Katsuhiro Otomo

Katsuhiro Otomo (大友 克洋) is a Japanese manga artist, screenwriter, animator and film director.

On October 4, 1973, Otomo published his first work, a manga adaptation of Prosper Mérimée's short story Mateo Falcone, titled A Gun Report.

In 1979, after writing multiple short-stories for the magazine Weekly Manga Action, Otomo created his first science-fiction work, titled Fireball.

Although the manga was never completed, it is regarded as a milestone in Otomo's career as it contained many of the same themes he would explore in his later, more successful manga such as Dōmu.

Dōmu began serialization in January 1980 and ran until July 1981.

It was published in Weekly Manga Action from 1980 to 1981 and collected into one volume in 1982.

Also in 1981, Otomo drew A Farewell to Weapons for the November 16 issue of Kodansha's Young Magazine.

He is best known as the creator of Akira, in terms of both the original 1982 manga series and the 1988 animated film adaptation.

It won the 1982 Seiun Award for Best Comic.

In 1982, Otomo began what would become his most acclaimed and famous work: Akira.

Kodansha had been asking him to write a series for their new Young Magazine for some time, but he had been busy with other work.

From the first meeting with the publisher, Akira was to be only about ten chapters "or something like that," so Otomo said he was really not expecting it to be a success.

It was not published in book form until 1983, when it won the Nihon SF Taisho Award.

It also won the 1984 Seiun Award for Best Comic.

In a collaboration with writer Toshihiko Yahagi, Otomo illustrated Kibun wa mō Sensō about a fictional war that erupts in the border between China and the Soviet Union.

It was later included in the 1990 short story collection Kanojo no Omoide...

In 1990, Otomo did a brief interview with MTV for a general segment on the Japanese manga scene at the time.

Otomo created the one-shot Hi no Yōjin about people who put out fires in Japan's Edo period for the debut issue of Comic Cue in January 1995.

It was serialized for eight years and 2000 pages of artwork.

Otomo wrote the 2002 picture book Hipira: The Little Vampire, which was illustrated by Shinji Kimura.

He was decorated a Chevalier of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2005, promoted to Officier of the order in 2014, became the fourth manga artist ever inducted into the American Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2012, and was awarded the Purple Medal of Honor from the Japanese government in 2013.

Following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Otomo, a native of the Tōhoku region, designed a relief that features a boy riding a robot goldfish in rough seas, while flanked by Fūjin and Raijin.

Otomo created the full-color work DJ Teck no Morning Attack for the April 2012 issue of Geijutsu Shincho.

Otomo was initially reported in 2012 to be working on his first long-form manga since Akira.

Planning to draw the work that is set during Japan's Meiji period without assistants, he was initially targeting a younger audience, but said the story had developed more towards an older one.

Otomo later received the Winsor McCay Award at the 41st Annie Awards in 2014 and the 2015 Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême, the first manga artist to receive the award.

Otomo is married to Yoko Otomo.

Together they have one child, a son named Shohei Otomo, who is also an artist.

Katsuhiro Otomo was born in Tome, Miyagi Prefecture and grew up in Tome District.

He said that living in the very rural Tōhoku region left him with nothing to do as a child, so he read a lot of manga.

As the only boy in a family with older and younger sisters, he enjoyed reading and drawing manga on his own and thought about becoming a manga artist.

Limited by his parents to buying one manga book a month, Otomo typically chose Kobunsha's Shōnen magazine, which included Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka and Tetsujin 28-go by Mitsuteru Yokoyama, series which he would copy drawing in elementary school.

However, he said it was after reading Shotaro Ishinomori's How to Draw Manga that he understood how to draw manga properly and started doing so more seriously.

In high school, Otomo developed an interest in movies, that led to his ambition to become an illustrator or film director.

At this time, one of his friends introduced him to an editor at Futabasha, who, after seeing Otomo's manga, told the high school student to contact him if he moved to Tokyo after graduating.

Otomo did exactly that, and began his career as a professional manga artist.

Intended to capture the region's will to overcome the natural disaster, it has been located on the first floor of the terminal building at Sendai Airport since March 2015.

38 years later, the two created the one-shot sequel Kibun wa mō Sensō 3 (Datta Kamo Shirenai) for the April 16, 2019 issue of the magazine.

In 2019, Kodansha announced that they will be re-releasing Otomo's entire body of manga since 1971 as part of "The Complete Works Project".

It was noted that some of his manga were edited when initially compiled into book format, and this new project, personally overseen by Otomo, plans to restore them to how they appeared in their original serialization.