01. This cartoonist knows the old otaku best
At the end of January, a lot of new game ace cards were circulating online.
Of course, it is not the blue-eyed white dragon that has been hyped up for 87 million people, but the game cards created by netizens. In this convenient Internet world, only if you have a little post-production foundation and a little logical thinking, it is not difficult to make a skill card.
As a result, netizens invited their favorite dog "doge" as a card phenomenon, borrowing its mouth to say out loud the long-suppressed determination!
Fortunately, these netizens were lucky, and after surfing the Internet using these cards, a beautiful girl written by a Japanese manga artist hit their eyeballs.
This person is Kentaro Yabuki, whose "Black Cat", "Out of the Bag" and "Demon Trio" are quite popular in the circle, and what has made these comics reach the peak of popularity is the beautiful girl characters with excellent body proportions, comfortable postures and eye-catching shapes in the manga.
Especially in "The Lady of the Bag", Yabuki shows his mentality of being everywhere and the performance skills of the enchanted house, which makes countless otaku ecstatic.
For example, although the male protagonist Yuki Ishidou is an ordinary high school student, he has the special skill of "definitely making a beautiful girl get involved in his own flat fall", and when he accidentally hits a beautiful girl, it is the charming moment of the manga;
Then there is the fact that Yabuki often shows the figure of the character from various special perspectives such as looking down and looking up. This should not only consider the fit of the action with the plot and setting, but also test the cartoonist's familiarity with the human body structure.
With these special performance techniques, Yabuki Kentaro's position in the hearts of the Aya people continues to rise, and every eager Aya is looking forward to Yabuki's old wet new works.
Happily, in May last year, Yabuki opened his personal account on Twitter, so that fans finally had the opportunity to appreciate his beautiful girls in media other than comic books.
Within five hours of his first tweet, his account had more than 200,000 followers and 380,000 in two days. Such a speed of fan growth also surprised Yabuki himself, in order to respond to the support of netizens, when the number of fans exceeded 300,000, he also presented a swimsuit map.
Then after another half a year, on January 16, its number of fans exceeded 530,000, in order to thank the netizens for their attention again, Yabuki specially prepared a "beautiful house" greeting picture, but the style of painting was a bit crooked.
Yes, you read that right, this time the beautiful picture was not born in his beautiful girl, but Frieza in "Dragon Ball Super". The reason for choosing Frieza as a greeting chart is nothing else, only because in the plot Frieza once claimed that his combat strength was 530,000, and he naturally wanted to seize this opportunity to draw this popular character... The "mesmerizing picture".
(Although human inclinations are free, but... ）
However, although Yabuki has established himself in the manga industry as the "most knowledgeable old otaku", no one will be a natural manga artist. The process of Yabuki's fame has not been smooth, and he has even made some messes within JUMP because of his own behavior.
02. Behind the creation of the charming house
Born in 1980 in Kochi, Kochi Prefecture, Japan, Kentaro Yabuki showed his talent for painting from an early age.
In kindergarten, Yabuki had fallen in love with drawing and often spent a lot of time drawing. When I entered elementary school, I began to move towards the advanced stage of "creating manga".
If there is any way to say that children born in this era are most deeply affected, it is undoubtedly the most influential comic book at that time--- "Dragon Ball". At that time, Yabuki was attracted by the various characters written by Akira Toriyama, and the various performances of these characters in the plot touched the hearts of audiences across the country.
However, in addition to following up the plot in time, Yabuki will also pay special attention to the drawing method, expression method and storyboard in the manga, and eventually subtly absorb it and manifest it in later creations. In Yabuki's later words, if it had not been for Akira Toriyama and his Dragon Ball, perhaps he would not have followed the path of a manga artist.
(Dragon Ball by Kentaro Yabuki)
However, if you want to say that he is related to the manga artist profession, you have to start from his junior high school days.
When Yabuki was in his junior year, JUMP held a character contest about Dragon Ball, where contestants could create a variety of original characters according to their preferences and ideas. At that time, Yabuki plucked up the courage to fuse two of his favorite Dragon Ball characters together to create a new character to contribute to JUMP.
What he never expected was that this brain submission was actually appreciated by the official, not only won the grand prize, but also appeared on the color page of JUMP at that time.
This successful experience led Yabuki to decide to become a manga artist, expressing the thoughts in his mind in the form of paintings. So for the next three years of his high school career, he was preparing step by step for his dreams.
Fast forward to 1997, when he was in high school, he won a special award from shueisha's manga critic for a short manga called "MOON DUST", and thus won the opportunity to make a commercial debut.
But having said that, Yabuki has always been self-taught, with no professional drawing training or specialized drawing tools, whether it is manga but format, or drawing methods, it is imitating other manga artists, and this creative method also laid the groundwork for a certain stage in his later career.
His first serialized work was "Evil Matai Fantasy". It is a fantasy manga based on ancient Japan and a fusion of history, yin and yang culture.
At that time, this manga created by a newcomer manga artist was a great success in jump, which can be called a fairy fight, allowing Yabuki to accumulate a lot of experience and lay a certain foundation for subsequent creations.
Just as Yabuki was still on his way to becoming a manga artist, he met another manga artist who had changed his life: Ken Obata.
At this time, Ken Obata had already serialized a manga called "Puppet Master Zuo Near", but unfortunately the response was mediocre and did not leave too deep an impression on the minds of readers, so Ken Obata prepared manpower and launched a manga with the theme of Go.
