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The Legends of Tono from Gegege's Mizuki Gets Animated
posted on by Egan Loo
Mizuki Shigeru no Tōno Monogatari (Shigeru Mizuki's The Legends of Tono), the manga adaptation of northeastern Japanese folklore by the creator of GeGeGe no Kitarō, is being animated for an attraction at the Tōno Municipal Museum next year.
The late author Kunio Yanagita wrote his celebrated Tōno Monogatari collection by assembling the folktales about spirits and other creatures from the town of Tōno in Iwate Prefecture. (Tōno is the same city where the Someday's Dreamers manga and the Summer Days with Coo anime are set.) Yanagita has been named "the father of Japanese native ethnology," and Shogakukan's Big Comic magazine called Tōno Monogatari the "scriptures of Japanese folklore." Mizuki launched his manga adaptation of Tōno Monogatari in Big Comic magazine in July of last year.
"The 100th Anniversary of The Legends of Tono" project is next year's centennial celebration of the book's original publication. Mizuki's manga version is not only being published in a compiled book volume next month, but the town of Tōno will use the characters Mizuki drew as official mascot characters in the celebration. A television special of Mizuki's visit to Tōno will air in March. (A live-action television adaptation of the autobiography by Shigeru Mizuki's wife will also air next year.)
The Tōno Municipal Museum will reopen after its refurbishing on April 24, and it will screen the anime version of Shigeru Mizuki's The Legends of Tono. Shogakukan Shueisha Productions manages the property's licensing, and it is planning posters, pamphlets, and other items based on Mizuki's depiction of the mythical kappa creature. The fifth television anime series based on Mizuki's GeGeGe no Kitarō manga ran from 2007 to March of this year.
Lexington Books republished The Legends of Tono in English in a new 100th Anniversary Edition this past September.
Source: animeanime.jp
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