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Naoki Urasawa's manga is like holding up a mirror for human beings, pointing straight at you and saying, "Look, this is human nature." “
Author: KK
When Araki Isuhiko was composing a "hymn to mankind", Naoki Urasawa, who was the same age as him, threw a "cross-examination" at human nature.
Compared with many of Japan's most famous manga artists, not many people in Japan may know about Naoki Urasawa. His comic animation work MONSTER is also listed as an extremely unpopular classic.
Monster animated poster
But in Japan, Naoki Urasawa is "the man who sold 100 million manga" and is the only manga artist in the history of Japanese manga to win the Osamu Tezuka Culture Award twice.
Naoki Urasawa was born in 1960 in Tokyo and has loved manga since childhood. In 1990, he won the 35th Elementary School Manga Award for his judo manga "Judo Way", which was well known in the Japanese manga industry. Deeply influenced by Osamu Tezuka's manga "Bird of Fire", following the launch of the sports-themed manga "Little Witch of the Tennis World", Naoki Urasawa's drawing style began to change and turned his attention to social phenomena, "Ultimate Mercenary" and "Danger Investigator" were his first transformational works.
Until the advent of the manga MONSTER, Naoki Urasawa's style and thought became more mature, and it also formally set the tone of his works, and its content became more and more literary, involving history, psychology, criminology, science fiction and other directions. "MONSTER" portrays the dark-hearted, cold-hearted killer and the Japanese doctor who hunts him down, confronts the two sides of human good and evil, and becomes a bestseller that has sold more than 20 million copies.
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Three entertainment masters masterpiece column, each issue recommends the growth path of a famous artist or the creative process of a famous work. Review of the last issue: Fu Jian Yoshihiro's "Full-time Hunter" has been suspended for more than 500 times, why do we still have to chase?
Depict the complex human psyche with concise comic strokes
Tokyo in September is still in the middle of the summer, and people are looking forward to the summer heat passing quickly. Naoki Urasawa's manga studio is about to usher in this month's deadline.
Urazawa's studio is located in Tokyo's Meguro district, and the tables are piled high with drawing tools and drawings, making the room look a bit cluttered. Even under the pressure of deadlines, the studio still presents a peaceful atmosphere, and the sound of everyone laughing and laughing is heard from time to time.
Urasawa unscrewed the knob of the music player
Unhurriedly asking about the progress of his background assistant, Urasawa got up from his workbench and turned into a glass door, gently unscrewing the knob of the music player, and Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" came from the stereo.
Urasawa has medium-length black hair, and Bob Dylan is his rock 'n' roll legend. He muttered satisfactorily, "This BGM is really good," and went back to his seat, picked up the dipping pen that he had used since his debut, and continued to draw lines for a middle-aged man on the drawing paper.
On deadlines like this, Urazawa's studio welcomes five times a month. In the sprint stage before the deadline, Urasawa can continue to paint for more than 10 hours a day. After more than 20 years of perseverance, the huge workload also brought a burden to Urasawa's body, and Urasawa was infected with the old disease of dislocation of his left shoulder, but he had no time to care, just focused on sketching the drawing in front of him, which was a block in the "20th Century Boy" that was being serialized.
Urasawa is painting the expression of the protagonist when he witnesses the death of an important character, and his portrayal of this link is particularly meticulous. With a small round mirror on the right hand side of the painting, Urasawa looked at his silent expression in the mirror and continued to paint with a sudden realization.
"Human nature is not simple"
"Is it sadness, or relief, or pain?" This is a perfect way to make a variety of explanations. After all, human beings are not so simple creatures. ”
Urasawa hates simple and easy-to-understand performances, and he often portrays the complex psychology of human beings in his works. In the masterpiece suspense manga MONSTER, the protagonist is a young man with an extremely dark heart, and Urasawa directly portrays the two sides of human beings through this role. In "Little Witch of Tennis", which has been adapted into a TV series, Urasawa even introduced a plot full of negative emotions such as jealousy and hatred into this sports manga.
At the end of the day, Urasawa said, the person who draws the manga has to be an actor himself. So I was painting with the same expression as the characters in my pen.
Using simple manga brushstrokes to depict the complex human psyche is one of the charms of Urasawa manga. It's like holding up a mirror for humanity and pointing it straight at you and saying, "Look, this is human nature." “
"Borrow the Hand of the God of My Manga"
Urasawa takes about a week to complete each episode of the series, and the entire creative process begins with a meeting of editors, with whom Urasawa determines the plot of the manga, and then ushers in the two most painful days for him.
Urasawa shut himself in the studio, alone with a scribbler on his head, there would be no rock and roll he loved, no assistants laughing, and the messy and crowded studio seemed a bit big. In the draft stage of comic creation, it is necessary to decide the layout, division, angle and distribution of lines, and the draft is the most test of a cartoonist's creativity.
Astro Boy's sequel PLUTO was written by Urasawa
Urasawa is racking his brains for the beginning of his new manga PLUTO. A day passed, but only 4 pages were drawn.
"When I first thought about this story, I wanted to paint an unprecedented masterpiece. Later, as the project gradually took shape, the boldness of the story became smaller and smaller, and I had to keep trying to draw it. In order to survive the bottleneck period of creation, Urasawa constantly polished it alone.