It has always been a rare opportunity to learn from jump," and although Yabuki was already preparing to serialize his own manga at this time, in order to gain more experience, he eventually stepped into Ken Obata's work and contributed to his "Chess Soul".
As a result, From a young age, Ken Hata prepared for his new work, and in the same year that the "Chess Soul" series was serialized, his second commercial manga "Black Cat" also appeared on the jump stage.
Although "Evil Matai Fantasy" has achieved good results, so that many readers have recognized Yabuki's unlimited potential of gold nuggets, his performance in "Black Cat" is slightly sub-optimal.
Since Yabuki has always studied in imitation, careful readers have found that the content of this manga has too many similarities with famous works such as Yoshihiro Fuken's "White Book of Yuyu", "HUNTER× HUNTER", such as Tsukihiko's "Ronin Kenshin - Meiji Swordsman Romance Tan-", "Test Goose" and other famous works;
At the same time, "Black Cat" also has a serious flaw of "lack of common sense", and the flaws in the manga have appeared in places that are simpler than the four operations, and this low-level error and the above-mentioned "similar" situation have led him to be labeled with the so-called "lack of knowledge" (Yabuki's word-breaking reorganization: zhi owed).
Fortunately, with the lengthening and learning of the series, Yabuki gradually overcame these shortcomings and explored a set of his own creative style. And he gradually became comfortable with his creation, and he also began to show his long-suppressed voice and consistent with countless otaku: I want to charm the house!
After the end of "Black Cat", a work that made Yabuki's name sensational in ACG circles--- "The Lady of the Bag" was born, and this time, Yabuki finally showed his amazing painting talent and charming mentality.
In terms of genre, "The Princess of the Bag" is a typical harem fan, and the various roles in it are in line with the diversity of the harem fan.
The naïve and cheerful alien Masamune "Lala", the gentle and crushing male protagonist of the green plum bamboo horse "Xilian Temple Haruna", the intelligent and capable sister "Yuki Mika", the most strategic (early) villain Character Eve...
A variety of typical harem characters with outstanding appearances and different personalities have made the male protagonist Jiecheng Pear Dou and the readers who bring it into his perspective feel a feast for the eyes.
In addition, on the "JUMP", which focuses on juvenile manga, Yabuki used his "Out of the Bag King Girl" to draw a lot of plots that "do not cross the line but are charming and powerful".
The plot and characters of "The Lady of the Bag" are so charming, and it is enough to use the description of "its related works can not appear on the domestic Internet in the form of genuine copies", because once its related works appear, they will definitely be stamped with the label of "male condensation".
After all, at the moment when ACG is becoming more and more popular, even serious works such as "Changing Dolls Fall in Love" will be pulled out and criticized, let alone harem fans?
However, we can also reflect the high level of his body painting skills and the rigor of the bridge section conception from "Yabuki's manga can always arouse the high appreciation of the old otaku" and "the unexpected charm in the manga".
But just as the niche culture of ACG is not suitable for going out of the circle because of various indecent elements, and it is difficult to move all of them to reality, Yabuki, a manga artist with his own charming attributes, does not create pictures that can be accepted by all the public.
In previous years, JUMP's official manga website, JUMP+, published a live-action manga titled "Let's Go! JUMP Crane Tail Expedition Team! (Crane Tails) is used to tell the story of various interesting things that happened inside JUMP, to cartoonists and screenwriters.
The third episode tells the story of "Crane Tail Team" asking Yabuki to design a new logo for the women's toilet in the newsroom.
A mesmerizing cartoonist, naturally thinking of the picture of the charming house, when he took over the job, the inspiration burst out in an instant, and he designed four women's toilet logos that made people look at a glance.
In the end, Crane Tails chose a fourth option and implemented it in the women's restroom of the newsroom.
However, it is this move that has caused dissatisfaction among many netizens. Some people think that such a sign is not a big problem with entertaining itself or placing it in fictional works; but in reality, it is suspected of harassment;
Of course, there are also people who disagree, believing that there is nothing wrong with the approach of "Crane Tails", that they are just following their own ideas and creating in their own field; the opponents are restricting the freedom of expression of comics.
As the controversy grew louder, JUMP+ officials had to apologize, saying that the comic had stopped publishing and that the symbol was not actually used officially.
At this point, the matter gradually calmed down, and the insiders continued to chase Yabuki's beautiful house map, and the outsiders had long forgotten about it.
Of course, from an objective point of view, Yabuki's painting skills are undoubtedly excellent, and it is precisely because of this that he can leave a deep impression on the hearts of readers and receive corresponding praise and support. It's just that in order to enhance the fun of the comic, the "Crane Tail Team" chose the picture that can most attract the attention of readers as a logo, which eventually led to the topic getting out of control.
At the moment when the scope of information dissemination is constantly growing, ACG out of the circle is also unstoppable, which has also led to the increasing popularity of the content created, and the creator's original expression of thought has to be limited.
And how will a manga artist like Yabuki, who exudes a charming atmosphere with all his heart, use such an unexpected performance method to draw more manga for more Azai?
03. Conclusion
It is also because of his rich painting experience and irrepressible expression that Yabuki can create works that make countless ata happy, and will make Frieza can be fascinated. Today, this young cartoonist after the 80s is still on the creative road of his dreams.
Not long ago, his serial "Magic Trio" announced the decision to animate, and I believe that it will not be long before we can feel the story created by Yabuki in the form of animation again. Sure enough, he still knows us old otaku best.
One guess is that by the time Yabuki's Twitter followers exceeded 600,000, his new color: Which non-human character will Hetu be?
Could it be his favorite Godzilla?