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Toronto Comic Arts Festival to Host Usamaru Furuya
posted on by Egan Loo
The Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) announced on Monday morning that it is hosting manga creator Usamaru Furuya during the May 7-8 weekend. The North American publisher Vertical is supporting his appearance just weeks after the English-language debut of his Lychee Light Club horror story. The story revolves around nine students at an all-boys school who create a god-like machine — that runs on lychee fruits — to seek out the beautiful women of the world. However, the machine eventually becomes self-aware "and is soon equally capable of measuring beauty and executing justice."
Furuya made his professional manga debut in 1994 with Palepoli in the alternative manga magazine Garo, and Viz and Cadence Books would later publish parts of this manga in the books Secret Comics Japan and Japan Edge, respectively. Viz also published his Short Cuts manga and announced at Anime Expo last July that it licensed another Furuya manga, Genkaku Picasso
Furuya's numerous other manga works include 51 Ways to Save Her, which DC Comics' CMX Manga had planned to publish before shutting down last July. Vertical confirmed just last month that it will release Furuya's manga adaptation of Osamu Dazai's acclaimed novel No Longer Human in November.
In Japan, the Lychee Light Club manga is inspiring a prequel manga, a musical group, and a stage play this year. The manga itself was loosely inspired by an earlier play of the same name by Norimizu Ameya and the theatrical troupe Tokyo Grand Guignol.
Source: Manga.about.com
Update: The Toronto Comic Arts Festival had announced last week that it would also host Natsume Ono, the manga creator of Quinta Camera ~5 Banme no Heya~, House of Five Leaves, Ristorante Paradiso, Gente - Ristorante no Hitobito, and Not Simple.
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