After dozens of hours of struggle and struggle, the original white painting paper has been covered with different shades of black outlines. The draft was initially completed, and Urasawa faxed it to the editor at the first time. Then the next day, they worked with their assistants on the next creative process: they had to complete 24 pages of line drawing in 5 days, which was a tight time and a heavy task.
However, on the third day of the line drawing, Urasawa hesitates in front of a manga scene. "A man who constantly escapes his past, determined to face reality and take a step forward", which is also the climactic scene in the sentence. How to draw a man's pace made Urasawa very troubled, and he wanted to show the man's determination to the extreme. After several pages of drafts, the picture was finally frozen in the moment when the man took his left foot.
Soon, with only 30 hours left before the deadline, Urasawa received a phone call from the editor in charge. The editor noted that he hoped that Urasawa would be able to correct a scene in the original manuscript. Although it was a completed manuscript, Urasawa began to revise it.
"Even if you use up your 100% efforts, you can only stay at the personal level." In order to make a work that shocks me myself, of course, I need to use everyone's strength. Urasawa quipped that when he was painting, he often meditated in his heart: "Please give me strength, the god of manga."
On the evening of the deadline, the editor came to pick up the original manuscript. However, the original manuscript is not yet completed, and the final work is being carried out at high speed. After 1 hour, the 24-page manuscript was finally completed. At this time, Urasawa showed a reassuring smile. "However, the heart is like experiencing a hearty cry, and the aftertaste of tragedy is a feeling of happiness."
When the original manuscript was completed, Urazawa smiled reassuringly
The comic life of rock and roll
The time goes back to when Urusawa was 5 years old. Since his parents were often absent from home, he and his grandmother were usually the only ones in the house. Urasawa, who has no playmates, spends his days every day by mimicking Osamu Tezuka's manga on various advertising leaflets. After entering elementary school, Urasawa became passionate about creating manga on his own. At that time, his painting skills had reached a level that surprised adults. The two encounters in junior high school completely determined Urasawa's fate.
One of them is Osamu Tezuka's manga Bird of Fire. Bird of Fire depicts a grand story in which people are exposed to stupidity and filth in order to survive, and Urasawa is deeply touched and determined to draw such a "literary manga" himself.
At the age of 22, Urasawa's manga was accidentally discovered by the editors of the magazine, and he subsequently debuted as a professional manga artist. For Urasawa, who has just entered the manga industry, if he can't become a best-selling manga artist, it means that he can't draw the manga he wants to draw. So Urasawa, in the creation of his first serial work "The Way of Softness", tried various ways to attract the attention of readers, and unconsciously "The Way of Softness" became a best-selling work with more than 30 million copies.
After ending the 7-year-long series, Urasawa finally had the confidence to paint the works he wanted to paint. He wanted to create a comic that depicted the essence of human beings like "Firebird", but the publisher asked for the opposite: draw another sports-themed comic.
Forced by the publisher and fans, Urasawa began a serial of "Little Witch of Tennis", but this time, he decided to realize his idea in sports manga. In this work, Urasawa actively incorporates the dirty side of humanity such as jealousy, but it is quite difficult for the fledgling Urazawa to depict the complex inner nature of human beings: his existing painting expressiveness is not enough to carry the plot he wants to express.
As he pondered, Urasawa began to lose the support of his readers, and the sales of each volume gradually declined. What people were expecting was a story like "The Way of The Way of The Soft", and it began to circulate, "This is a manga of Urasawa's person". Even with no one around, Urazawa struggles alone, and his only spiritual pillar is the lonely attitude of Bob Dylan, the god of anti-war folk songs.
Bob dylan
In the 1960s, Bob Dylan, who was sought after in the folk world, turned his creative center to rock and roll, which sparked an outcry from fans. Boos echoed throughout the concert, with Dylan singing the rock song "Like a Rolling Stone" amid a chorus of insults.
In the face of others' doubts and incomprehension, Urasawa also chose to stick to his ambition to create manga. With constant observation, speculation and portrayal, Urasawa's drawing skills became more and more abundant, and he eventually mastered the manga brushwork of portraying various negative emotions of human beings. The next series of serial works "MONSTER", "20th Century Boy" and "PLUTO" pushed his comic book career to the peak.
The protagonist of "20th Century Boy" is in his infancy
Among them, "20th Century Boy" has the same name as the famous rock music of the 1970s, and is also the most autobiographical work of Naoki Urasawa. In this SF comic, the 20th and 21st centuries, past and future, are intertwined. The protagonist of the work is a religious leader who dominates the world and a rock singer who wants to prevent him from achieving his ambitions, and the foggy plot makes many readers fall in love with this work. Serialized since 1999, 20th Century Boy has surpassed 18 million comic books and was once adapted into a movie.
So, how much potential can the original intention of human beings play? Naoki Urasawa's divine stroke comes from his tireless efforts, but also from the original intention of adhering to his original intentions. Just like dylan's song, Urasawa's favorite lyrics read: Go with the flow, and in the end everything will be fine.
A toy shop in Tokyo that Urawa used to visit as a child
When I came to the toy shop that I often visited in my childhood, I suddenly realized that my life has gone through a long journey. Naoki Urasawa says he's trying to get back to his childhood self 40 years ago, to where all chapters began.
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