Naoki Urasawa
Kazuyoshi Saitо made an offer to collaborate with Naoki Urasawa, with whom he has a close relationship, after he saw Urasawa's rough drawing of a boy who strummed a broom like a guitar. The image matched what Saitо completely had in mind for his song "Boy." Urasawa created a storyboard, and completed an animation on his own for the first time. Urasawa also illustrated the song's album cover.
Reboot of the original Manben series from 2014-2017. Naoki Urasawa is returning to visit eight different manga authors, observe them in their daily work and discuss the creation of manga.
Urasawa Naoki no Manben (Naoki Urasawa's Manga Exertions) is a TV Documentary airing on NHK Educational TV. It follows acclaimed mangaka Naoki Urasawa (creator of 20th Century Boys and Monster) as he sets out to break new ground for manga even further than he already has. In an attempt to educate viewers about manga and preserve the intricate craftsmanship and process of Japanese artists on video for future generations, he invites a manga artist to have their workplace filmed for a couple of days, so as to display them in the process of crafting chapters for their current serializations. After the footage has been shot, Urasawa meets with the artist and they discuss the footage, talking about the artist's workplace and workflow, the difficulties involved in the mangaka lifestyle, their reasons for drawing manga in the first place, and their perspective on the current industry and their own work.
Jiantan is a young boy who has to leave Xi'an after the death of his mother to go deep into the Tibetan prairies to start living with the father he barely remembers. His dad, LaGeBa, is a busy doctor who decided to depart from the city and reside in Tibet where he is the essential physician of the poor community he lives in. To help his father, Jiantan has to learn how to herd sheep. While trying to learn his new responsibility, he is saved by a stray gold-colored Tibetan Mastiff. Both Jiantan and the big dog help each other as they try to adjust to this new environment.
The final showdown, and the final reveal. who is Friend? How can he be stopped?
Set 15 years after "Twentieth Century Boys," Kanna (Airi Taira) reunites with several main characters from the first film in an attempt to stop Friend's increasing influence over the world and continued plans to eliminate humanity, as detailed in the New Book of Prophecy.
In 1969, Kenji, an elementary school kid and his friends built a secret base during their summer holidays. They fantasized that they had to fight villains who were out to conquer the world and wrote them in the Book of Prophecies. Years later in 1997, Kenji becomes a convenience store manager and leads a regular life after giving up his dreams to become a rock star. His boring life is suddenly turned upside down when his old classmate dies mysteriously and an entire family in the neighbourhood disappears. At the same time, a religious cult and its mysterious leader, Friend emerges and a strange chain of events duplicating exactly the events described in the Book of Prophecies follow. Is this the beginning of the end of the world? Who is Friend?
Filmed in Japan, this program looks beyond the stereotypes to objectively examine the history of manga, how manga are drawn, and manga's influence on Japanese life as illustrated by cosplay bars, where people dress up as their favorite characters; manga kissa, 24/7 manga cafes; and Comicket, the twice-annual comics market that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors. The program also introduces viewers to a cross-section of mangaka icons: Vagabond creator Takehiko Inoue; Naoki Urasawa, author of The Pushman and Other Stories; Jiro Taniguchi; Yoshihiro Tatsumi; and Kan Takahama.
Master Keaton is a Japanese manga series created by Hokusei Katsushika and Naoki Urasawa. It was serialized in Big Comic Original between 1988 and 1994 and ran for 144 chapters. The chapters were combined into 18 tankōbon volumes. An anime adaptation was created, with 24 episodes airing between 1998 and 1999 in Japan on Nippon Television. An additional 15 episodes were created and released as OVAs, bringing the total to 39 episodes. The manga's target audience was Japanese men in their 20's and 30's, a comparatively older target audience than is common for most anime series. Though the manga series has not been translated into English, the anime and OVA series were dubbed into English and released by Pioneer Entertainment. Naoki Urasawa will be writing a sequel to the series, titled Master Keaton Remaster, with writer Takashi Nagasaki. Beginning in the March 2012 issue of Big Comic Original, it will take place 20 years after the original series ended.
Yawara Inokuma competes for Japan in the Atlanta Olympic Games as she meets with several familiar faces throughout the tournament.
Yawara helps a group of timid grade school kids overcome their fears and compete in a judo competition.
Yawara Inokuma is a girl who aspires to an ordinary life but due to her innate talent is forced to practice judo by her authoritarian grandfather, Jigorou Inokuma, with the aim of achieving the championship in Japan and the gold medal in the Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games. Because of the pressure from her grandfather she has a generally bad attitude about judo, avoiding it as much as she can. However, over time she comes to understand why her grandfather loves judo and appreciates it more.
