The Manga of Naoki Urasawa
Introduction
Naoki Urasawa may not be a very well-known name outside of Japan, but
the anime based on one of his manga has been very well-received. Most
western fans are familiar with Yawara, the TV series that
has been partially fan subtitled. Some fans may also have
actually read the manga that had been serialized in Big Comic Spirits.
However, very few people are aware of the other manga that Urasawa has
worked on. This web site is dedicated to changing this situation.
Hitoshi Doi and I have summarized some of the Yawara manga, and I have
written reviews of Monster, Master Keaton, and Happy. Most of the
Yawara summaries are on other web sites, but my reviews and character
guides are here.
If you liked Yawara, I hope that you find this page useful. As
always, I am happy to give credit to anyone that can help me add
information to these pages.
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Who is Naoki Urasawa?
Although Urasawa is incredibly prolific, I actually know very little
about him (including whether he is male or female.) Most of what I do
know revolves around his manga. Urasawa likes doing a variety of
one-shot stories that show slices of life in comic ways, ranging from a
Japanese beat cop, to a pair of samurai a few hundred years ago. Some
of his earlier short stories have been collected into two volumes, but I
haven't seen collections of the more recent stuff (although, the
retelling of the life of Judo master Jigoro has been collected, along
with some of other shorts to pad out the book.)
I had written reviews of the short story collections for rec.arts.anime
a few years ago, but I'm not sure where they are anymore. If anyone can
find those files, I'd appreciate it.
Urasawa has also teamed up with other writers to do the artwork for
manga series like Pineapple Army and Master Keaton. On
his own, he has written and illustrated Yawara and the currently
on-going Happy and Monster.
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Revision History
01/18/97: Created this file.
People who helped me on these files:
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Summaries and Character Guides
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You can contact me at: riemann96@yahoo.com
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