I bet you one, and only one thing: there have been a ton of manga artists to have their works published in the states, and out of most them, only Katsura might be more thought of because of their anime roots. I say that since that was the big reason Katsura was able to come to New York Comic Con 2012: because he happened to design characters in Tiger & Bunny. Nevermind he happened to create two titles that did reach the states – I’s and Video Girl Ai — it was mostly about him being the character designer of what’s become a pretty popular superhero franchise. I think because he’s working on a superhero manga now that’s essentially locked him out from getting his works published in print, and it’ll be a long while before that happens.
But first, a bit of primer of how I got introduced to Katsura. It started when I saw DNA2 at an anime convention. For reasons unbeknownist to me, the design looked intriguing, and the premise — a high school kid who vomits whenever he gets sexually aroused eventually has the power to turn into a mega-playboy, thus ensnaring just about any woman — seemed weird and off the wall at the time for me. I didn’t actually buy it that year. I waited another year before wasting my money. I actually didn’t regret it. I laughed hard and just wondered if Junta would ever make the right decision. It was fairly stupid at times, but the character designs and the characters themselves were just enough for me in my early state of fandom. After that I had to figure out who this Katsura guy was, and I did. And as it turned out, his works had been published in the US. That was great!
The only problem was they weren’t in bookstores. Borders, Barnes and Noble, not even Midtown Comics had any of his works in stock. Unfortunately, Viz stopped printing them at the time. So my luck was shot right there. Then I happened to read Video Girl Ai at AnimeNEXT a few years ago. I couldn’t stop myself and read the rest online. A story that begins when our main character realizes he can’t go after his real love, he goes and rents a video that he thinks is going to cheer him up; instead, this girl turns out to be fairly real, and while it has its fanservice elements, it turned out to be more than that, and I had to keep finding out what would happen at the end. Then I finally decided to go read I’s, and while I’m not sure I’m at peace with its ending, this was another quality work by Katsura. So not surprisingly, I was looking forward to reading his next work.
And as it turned out, his next work was something he’s always wanted to do. Zetman got started in 2002 in Weekly Young Jump. Unlike all of his fanservice works, Zetman is a dark superhero tale that only manages to evolve from childhood all the way to adulthood, and takes a bit more of a critical look of what it means to be a hero. Now, if you watched the Zetman anime, you get a sense of what the manga is. And I mean a sense, since the Zetman anime is more of a mashup of most of the chapters than it actually representing the manga, cause otherwise, it’s a pacing disaster that I guess looks good and has a cool ending theme in the final episode.
But anyways, considering some of the hints he’s dropped about superheroes in some of his works (think of Batman), and he actually did a superhero work in Wingman (was serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump in the 80s) Zetman was probably his dream work. Yeah, he probably had fun doing stuff like DNA2, Video Girl Ai, and I’s, but Zetman is the type of fiction he’s always wanted to do, and considering he’s been working on this for over a decade, it doesn’t look like he’ll be stopping any time soon. But sometimes dreams do have a price, and in this case, it essentially means his work won’t be available to a US audience anytime soon. Why exactly is that? Well, it’s the type of material I’m not sure early Viz Media could have handled at that point in time (again, this series started in 2002), and the material itself is pretty sickening. In the very first chapter a guy gets cut in half, and then later on in the series there are rape attempts, and sure, it’s intended to express ruthlessness or a whole bunch of things, but there are many interpretations of certain scenes in fiction, and I’m guessing Viz didn’t want to answer those types of questions. Now however, it’s entirely too long, with 19 volumes currently out in Japan, and series already with a long shelf life don’t get picked up for US release. It’s just asking for trouble.
So in a nutshell, Katsura, who had been working on fanservice stuff for years that gets released for the US, ends up working on something that’s not a fanservice work and yet can’t get his work out in the US. Katsura is one of the (maybe) many artists whose works actually finished in the 90’s in Japan and none of their works have been released in the 21st Century in the US. My only real question is to wonder what was the main reason Zetman couldn’t be published in the US — after all, there’s more questionable material out in the market nowadays than this — and wonder if Katsura ever works on something new, will it ever come over to the states? Now, if there is a sign Viz is trying to keep him relevant, in light of his role in Tiger & Bunny, they have been reprinting digital copies of the I’s series. But it does suck there’s nothing in print, and no sign that there’s going to be one in print for a long time.
If there are any artists that have come over to your country and have left, feel free to give them a shout out by email [email protected] or reply below.
