Masamune Shirow Art Work & Exhibition

 

Glad to say the Osaka Expo this year hasn't killed off all competing exhibitions. That still seems to be the case for the next 6 months in Kansai,  but Tokyo is a different story.

Last week end the Masamune Shirow  Exhibition opened in Tokyo. 

I hope to be able to stop in, see the works and get the exhibition book during a coming trip to the kids and grandson in Chiba before it closes in August. 

Masamune Shirow is not his real name. That is actually Masanori Ota, and for the longest time he remained anonymous. 

His GHOST IN THE SHELL,  the translated to English, and page flipped (so it was read left to right on the page) comic version was the first Japanese Manga I read in maybe 1995. It is still really something. I was living in Japan at the time and it was still very early stages of websites, and I didn't find out about APPLESEED  and his other works till I went back to Australia in 2001. 

I am currently rereading the 4 volumes of APPLESEED I bought at Kinokuniya Sydney Australia and think wow. The mechanical designs and architecture backgrounds in particular are amazing.  I just think "that must have taken so long to draw" which adds hugely to the atmosphere, but you pass the panel in a second.

The exhibition also has work in progress material, as he copied his in progress (as a backup?) work.

This is the kind of mangaka exhibition I want to see, with manga pages, completed and not.  That was a disappointment for the Nagano Mamoru Exhibition I attended in Nagoya last year, that had no manga pages at all.

The exhibition book is now on Amazon Japan, so I don't have to lug it home when I finally visit:

Yes the GHOST IN THE SHELL Anime is cool too, I particularly like STANDALONE COMPLEX, but the manga is great without them. 

 

When done with APPLESEED, will reread GHOST IN THE SHELL too. I do remember not being so thrilled with the final volume, MACHINE INTERFACE, but all good.

2 years ago, Otomo Katsuhiro had a huge display of artwork for his AKIRA animation, and all his manga were re-released in the OTOMO COMPLETE WORKS series.  I didn't know about the Osaka show till the day before it was to close. Still dealing with Covid controls at the time, you had to pre-purchase the ticket, and specify the time to attend attend, like 11AM till 11:59AM. The ticket may not be available for that time slot though, and it just seemed too difficult, so I didn't go. 

Yes, AKIRA is awesome and his artwork is amazing, but OTOMO as a story teller doesn't interest me as much as Masamune Shirow has.  His recent episode of Manben neo was great though, and made me track down his DOMU and FIREBALL. His artwork is incredible.

I have a fascination with the comic medium.  But I think life is too short to put as much detail in a panel that Otomo has!

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