy as well as simply a great title on its own, I'd have to go with Mars. Debuting in 1976 in the pages of Weekly Shonen Champion & running for a single year across five volumes, Mars told the story of how the fate of the Earth itself was up to a single man, the titular Mars, who discovers that he's actually part of an alien race that plans on destroying the entire planet due to humanity being deemed too dangerous to expand out into space, and while Mars knows that his kind is right he believes that humanity can learn from its mistakes. To fight back Mars can command a giant robot called Gaia, but should Mars himself be killed then Gaia will self-destruct & eradicate Earth... just as it was intended to do.
Sure, I do have some personal attachment to this manga since I covered it (& its two direct anime adaptations) back in March of 2021, but I do feel that Mars is a great manga that tells a story that, quite honestly, still rings all too true to this day & would make for an excellent first (& possibly only) official English release of a Mitsuteru Yokoyama manga.
Back in Part 1 I included Hideko Mizuno, the legendary shojo mangaka who (prior to her pro debut) spent a year as an assistant to Osamu Tezuka in the legendary Tokiwa-so building, where she befriended two of her fellow assistants, with the three even drawing some manga together. One of them, Shotaro Ishinomori, has had some of his works published officially in English, but the other one has not... so let's go over him, shall we? Born abroad in Rehe, Manchuria on September 14, 1935 as the son of a Japanese military police officer, Fujio Akatsuka mostly grew up in the Niigata & Nara prefectures after World War II ended, before eventually moving to Tokyo when he turned 19. He got noticed by Tezuka & was invited to Tokiwa-so as an assistant. Akatsuka would make his pro debut in 1958, with his first hit manga being Nama-chan from the same year, but he truly hit it big in 1962 when he debuted Osomatsu-kun, a gag series about identical sextuplets who cause mischief, though the true breakout star would be Iyami, a con artist who the sextuplets would often mess with. Then, in 1967, Akatsuka would hit it big again with Tensai Bakabon, another gag manga that initially starred a child lead (the titular Bakabon) but would get upstaged by another character, in this case Bakabon's Papa. Akatsuka would continue making manga until the early 00s, & even became the namesake to the biannual Akatsuka Award (the gag manga counterpart to the Tezuka Award, though only six manga have actually won the grand prize across 100 ceremonies), but in 2002 suffered a hematoma that eventually left him in a persistent vegetative state starting in 2004; Akatsuka would pass away on August 2, 2008 of pneumonia at the age of 72.
Without a doubt, Fujio Akatsuka is one of the most iconic mangaka of all time when it comes to gag manga, and that admittedly is likely what has kept his catalog from being given official English release in North America; after all, humor can be one of the toughest things to localize. Not just that, but his most iconic work like Osomatsu-kun & Tensai Bakabon are long, with both totaling over 30 volumes each. However, there is something else Akatsuka is known for, and it also happens to not be a long manga at all. You see, just a couple of months after debuting Osomatsu-kun in early 1962, Akatsuka would debut Himitsu no Akko-chan/The Secretive Akko-chan in the pages of Shueisha's Ribon magazine, which told the story of Atsuko "Akko" Kagami, a girl whose love of mirrors is so strong that after one that was gifted to her by her parents breaks she decides to bury it, rather than toss it into the trash. This results in Akko being visited by a spirit that rewards her respect for mirrors with a compact that, with some magical incantations she's taught, can allow her to transform into anything she wishes, which Akko decides to use to help others out. While Mitsuteru Yokoyama's Sally the Witch wound up being the first magical girl anime, Himitsu no Akko-chan is generally considered the first magical girl manga, as the first anime adaptation of Akatsuka's manga (of which there would be three) wouldn't debut until 1969. Indeed, Akko-chan is in essence the OG transforming magical girl, and while the original run lasted between 1962 & 1965, plus a second run in 1968 & 1969, the most "complete" edition of Akatsuka's Akko-chan totals to only eight volumes.
We have lately been getting more iconic & classic manga in the past years, but the OG magical girl manga would definitely be a neat companion to those other titles, and it would give Fujio Akatsuka his first (& likely only) official English release.
