Hojoji is now in his 60s, and his status is, of course, an old veteran of the Japanese manga industry. Worshiped as a god have a role in promoting the development of manga or subversive creation of people, HojoJi does not have such a height, but also once became very popular, in the 80s have created "Three Sisters of Cat's Eye" and "City Hunter", the 80s is also the era of a hundred flowers, I will give a few, "Saint Seiya", "Big Dipper God Fist", etc., the biggest competitor is still "Dragon Ball". Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball is thriving, with a wider audience, and it is not unjust to lose to him.
One of the valuable points of Hojo Is his insistence that in the 80s Japanese manga did not pay special attention to painting, and editors generally believed that good stories were more important, and that it was easy to save money. Hojo division is still a particularly fine painting method, the texture of the character's clothes is very clear, the proportion of the character lines is particularly realistic, a large number of weapons appear in "City Hunter", various firearms are painted very realistically, and the only slot point is probably that the female characters in the pen have a thousand faces. But this is not Hojo Ji alone, how many faces does the female character of "Dragon Ball" have? Looking at "Detective Conan" again, it is not to say that most female characters are distinguished by hairstyles and hair colors.
Hojoji's manga is very time-consuming, but this will not bring higher income, obviously can also go with the flow and change the style of drawing, even if "City Hunter" is far less delicate than in the manga. Fortunately, this persistence is not lonely, Hojoji has an assistant who inherited his painting method, that is, Yuhiko Inoue, who later painted "Slam Dunk Master", and is also a big guy with a realistic and delicate painting style. Those who are interested can go to see Inoue's "Wandering Line".
Delicate and realistic drawing method is especially suitable for depicting urban themes of comics, "City Hunter" is exactly like this, but it was really popular at that time, not only in Japan, and then many films adapted from "City Hunter", Hong Kong starred by Jackie Chan, the protagonist's name was changed to Meng Bo, the identity is a private detective, Hong Kong and Taiwan translators will always forcibly translate the imported animation into Chinese names, such as Ma Sha and Li Yabao, do you know who it is?
South Korea a few years ago there was an adaptation of "City Hunter", the plot of the magic change is terrible, and recently France also adapted a "City Hunter", super restoration. It is hard to imagine that the animation of the 80s is still remembered by some people today, and the director of the French version of "City Hunter" must be an iron fan.
Perhaps "City Hunter" could have been hotter for a longer time, but as the author's age rose, his mentality and experience changed, and he created a work called "City Hunter Angel Heart". How to say this work is good, I have not seen "City Hunter" directly to see "Angel Heart" is good, after watching "City Hunter" and then watching "Angel Heart" will be like a knife, although the author has repeatedly emphasized that it is just a parallel world, but many old audiences do not accept it, preferring that it is a story without an ending.
Text: Dragon Knight Sharu