In 1982, the Juvenile Jump Editorial Office received a submission from a newcomer, which, although only a dozen words, was valued by the editor-in-chief at the time, Shigeo Nishimura. Why?
This may start from the market structure of juvenile comics in the 1980s.
At that time, "Shonen Sunday" had Aunt Takahashi's "Fuxing Kid" in full swing, and Anda Chong's "Baseball Heroes" was a blockbuster from the beginning of publication; on the other hand, Jump stepped onto the train to the Golden Age with a number of genius manga artists such as Akira Toriyama and Masami Cheda, and in the years when the teenager Maziine was still playing soy sauce in a high wind, the battlefield of juvenile manga undoubtedly evolved into a tug-of-war between Jump and Sunday. The surge in sales in a certain period of Jump will inevitably cause a decline in Sunday's sales volume in the same period, and vice versa.
Sunday's comics are delicate, exquisite, and high,like a humble and courteous, personable veteran aristocrat; in contrast, Jump's long-form mainstream at that time was not only hot blood or hot blood, eager to kill in one move, plus roaring and violent, directly allowing the protagonist to explode the universe and rush to outer space.
This put editors in a bind, some of whom thought they needed to learn from Sunday to improve their grades, while others thought they should keep the original route and continue to run, from the short stories that were selected for the Tezuka Newcomer Award in that year, they could see the contradictions in the newsroom at that time.
In the end, it was the editor-in-chief Nishimura who decided that since there was blood, we would have to be hot blood to the end, so hot that no one could copy it. Use a simple and rough tough guy image to fight against the soft-hearted lovers. So there is the opening scene. The submission in 1982 gave Nishimura a glimpse of this talented young man, and he asked the young man to bring his work to the editorial department for detail.
This young man is Tetsuo Hara.
Therefore, Tetsuo Hara came with a proud work of ambition. However, the editor-in-chief who saw the work frowned - the painting was really good, the story was really bad.
Although the fighting comics do not have high requirements for the plot, but is it really a big husband to put the future on such a hairy boy? The editor-in-chief couldn't help but fall into contemplation, it seemed that if he wanted to make his work brilliant, he had to find an original script, so he found Wu Renzun.
Wu Tanzun and Tetsuo Hara's "Hokuto Divine Fist" was serialized for 5 years, and this work even directly changed The overlordship of Sunday, and even Sunday's own editors admitted that they had reached the peak before "Hokuto", and from the beginning of "Hokuto" it was Jump's world.
However, with the success of "Hokuto Shinken", there are also more and more comics to find Takeruzun to ask him to be the script author, from 83 to 88, Wu Nongzun while conceiving "Hokuto Shinken", while maintaining cooperative relations with a number of cartoonists, for a time very busy, so from the end of "Hokuto" hope to greatly streamline the work, focus on a small number of comics.
So from the moment Kenshiro finally went into the wilderness alone, the pair of Takeruzumi and Tetsuo Hara also decided to separate for the time being, and the next cooperation between the two would be until 1997. Of course, this is an afterthought.
Back to 1988, when "Hokuto Divine Fist" had just ended, when Takeruzumi and Kentaro Miura had already made an appointment, but because Takeruzun was responsible for many serials, Miura waited for several months, and as soon as "Hokuto" ended, Takerozun began to create "King Wolf" without stopping.
On the other hand, Tetsuo Hara also decided to set up his own portal. However, he was not good at storytelling, and he encountered bottlenecks at the beginning - the short stories he created alone were repeatedly rejected by the editorial department, and even the SF manga "CyberBlue" cooperated with Ryuichi Mitsui had a mediocre response (in fact, the standard of "CyberBlue" was not bad, but after all, the man who had drawn "Hokuto God Fist" always had some bitterness in the sea).
The successive setbacks have devastated the 27-year-old Tetsuo Hara. His editor-in-charge, Nobuhiko Horrie, looked into his eyes and felt that it would not be possible to continue like this. Horie went to Tetsuo Hara and said, "You should rest for a while and stop painting."
At the same time, Horie himself was not idle, he knew very well that what Tetsuo Hara needed most at the moment was an original scripter with good skills and similar tastes, and after quickly adjusting his strategy, Nobuhiko Horie read thousands of novels in the past 3 months, and finally finalized Takaichiro's "Ichimon-an Affair".
The time point of the story is based on two years after the change of Honnoji Temple, that is, in the 12th year of Tenshō. The protagonist, Keiji, is the righteous nephew of the Maeda Toshiya family, the five elders of the Toyotomi regime at the end of the Warring States period, known as the "Gun and Left", this humanistic Tao Wu Strategy, Dashing and Flying, although not ranked in the main history, but in many wild histories, it appears frequently, and mostly appears as a talented and unruly image.
