Interest
Man Who Landed Drone on Prime Minister's Roof Moonlights as a Manga Artist
posted on by Eric Stimson
Yasuo Yamamoto was arrested recently for landing a drone filled with slightly radioactive sand on the roof of the office of Japanese prime minister Shinzō Abe in Tokyo. He claims to have done it as a protest against Abe's nuclear policies. It turns out that Yamamoto, although unemployed, is a manga artist, and has posted manga on Nico Nico Seiga, a webcomic counterpart to the popular video-sharing website Nico Nico Douga, under the pen name Yasprey — and the manga's contents are politically controversial, too.
Police remove the drone from the roof
Hello Worker (the name refers to Hello Work, a popular Japanese job board) depicts the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare taking a radical solution to Japan's serious demographic problem in the near future: it hires the young and jobless to exterminate the elderly. The elderly, with their pensions, health care costs, and welfare, are soaking up the state's money, it argues. Better to distribute that money to the next generation in the form of child care and education. Its protagonist begins the story unemployed, but with a pregnant wife; his parents pressure him to find a job despite his lack of viable skills or even a high school diploma. He ends up getting hired by the Ministry to wipe out old men by pouncing on them in the park with a huge knife.
Its sequel, Kinrōku ("No Elders Zone"), takes place several years later, with elderly extermination squads fanning out across the country systematically. Three old men take refuge in Himeji's iconic castle, demanding a repeal of the Elderly Extermination Act, and endure a military siege. Lieutenant sakuma. is sent inside to kill them, but has a change of heart after they defeat her, spare her life and tend to her wound. It is much more sympathetic to the seniors' plight.
Both manga have been submitted for publication in Weekly Young Magazine. Both were rejected.
[Via Yaraon!, IT Media News and U.S. News & World Report; Image from Yomiuri Online]
