Naoki Urasawa is a Japanese manga artist and musician. He has been drawing manga since he was four years old, and for most of his professional career has created two series simultaneously. The stories to many of these were co-written in collaboration with his former editor, Takashi Nagasaki. Urasawa has been called one of the artists that changed the history of manga and has won numerous awards, including the Shogakukan Manga Award three times, the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize twice, and the Kodansha Manga Award once. By December 2021, his various works had over 140 million copies in circulation worldwide.
The size of the Japanese animation market was 2,426 billion yen by 2020. More than half of that amount came from overseas sales. The manga market is also expanding, reaching 675.9 billion yen in 2021. Those unique visuals and stories from Japan have struck a chord with fans around the world and are growing into a huge industry. ANIME MANGA EXPLOSION will actively feature major works that are highly recognized by overseas fans and reveal the secrets of Japanese anime and manga creation through th...
Urasawa Naoki no Manben (Naoki Urasawa's Manga Exertions) is a TV Documentary airing on NHK Educational TV. It follows acclaimed mangaka Naoki Urasawa (creator of 20th Century Boys and Monster) as he sets out to break new ground for manga even further than he already has. In an attempt to educate viewers about manga and preserve the intricate craftsmanship and process of Japanese artists on video for future generations, he invites a manga artist to have their workplace filmed for a couple of day...
Reboot of the original Manben series from 2014-2017. Naoki Urasawa is returning to visit eight different manga authors, observe them in their daily work and discuss the creation of manga....
A sequel to the 1980 movie The Legend of the Stardust Brothers. As well as being a rock musical comedy, it also borrows elements from other genres such as road movies, westerns, and meta fiction....
Filmed in Japan, this program looks beyond the stereotypes to objectively examine the history of manga, how manga are drawn, and manga's influence on Japanese life as illustrated by cosplay bars, where people dress up as their favorite characters; manga kissa, 24/7 manga cafes; and Comicket, the twice-annual comics market that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors. The program also introduces viewers to a cross-section of mangaka icons: Vagabond creator Takehiko Inoue; Naoki Urasawa, author of...