Keiji is curious about dressing differently and has a peculiar personality, just take the plot of the manga in which he finds a monkey and wears Toyotomi Hideyoshi's costume to show off the market, in fact, it has been mentioned in many no histories, why this person is called "the first stranger of the Warring States" by later generations.
Throughout the history of manga, there was no manga set in the Warring States before 1989; coupled with the fact that Ryuichiro was good at laying out stories and knew how to shape characters, just a few pages of Keiji's taming of the horse made the image of a generation of merry rangers jump on the paper. Nobuhiko Horie was overjoyed and said it was him!
Unexpectedly, good things were a lot of grinding, and the editor Horie just excitedly contacted Takayoshi Ichiro, and his heart was half cold.
Nowadays, when it comes to Ryukeiichiro, the first thing that comes to most people's minds should be his Shadow Warrior Tokugawa Ieyasu. Takaichiro, who became a late bloomer, showed surprising pride in his "advanced age" at the age of Hanako, which was exactly what Jump valued and complemented Tetsuo Hara's rugged painting style.
No one expected that the tough-style Ryukei ichiro would suddenly fall ill.
Advanced cancer.
With Ryu Keiichiro's physical condition, the serial is hopeless, but as a fan, Horie often visits the hospital. After several repetitions, probably touched by Horie Jun's insistence, Mr. Long actually relaxed.
One windy and sunny day, Takayoshi Ichiro, who was having afternoon tea with Horie, inadvertently asked, "How many pages do you want?" This sentence led to a new legend.
Admittedly, at this time, Ryukeiichiro also understood that his life was short, and he could be critically ill almost at any time, and he needed to race against the god of death and complete the script work of "Hanano Keiji" as soon as possible under the limit of his body.
One of the characteristics of Takaichiro's works is that they are quite sophisticated about historical facts, taking the "Wounds of Loyalty" volume as an example, the shamisen played in Keiji's hand is the symbol of Edo culture, which was transmitted from China to Japan through Ryukyu in the late Sengoku period. Appearing in the manga, it corresponds to both the time and the avant-garde and open personality of Keichi.
The extremely serious attitude undoubtedly increased The workload of Ryu Keiichiro, his condition deteriorated for a while, and even changed to dictation because he could not hold a pen in the later stage, recorded by the editor Horie, and then Ryu Keiichiro even became difficult to speak, Horie took the banner of script creation and began to write it himself, and then took it to Mr. Takashi to look at, and constantly adjusted and revised until Mr. Nod.
However, the plot of "Hana no Keiji" does not become miserable and sad because of physical discomfort and fear of dying, on the contrary, the protagonist of the story, Maeda Keiji, respects life, but laughs at life and death, and is a true hero Haojie, which is also inseparable from the character of Ryukei ichiro himself.
Takayoshi Yoshinori is a good wine, which is famous among his friends, and even the pen name "Takayoshi Ichiro" was coined by the lady owner of the izakaya. His people are also very heroic when they drink wine, and they are quite chivalrous. On the other hand, Takayoshi Ichiro is good at martial arts. Although many cartoonists or novel writers who create martial arts themes have knives, guns, clubs, axes, hooks and forks, and eighteen weapons, 80% of those who are hospitalized with cold weapons are also unique. Imagine Tetsuo Hara visiting Mr. Ryu in the hospital room and seeing him pull a dagger out of his shoe.
It seems that in order to match The story style of Takayoshi Ichiro, Tetsuo Hara changed the heavy picture of the end times in "Hokuto Shinken", reducing the use of outlets, and adopting more black and white color blocks and lines, which became more and more obvious with the serialization of "Hana No Keiji".
"Big Dipper Divine Fist" (top) contrasts with "Hana No Kiyoshi" (part 2), which is significantly brighter in comparison
Unfortunately, Takayoshi Ichirō was not able to see the serialization of Hana no Keiji, and before his death, Mr. Takashi handed over the copyright to Nobuhiko Horie and repeatedly told him that he must continue it.
In the winter of 1989, Ryuichiro passed away. Four months later, Hana no Keiji began serializing in Weekly Shonen Jump.
"Men are such things that always go down the road of destruction for their dreams." ——This is a sentence from Ryu Keiichiro's "Shadow Warrior", and the author himself has used his life to implement his faith.
At the end of the manga, Keiji asks for the life of the Uesugi family, risks death into Osaka, sees Tokugawa Ieyasu, cuts his hair to escape the world, and exchanges his best friend's family for health, and does not come back. After the year passed, the daily leisure was leisurely, until an "uninvited guest" came to visit, breaking the calm life of the former Ranger - but, that is another story...
Text: Kai Chuan/Black and White Comic Culture