If the characters in literature, film, television, and anime are based on reality, many of them will not be limited to one person, but a complex of many people. Just like the protagonist big empty wing in the well-known sports comic "Football Boy", it has multiple realistic prototypes.
According to the author Yoichi Takahashi, the experience of Japanese player Mizushima Musashi was referenced when setting the big air wing.
In 1974, football was still very unpopular in Japan, but the 10-year-old Mizushima Musashi crossed the ocean to Brazil to play football, playing for the famous football club São Paulo. Perhaps Mizushima Musashi's level of football cannot be compared to that of the big air wing, but his deeds are the source of this classic manga.
There are also some friends who may think that the Japanese football "evergreen" Miura Chiryo is the prototype of the big empty wing. In fact, Soccer Boy was only serialized in 1981, when Miura was just a 14-year-old boy.
However, Yoichi Takahashi did refer to some of Miura's deeds when serializing "Soccer Boy", but he was not the prototype of the Big Empty Wing, and was split into two manga characters.
In 1982, at the age of 15, Miura traveled to Brazil alone to become a player at Juventud Athletic in São Paulo, and then signed his first professional contract with Baliga star Santos.
His experience in Brazil was installed in the comics by the Japanese-Brazilian player Roberto Hongo (doubtful), while the experience of surviving in Brazil was installed in Aoi Shin-woo of "Football Junior: World Youth".
In the manga, Yoichi Takahashi recreates Miura's experience, for example, to train by tying sandbags inside clothes to enhance his physical fitness, and some readers may feel that it is not real, but Yoichi Takahashi said: "Many readers write to me to sympathize with the suffering of Aoi Shingo. But I would say that those are real things that happened to Miura 20 years ago. ”
However, after all, Yoichi Takahashi's portrayal of the Great Air Wing is only a reference to Mizushima Musashi's experience, and whose technical characteristics come from?
After the death of "Ball King" Maradona in 2020, Yoichi Takahashi publicly stated that the prototype of the big empty wing was Maradona.
In an interview with football magazine Libero, Yoichi Takahashi revealed that the entire inspiration for the work "Football Boy" was Maradona. He said, "Maradona is everywhere in my work. In 1979, Japan hosted the World Youth Championships, and although I didn't go to the scene, I witnessed Maradona's performance on TV, which was so shocking! ”
Yoichi Takahashi also said that Maradona's shadow is ubiquitous in his work. "I was working on Football Boy, which had a big impact on me, and before Juan Díaz [another Argentine star in the comics], the big empty wing was Maradona himself."
In the 1970s, the most popular sport in Japan was baseball, but after japan hosted the World Youth Championship in 1979, this popular sport burned the football desert in Japan, and It was after this that Yoichi Takahashi began to create "Football Boy" and let it go to the whole world.
After football became popular in Japan, the first person in the world at that time was Maradona, who almost became an idol for Japanese fans. Therefore, Yoichi Takahashi used him as a template to create the image of "big empty wing". The big wing is very similar to Maradona, short in stature but excellent in ball, but also has a strong spiritual attribute and leadership temperament, and also joined Maradona's barcelona.
However, later in the manga, Yoichi Takahashi gradually abandoned the use of Maradona as a template to create the main character, and created another Argentine ball king, Juan Díaz.
Whether in the image or the style of the ball, Díaz and Maradona are like a mold printed, and even reproduced the classic shot of "God's Hand" in the Olympic chapter, at this time, the image of the old horse has been completely transplanted to Díaz's body.
Before Maradona's death, Yoichi Takahashi had previously denied that the image of the big empty wing had a realistic prototype, but now he finally revealed his original idea, and said that in his mind, Maradona was the greatest player.
This article was first published by "Zephyr Anime", please indicate the source when reprinting.