He was a bad boy, but then became a master comic book. He draws clichéd plots year after year, but he can maintain his feelings for more than 50 years. He was a fearless man, he was the most romantic teenager.
This article was first published by "Zephyr Anime" and reprinted with attribution.
①
In the 1960s and 1970s, Japan, which was about to enter a bubble economy, was in a chaotic period before its economic take-off.
At that time in Japan, various organizations, movements and ideological trends were intertwined, and some flesh-and-blood children took to the streets, giving birth to the emergence of undesirable youth groups such as the "Thunder Clan (Flying Car Party)" and "Hard Faction", and set off a bad trend of "very stylish mixed underworld" among young people.
This thought also haunts the mind of a child from a family of construction workers in Tokyo, and the hot life of racing and brawling is the life he dreamed of.
The star that the boy admires most is Ken Takakura, who has a handsome and tough appearance and a taciturn manner, and it is the happiest thing for him to ask his friends to run to see Ken Takakura's movie.
The boy who advocates the life of the underworld naturally grows into a bad teenager, and it is common for him to get into trouble and fight. The police station became his second home, and he even learned judo in the dojo near the police station.
Growing up, the boy never changed his hobbies. But fate is so ingenious that even if you don't want to change, it can set you on a different path by chance.
The boy was fascinated by bloody fighting manga in his freshman year of high school, and his favorite was Hiroshi Hongomiya's "Boy As a General (Male One Horse").
The protagonist of this manga is very different from the protagonist of the popular "Wei Guangzheng" manga in Japan at that time, and is a guy who fights with a group of hooligans.
The scene in "Boy As a General" in which a person can play 180 opponents, and the "big spread" form of expression that appears from time to time, none of them touch the boy's uninhibited heart.
Finally, at the crossroads of his junior year of high school, the boy made a very important choice, that is, to become a cartoonist.
Since then, a star has risen in the Japanese manga industry, and his name is Masami Cheda.
②
Let the pace of time stop for a moment, and first take a look at the man who brought Masami Cheda into the world of manga.
Hiroshi Hongomiya (also translated as Hiroshi Hongomiya), born in June 1947 in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, has representative works such as "Boy As a General", "Office Worker Kimtaro", "Migrant Boy Kintaro", "National Burning" and so on.
Speaking of Hongzhi Honggong, many friends may not be familiar with it, but when it comes to one of his works, I believe that many post-80s and post-90s will not feel strange - that is, "Devouring Heaven and Earth".
Presumably, many friends have played the RPG version of "Devouring Heaven and Earth" and its sequel "The Legend of Zhuge Kongming" at home when they were children, and hardcore friends have also played the Qing version of "Devouring Heaven and Earth" in the arcade hall, or "The Battle of the Three Kingdoms And Chibi".
However, when you open the original work of Hiroshi Hongu, you will definitely have such a view - what a ghost this painting is!
The heroes of the Three Kingdoms who are familiar to everyone in it not only look strange, but also the plot is inexplicable, making people wonder whether the author has seen the Three Kingdoms. However, the plot is going in the direction of blood and heroism, leaving aside the historical background, it can indeed make people see the blood boiling.
At the same time, Hongu Hiroshi also expounded the personality, ideals, beliefs, and mutual bonds between the chaotic heroes according to his own understanding, completely unconventional in the historical background, which can be said to be a re-creation under the author's will.
This is Hongu Hiroshi, straightforward and bold, dare to speak out.
Hiroshi Hongomiya is known as "the founder of the hard art of Japanese manga", his character settings, story plots, and the form of expression of the picture all present a powerful, desolate and mournful style, the characters in the manga often rely on force to solve problems, the fight scenes are fist to flesh, and the storyboard is full of power.
It is worth mentioning that he also drew the despicable facts of the Japanese invasion into the manga, so that many young Japanese people can also access the historical facts that have been concealed and tampered with by unscrupulous politicians, and from this point of view alone, he is indeed a respected cartoonist.
Cartoonists with such personalities and styles are most suitable for portraying "bad boys" comics that describe the love affair between the rivers and lakes. Therefore, most of the male protagonists in his writing are not necessarily too righteous heroes, but most of them are bad teenagers.
