Nothing quite like watching your favorite manga artist draw real...Izumi Matsumoto’s name might not ring a bell to English-speaking manga fans. However, his most famous manga, Kimagure Orange Road, was wildly popular in Europe, mainly in France, Italy and Spain, in the early 1990s, when its anime version was broadcast under the rather weird titles of Max et Compagnie (Max and his crew), È quasi magia Johnny (It’s almost magic Johnny) and Johnny y sus amigos (Johnny and his friends). Kimagure Orange Road (AKA KOR) remains a cult series still today.
KOR tells the story of a love triangle between clumsy Kyōsuke Kasuga (who has some kind of modest powers -like telekinesis, teleportation- that must be kept a secret), beautiful yet wild Madoka Ayukawa (the early teenage love of many Europeans aged now 30-35) and petite, outgoing Hikaru Hiyama. It was serialized on Shōnen Jump between 1984 and 1987.
If you want to know more about Matsumoto before I upload his profile one of these days, you can read his (rather meagre) English Wikipedia article. Also, here you have the article for Kimagure Orange Road.
This next video shows Matsumoto while drawing this illustration of his star character Madoka Ayukawa; as you can see, Matsumoto is right-handed. Later this week, however, I’ll post another video in which he draws Hikaru with his left hand (!). By the way, as he himself told me, this is the first time that a video of him drawing is ever made public.
Let’s see the master in action:
(Also on Vimeo)
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Awesome. Great site. I love videos of mangaka at work. And as unlikely as it is, I would love to see the KOR manga come out in the US.
That is one kooky song.
Thank you for your comment, I also hope you can read KOR in the US too!
Actually some of the manga was released in the US, along with a fair amount of the anime. It was one of my favourite series back in middle school. I don’t remember who had licensed it, but it’s out of print now. You can always check some used books stores or ebay.
Man, seeing Madoka again really brings back the memories (even though I have a wallscroll of her in my bedroom so I see her every day)….
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This website is absolutley wonderful and insightful I am just enjoying the sheer variety of artists and having a nice insight into how they work and think, exellent articles- this website is wonderful! thanks for doing this <)
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