Similar to Chikako Urano last time this woman really only has one truly notable manga to her name, and has long been retired from manga, but the impact of that one title is massive. Born on July 17, 1949, Sumika Yamamoto made her debut as a manga in 1971 but would hit it big the following year with 1972's Aim for the Ace!, a tennis manga that ran in Margaret magazine, same as Attack No. 1 before it, that told the story of Hiromi Oka, a high school student who decides the join the tennis club due to her admiration for the star player of the team, Reika Ryuzaki, who Hiromi eventually starts to refer to as her "Older Sister". While rough around the edges, & having her own problems with self-esteem, the team's coach Jin Munakata sees potential in Hiromi & trains her in his notorious harsh & intense fashion, even telling her to not fall in love at one point so that she can focus on improving her skills. At first the manga ended in 1975 after 10 volumes & Yamamoto moved on to her next major work, Nanatsu no El Dorado (which wound up being unfinished due to illness), but in 1978 Yamamoto was asked to continue making more Aim for the Ace!, due to reader demand because of Osamu Dezaki's 1973 TV anime adaptation, which was initially a ratings bomb but later saw a massive surge in popularity via reruns. This also led to New Aim for the Ace!, a 1978 TV anime that remade the first anime in a more manga-accurate form, though since Osamu Dezaki was not the director it seems to be forgotten nowadays, in lieu of the first (more divergent) anime.
The revived manga would run for another eight volumes (18 in total) & finally come to a proper end in 1980, which also marked the end of Yamamoto's time as a mangaka, more or less. In 1981 she moved to Enzan, Yamanashi & became a shrine maiden for a new religious movement called (I think) "Kamiyama-kai", eventually becoming its leader. However, as of 2020 the movement is no longer registered, & their website has long disappeared, so who knows what's going on there at this point; all I know is that Yamamoto herself looks to still be alive & well. Anyway, to call Aim for the Ace! a sports manga institution is more than likely a bit of an understatement, as it's popularity & influence is immense; of course, the obvious one to mention is Gainax's mecha OVA Gunbuster, which started off as a direct homage. As of 2004 it had already sold over 15 million copies (& that's long before the current digital offering that's available in Japan) & as mentioned already reruns of the 1973 TV anime resulted in a full-on remake anime, which itself was successful enough to warrant bringing back Dezaki for a movie adaptation in 1979, which was then eventually followed up with two OVA sequels, Aim for the Ace! 2 (a.k.a. Another Match) & Aim for the Ace! Final Stage, which came out between 1989 & 1990 that adapted the remainder of the manga. The franchise would finally see its official English debut in 2023 when Discotek Media released the 1973 TV anime, the 1979 movie, & Ace 2/Another Match on Blu-Ray (New Ace & Final Stage have both been left behind, however), but it would be great to see the OG manga itself one day be given a chance in English, officially.
The next mangaka I decided to include is one that might not be a readily known name on his own, despite having a catalog of wholly self-produced manga, but some of the manga he was the artist for are considered all-time greats. Born on January 28, 1941, Noboru Kawasaki found inspiration to draw manga in the pages of Sakai Shichima & Osamu Tezuka's New Treasure Island in 1947, the title that initially put Tezuka on the map, and after a rough start in the rental manga business (so much so that he wound up living with Takao Saito for a bit, as he was a friend of a friend) Kawasaki slowly was able to consistently get work, with his 1965 manga Captain Goro in Weekly Shonen Sunday catching the eye of the editors at Weekly Shonen Magazine, in particular. They wanted Kawasaki to draw a baseball manga that mixed in human drama, and while Kawasaki initially refused multiple times (as he had no interest in or knowledge of the sport), the dogged determination of the editors eventually got him to agree to it, feeling honored that they wanted him so badly. With Ikki Kajiwara writing that manga would become 1966's Star of the Giants, one of the most iconic sports manga of all time, which ran until 1971 for 19 volumes & its TV anime adaptation in 1968 being the very first sports anime ever produced & more or less just as iconic (it literally once crossed over with Astro Boy in Japan!), but in some ways this was just the start for Kawasaki's legacy.
While making Star of the Giants Kawasaki would also make 1967's Inakappe Taisho for one of Shogakukan's children's magazines & 1968's Otoko no Joken (with Ikki Kajiwara) for Shonen Jump that was an early manga about becoming a mangaka. After Star ended Kawasaki would keep busy with tons of manga, most notably 1971's Kouya no Shonen/Wilderness Boy Isamu (based on a 1952 novel by Souji Yamakawa) for Shonen Jump (a Wild West story that was a major hit for Jump at the time), 1974's Musashi (with Kazuo Koike) for Shonen Sunday, 1977's Football Taka/Hawk (an early manga about American football) for Shonen Magazine, & even a return to his iconic smash hit with New Star of the Giants from 1976 to 1979. In the early 80s Kawasaki decided to slow down, disbanded his studio, & stopped relying on assistants by working at his own pace, and in 2003 left Tokyo entirely to work at a personal studio in his new home of Kikuyo, Kumamoto with his wife. From 2004 to 2022 he teamed with Kazuo Koike to make Hoshino Seiichi Monogatari: Kachitain'ya!, a biographical manga that would wind up being Noboru Kawasaki's final manga, though he still draws things like picture books, murals, & designs mascot characters for local governments, even at the age of 84; his son, Ken Kawasaki, is also a manga writer, most notably for the long-running golf manga Tonbo!. As for what titles to pick as "ideal" candidates for an English release, especially considering the age of almost his entire catalog, I guess (should Ashita no Joe perform decently enough) Star of the Giants could be a possible one, though at 19 volumes (plus another 11 for New Star) it would be on the slightly longer end of things. Kouya no Shonen Isamu (12 volumes) would at least be unique due to its setting, while Football Hawk would be interesting in comparison to something like Eyeshield 21, but otherwise would probably be too old-fashioned for most readers interested in American football.