The protagonist of that era who wore a mask to conceal his identity, the awe-inspiring defeat of evil in the manga of Hongu Hiroshi Hongu, which was completely absent, was replaced by vivid characters and things that could be seen around the reader, and the young Masami Cherda was attracted by this and embarked on the road of creating manga.
I didn't expect this walk, it was nearly 50 years.
③
Masami Cheda, determined to embark on the thorny road of manga artists, suffered setbacks from the start.
Masami Took advantage of the summer vacation to draw her first manga work and submitted it to the weekly Shonen Jump magazine "YOUNG JUMP Award".
The confident Masami Cheda waited for the left and the right, but the manuscript was a stone sinking into the sea, and even the best work award could not be shortlisted. Although his name was published in the magazine's comforting "Worth Looking Forward to" column, it was written as "Masami Higashida", which really made him cry and laugh.
Young and vigorous, he went directly to the editorial office to find an explanation. I don't know whether the editor was intimidated by his murderous spirit or admired his spirit of not accepting defeat, so he recommended it to the manga artist Hiroshi Inoue as an assistant.
Since then, Masami Cheda has embarked on the road to really starting to draw manga.
Masami Cheda is working and studying, while also brewing her own works. In 1974, his debut novel "Storm of Women" finally began serialization in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine.
Storm of Women is a bloody fighting manga featuring women. Originally, it was about 20 pages per issue, but due to the oil crisis, the magazine was greatly reduced in page size, and each issue was cut to 12 to 13 pages, which was equivalent to serializing in the form of short stories.
Although it is a bit bumpy, it is worth rejoicing that 20-year-old Masami Cheda has officially debuted.
Subsequently, Masami Cheda, who was full of ambition, successively launched works such as "The Genesis of the King of Fighters" and "Wind Demon Kojiro", which were widely acclaimed. Even the world-famous manga artist Yuhiko Inoue admitted that he was deeply influenced by "The Genesis of The King of Fighters".
Masami Cheda also slowly formed her own unique style during this period, such as the configuration of the five protagonists, the super refreshing cross-page map must kill, the integration of various knowledge points in the work, etc., making it rank among the quasi-first-class manga artists.
In 1984, Masami Kawada began serializing the manga "Ozaka". This manga is also very characteristic of Chetian, telling the story of a man like sunshine, Kikugawa Hitoyoshi, who fights against the underworld.
The manga maintains the style of Masami Cheda's usual hot-blooded hard school, and at the same time injects the traditional culture of many countries, such as the protagonist Kikukawa Ninyoshi's name is taken from "Kong Yue Chengren, Meng Yue Takes Righteousness", and the first page of the manga is "the wide residence of the world, the right position of the world, and the road of the world" in "Mencius".
However, the comic did not bring him much heat, and the response was mediocre after its launch. "Weekly Shonen Jump" has always had a cruel mechanism, whether a work can be serialized depends on the reader's questionnaire for feedback, the high popularity will be temporarily safe serialization, and the low popularity will have to be cut off, "Male Saka" is cut off by this mechanism.
This undoubtedly gave Che Tian a big blow, and he thought to himself that if the next work did not become popular, he would not appear as a manga artist.
Very fortunately, the next work not only became popular, but also became the representative work of Masami Cheda.
④
In 1986, Saint Seiya came into being.
Masami Cheda poured a lot of effort into this work. Before he began, he reflected on several of his own works, "Genesis of the King of Fighters" was about boxing, "Wind Demon Kojiro" was about ninjas, and "Ozaka" was about bad boys. These things were already rotten in the comic book industry at that time.
Therefore, Masami Cheda made up her mind, stop painting this kind of dirt hardcore thing, and come to a completely entertaining work!
Masami Cheda was inspired by a report on the Leo meteor shower that year, and he wanted to draw a comic that combined Greek mythology, a hot-blooded teenager, and the most popular Gundam mech of the moment.
The protagonist was originally set as Leo according to the meteor shower, and later changed to Pegasus with the meaning of "Pegasus", but the protagonist's trick "Pegasus Meteor Fist" still has the meaning of meteor shower.
The name of the work was considered "Wheel of the Galaxy", "Holy Warrior" and the like, and it was only finalized as "Saint Seiya" when it was decided to serialize it. The protagonist's name is from "Sacred Arrow", but thinking that the overly dignified name is not suitable for the protagonist who is gradually growing, he changed to the Japanese homophone "Hoshiya".
