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NEWS: Saint Seiya's Kurumada Brings Back Otoko-Zaka Manga 3 Decades Later




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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2680
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Thu May 01, 2014 1:05 pm Reply with quote
Interesting to see Kurumada come back to this work after all this time. Having never read Otoko Zaka before, due to a lack of any English translation, I am curious how the original manga played out and how this continuation works. All I really know about this title is that Kurumada meant for this to be an homage to the works of Hiroshi Motomiya, specifically Otoko Ippiki Gaki Daisho (his debut work and a title Kurumada actually was an assistant on at one point). The concept, lead wants to be the #1 boy's gang leader, is the same, but instead of simply covering Japan (ala Gaki Daishou) Kurumada apparently wanted to cover the world.

I've also read that, likely due to the concept, Otoko Zaka features no "superhuman" abilities. No cosmo, no piece of the sun, no mystical weapons, and no crazy superblows; just old-school guts and brawn. I'm going to guess that this lack of superhuman strength, which Kurumada himself helped make popular, was why the manga was cancelled back in the 80's; it just wasn't in fashion anymore. I also know that the "ending" is semi-infamous for saying "mikan/incomplete" at the end instead of the usual "kan/complete". Actually, this is making me wish that I could actually read Otoko Zaka now... Hell, though it would likely never happen, it would be cool to see an anime adaptation of the original 3 volumes made. It could act as promotion for the new manga while also letting newcomers get properly introduced; also, the chanes of an anime being made and simulcast are much higher than the manga ever being translated into English.
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Zhou-BR



Joined: 28 Feb 2008
Posts: 1461
PostPosted: Thu May 01, 2014 6:10 pm Reply with quote
Otokozaka's final double-page spread is so iconic it even got parodied a few times over the last years. I've always been interested in reading it because its story seems to mean a lot to Kurumada personally, even more than Ring ni Kakero.
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2680
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Thu May 01, 2014 8:26 pm Reply with quote
Zhou-BR wrote:
Otokozaka's final double-page spread is so iconic it even got parodied a few times over the last years.


Yeah, I've seen some of the parody images (searching "Otoko Zaka" over at Google Images gets your a couple of them easily enough) & they're kind of entertaining.

Quote:
I've always been interested in reading it because its story seems to mean a lot to Kurumada personally, even more than Ring ni Kakero.


That's partially why I've been interested in reading it. Kurumada became so well known for his over-the-top, highly stylized action titles that it's easy to forget that he was mainly influenced by mainly realistic action like Gaki Daisho & Ashita no Joe. It would be interesting to read a Kurumada title that's told like those.

By the way, if anyone is interested in hearing the actual song Kurumada wrote for this manga for the Seisei Ruten CD, it's over at Vimeo:
http://vimeo.com/63495329

It's an outright enka song... Yeah, Kurumada really went old-school styled for this title.
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