Really, Noboru Kawasaki is included in this list more due to his legacy & importance in manga history, as outside of maybe his most iconic work (which itself is a bit of a stretch) I kind of see him as likely never getting an official English release, of any sort.
The last male mangaka I'll include here is an interesting one, because it seems as though he'd be a perfect pick for a specific niche of manga fan that's seen a bit of a resurgence in recent years and most of his catalog is short work, yet the most we've ever gotten is the sole anime adaptation of one of his works & (more recently) a live-action movie adaptation of another. Born on July 6, 1949, Daijiro Morohoshi actually first worked at the Tokyo Metropolitan Industrial Technology Research Institute for three years after graduating from high school before moving over to manga, making his first appearance in an issue of COM magazine (Osamu Tezuka's equivalent to Garo) in 1970 with a one-shot. He then won the Tezuka Award for another one-shot in 1974, which then led to his debut serialization in Weekly Shonen Jump, 1974's Yokai Hunter. The short-run manga (three stories across five chapters) saw ex-archaeology professor Reijirou Hieda visiting various locales around Japan to examine their folklore & history, only to come across some sort of supernatural (or even interdimensional) event in the process; a live-action adaptation of one of the stories did see English release in 2022. Amusingly the "Yokai Hunter" name was actually forced on Morohoshi by editorial, since Hieda rarely came across yokai & wasn't a "hunter" by any means, but it was catchy enough that it's since stuck, despite Morohoshi trying to change the title for future entries at least once (only to give up & revert back to the OG name for reprints). Morohoshi would then follow up Yokai Hunter with a number of different titles, like 1975's Mud Men, 1976's Ankoku Shinwa/The Dark Myth (the 1990 OVA adaptation was given an English release by Manga Entertainment in 2003), 1977's Koushi Ankokuden/The Dark Tales of Confucius, Morokai Shii/All Kinds of Strange Things (which he made on & off from 1988 to 2011), and many others to this very day.
Today, Daijiro Morohoshi is considered an icon when it comes to manga all about the supernatural, with his works being cited as direct inspirations for Hideaki Anno & Hayao Miyazaki, the latter of which admitted to actually originally wanting to hire Morohoshi to draw the Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind manga. Osamu Tezuka once admitted that Morohoshi's unqiue art style was impossible for him to ever imitate, with Morohoshi's own assistants sometimes being left dumbfounded as to how they could help him, while Yellow Magic Orchestra's Haruomi Hosono has stated that YMO's song "The Madmen" was inspired by The Mud Men, clarifying that the production company misspelled the manga's title, hence why the song is "Madmen" instead of "Mudmen". Other mangaka like Rumiko Takahashi have paid homage to Morohoshi by naming characters after him, such as Ataru Moroboshi in Urusei Yatsura, & the late Nekojiru even once sent him a fan letter. Morohoshi is also close friends with sci-fi manga icon Yukinobu Hoshino (who has been published in English before, so he's ineligible here), as the two both got their starts with Shonen Jump around the same time. Considering the immense respect the man has in the industry, and with the increased prevalence of supernatural or even simply horror manga in English (Junji Ito, Kazuo Umezz, Gou Tanabe, Noroi Michiru, Hideshi Hino, Shinichi Koga, etc.), it's still kind of surprising that Daijiro Morohoshi has yet to receive an official English release for any of his manga, as I think now would actually be the best time of all for his work to find an audience. Even though his earliest work date back to the 70s his art style still looks rather timeless, quite honestly, but if I had to pick a couple I think I'd go with either Yokai Hunter (three collections alone cover a good majority of the stories in Japan) & The Dark Myth (if only because that had some prior availability here via the OVA).