"Saint Seiya" to Greek mythology and constellation stories as the backbone, the sacred cloak adopts the form of a constellation, can be removed to wear on the body, according to The words of Masami Cheda, this is "a dress-up doll toy for boys, and the theme of Greek mythology is also quite romantic, and girls can also accept it." ”
These routines suddenly captured the hearts of the children, and soon they were favored by Toei Animation to make a TV version, and Masami Cheda also made a lot of money.
The TV version of "Saint Seiya" not only made the work more influential, but also led to a wave of toy sales, after the launch of the bronze holy cloth and silver holy cloth, and then launched a limited edition of the dark holy cloth, and then the gold sacred clothing was even more popular.
I can't imagine that Masami Chetian had the idea of selling peripherals in the 80s of the last century, which is really admirable.
Saint Seiya pushed Masami Cherda's manga career to the pinnacle, and it is said that at that time, the manga was only serialized, and the anime immediately followed behind the ass to produce an episode.
This also caused a problem, due to the animation production too fast, gradually catching up with the speed of manga serialization, Toei Fang original a lot of plots, there are not in the original steel saint seiya, private soldier saint seiya, Norse god fighter, etc., who is the ice master? Was the slain pope Shion or Aliss? These are all bugs generated by the original animation at that time.
However, these did not affect Masami Cheda at all, and at that time, he seemed to be a manga master.
⑤
There is a way that prospers and declines.
Saint Seiya did not keep the heat for too long, due to the loopholes and clichés in the storyline, when the manga was serialized to the "Neptune Chapter", its popularity began to decline, and when it reached the "Pluto Chapter", it even faced the risk of being beheaded.
At this time, Masami Cheda did not know whether she had thought of "Ozawa".
When Masami Cheda conceived the "Pluto Chapter", she referred to Dante's Divine Comedy and painted a huge stage for the underworld. However, due to the lack of popularity of the manga, he could only give up many settings and let the manga end in a hurry.
After the end of "Saint Seiya", Masami Cheda seems to be in the predicament of Jiang Lang's exhaustion, and although the "Shizuka Kaoru Xiang" and "Iron Divine Soldier" launched have their own novelty, they all have the shadow of Saint Seiya no matter how they look at it.
The fights in the comics are all shown in stop-motion pictures and narration, which cannot keep up with the pace of the times, and readers naturally do not buy it.
From a bad boy to a generation of manga masters, Masami Cheda has the stubborn strength of the cartoonists of the old era. He was completely reluctant to change his inherent style, that is, he liked the hardcore, romantic manly style that led him to the beginning.
Masami Cherda once said that no one, including her parents, would have imagined that she would succeed in becoming a manga artist. Under the torrent of the times, what he can hold on to may be the heart of the prodigal son who wants to turn back and become a cartoonist because of "Boy Become a General".
Masami Cheda wrote in his autobiographical manga "Blue Age" that someone once said to him, "Anyway, we can't do it, at least Cheda you have to refuel and become a star for us to look at." Judging by the comprehensive level of manga artists, Masami Cheda is not a top master, but his stubbornness to become a star to look up to is probably also worth learning from many recruit cartoonists.
In June 2021, Masami Cheda released saint seiya ultimate edition, adding many plots to the original. At his age, he spent so much energy to fill the big pit of his previous works, presumably he had a great resentment towards the hasty conclusion of the "Pluto Chapter".
Many people criticize Masami Cheda for her love of fried cold rice and selling feelings, but what I see is the stubbornness of a manga artist. He has always adhered to his own style attitude, even if he is criticized, he will stubbornly tell everyone that I want to draw this kind of comic!
I don't know how many encounters and separations I have encountered, but I have lived in this city to this day. The fragments of youth are not so much a refreshing cyan as a dull blue, still dormant here. ~The Blue Age
All along, Masami Cheda seems to have been the boy who practiced judo near the police station, using the adolescent state of mind to portray the original beloved manga. He is like a star, bright and dark, but it is all over the night sky, so that everyone can look at him from afar, even if he is scaled all over his body, he is still unchanged.
Because of the scars, it is a medal for manhood.