Finally, we end this entire list with what was admittedly a bit of a last-minute replacement. I originally had wanted to include Shinji Mizushima, creator of Dokaben & Abu-san, but despite him also being iconic in his own right the problem with Mizushima is that all of his truly notable works are insanely long, and I do want to keep some semblance of "I can realistically see this person be given a chance in English". Plus, I think it's only fair that I follow the order of "two men, one woman" that I've been doing throughout both halves of this list, so I decided to end with a bit of a dark horse pick, Koi Ikeno. Born on April 16, 1959 (making her the second youngest person on the entire list, behind only Masanori Morita), Ikeno found a love of manga both from her grandfather growing up & by reading Osamu Tezuka's Jungle Emperor Leo in elementary school, and one of her friends had told her that a fortune given by a kokkuri-esque kami stated that she would have her first manga published when she turns 19. Amazingly enough that actually wound up happening, as a one-shot Ikeno made called Happy End Monogatari was submitted for the Ribon Newcomer Award & became a semi-finalist, which meant that it got published in the Ribon New Year's Special at the end of 1978, when she was 19. She would work as a typist while making manga on the side for three years, but by 1982 she switched over to manga full-time for her second serialization, Tokimeki Tonight, a romantic comedy about Ranze Eto, the daughter of a werewolf mother & vampire father, while Ranze comes to realize that she can transform into a carbon copy of anything she bites, living or inanimate, and can only change back by sneezing; naturally, this complicates things when she falls for a classmate at her new junior high.
Tokimeki Tonight would became a smash hit for Ribon magazine, receiving a TV anime adaptation by Group TAC only four months after the manga debuted, while the manga would run until 1994 for 30 volumes, during which Ikeno would get married & have a child, which slowed down the serialization for a little bit in the middle. Ikeno has also since returned to her hit manga with two sequels, Tokimeki Midnight (which ran from 2002 to 2009 for nine volumes) & Tokimeki Tonight: Sorekara (which debuted in 2021 & is still running, currently at four volumes), as well as a one-volume spin-off in 2000 called Tokimeki Tonight: Hoshi no Yukue; there have also been a variety of one-off side stories & the like over the decades. Despite this being Koi Ikeno's most notable work, it's definitely a bit too long to really look at as a "viable" pick, but luckily there is one other work of hers that does have enough notoriety (via a TV anime adaptation) & is also rather short. Debuting in Ribon back at the start of 1995, Nurse Angel Ririka SOS was Koi Ikeno's take on the magical girl concept, made in concert with Yasushi Akimoto, a TV writer/author/lyricist/director/music producer. The idea behind Ririka SOS is that young girl Ririka Moriya is given a nurse's cap that allows her to transform into "Nurse Angel", and it's up to her to protect the Earth against the evil organization Dark Joker, which has already taken over the world of Queen Earth, by finding the legendary Flower of Life. A 35-episode TV anime would later debut that July, which was the first anime ever directed by Akitaro Daichi & become notorious for how it twisted the idea of the magical girl around. Namely, Ririka was given a finite amount of "Green Vaccine" (the source of her magical powers) that she could rely on, thereby essentially giving her a time limit before she became no longer able to fight back against Dark Joker; this has resulted in some considering Ririka SOS an early "deconstruction of magical girls". As for the manga, it seemingly doesn't feature the finite magical resource that the anime does, but at only four volumes it would still seemingly be the best overall option for Koi Ikeno to possibly one day be given an official English release, manga-wise.
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Now, of course, there could be very good reasons for any of these mangaka not having any official English releases that go beyond the simple "English manga publishers feel that they're too risky, sales-wise". As Mangasplaining's Deb Aoki has stated before, sometimes it's the Japanese publisher (which tend to handle licensing on behalf of the mangaka, as most aren't really aren't interested in that side of the business) that has their own restrictions & hesitations, while other times the mangaka themselves simply have no interest in releasing their works in certain regions. Other mangaka might have passed away, which could result in some legal hurdles that have to be dealt with first before licensing can be re-opened, which is what happened with Mitsuteru Yokoyama's catalog after his passing; Hikari Pro has long since settled everything regarding that, though. Sometimes, things are just out of a licensee's control, and that's that.
And, really, this list isn't meant to be taken as a denigration of the English manga industry, nor am I really expecting any of the manga I highlighted (or maybe I should say "bolded") to ever see official English release. Still, as we get closer & closer to the 40th Anniversary of those original English releases back in 1987, I think it's important for manga fans to know just what they're still missing out on, and in an ideal world that could be rectified one day, to some extent.
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