Manga Madness #4: E.O. Catalyst

Welcome one and all, to the final week of Manga Madness! It's been a long month, but it's been quite a trip. We've been through an action adventure in an alternate world, the quest of a vengeful young swordsman in historic Japan, and a tale of horror surrounding a cursed police station. Our final stop is by far the most unusual of my stories - it is a tale of "connection". And so, today's final manga is a futuristic drama one-shot called E.O. Catalyst.

Synopsis: In the year 2187, the Great City of Progress looms over the countryside of the European nation no-one took the time to remember. It goes by the name of "Catalyst". An advanced cerebral chip tech known as the "E.O.", which allows people to link their minds directly to digital machinery, was invented and developed here; it is the lifeblood of Catalyst and the reason for its leap in progress. A complacent young girl named Esther Arghause, age 13, lives in this city, believing a world where everyone is connected to be the norm. But her illusion will be broken once she becomes intertwined in the plans of an embittered rebel with a vengeful past, as she comes to realize what truly is the catalyst for "connection"...

Origin:
At some point during my tenure in college - I saw an anime movie called Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo or The Girl Who Lept Through Time. Without giving too much away, it's a story about a girl who, well, gains the ability to leap through time, and the events that unfold around her as she uses this power. It's a wonderful, wonderful movie that I would heartily recommend to any anime fan who has not already seen it. It left a lasting impression on me personally - it was one of the first anime, of both series and movie length, I'd ever seen that moved me to tears. And I fondly remembered the movie as I was brainstorming ideas for the two new manga to follow Gogyouo and Hyozan. For the second, I decided I wanted to try a tale of drama. Not in the format of a series, but as a one-shot movie. My goal was to create the story of an anime movie that was as moving as Kakeru Shoujo - it held a strong influence on my story, which for the longest time went unnamed. However, it DID have the very lame and temporary working title of Middle School Murderer. Why that title? Read on through the Plot section to find out.

Plot/Character:
To explain the history of the working title of Middle School Murderer, I have to explain some of my own history. So allow me to get personal for a moment. I was always an introvert as a younger child. I still am, to a lesser degree, but I was very much an outcast back in the day. I acted a bit differently from the other kids, and because of that I was a target for verbal bullying through virtually all of elementary, middle, and about half of high school. It was a rough time where my family moved a lot (for unrelated reasons) and I kept hardly any friends. I hit an all-time low once out of depression, where I wished I didn't exist. Even though I did not enjoy it and I'm glad those darker times are behind me, I've drawn a lot of inspiration for my stories from them. The past of Sei from Gogyouo, for example, shares several elements from my own. But then there's today's story, which originally started as a kind of "revenge fantasy" against all of the children who had ever bullied me. Actually, I dreamed up this version of the story back in high school, long before I ever saw Kakeru Shoujo - I simply re-purposed it once I began brainstorming for new ideas. The original version of the story was about a man who had been absolutely shunned as a child - he was hated by everyone and bullied both physically and verbally by his peers. He wasn't good looking and he had no social skills - easy pickings. But then it turns into a tale of ugly karma, where this man grows up to become absolutely hateful and full of vengeance. He begins enacting a series of gruesome murders against those who wronged him as a child. It was an extremely basic slasher story from the split point-of-view of the killer and the law trying to take him down. But the horror cop story inevitably went to D/4-Laws; MSM went pretty much nowhere until I re-purposed it later on.

One thing I decided I had to do for this new version of MSM that I hadn't done for any of my other works was: use a female as the protagonist. From there I came up with the girl you see above (whom until now had been unnamed), Esther Arghause. She was now the main character of the story instead of the killer. One day, 13-year-old Esther is held up by some thugs on her daily walk home, but the man thought to be a cold killer appears and saves her life - by brutally slaughtering them. Esther runs in fright but is not sure what to think of the whole situation. Everyone in town knows about the man and that he is killing people, but it was never imagined that he may not be all bad. Keep in mind that Esther is wise for her age, but she is also quite curious to a fault; she is prone to making possibly bad decisions. Spurred by her curiosity, in the following weeks, Esther begins actively pursuing the man, and she eventually finds where he hides away. She decides to keep his hideout a secret from the police because she wants to learn more about the man and find out if he really isn't all bad, and maybe even convince him to stop killing people. From that point, the two develop a morally odd relationship as Esther begins to see the man as a mysterious big brother and the man sees her almost like a daughter to watch over. The story evolves based on Esther's actions and how she handles the idea of a killer that would spare her life for no apparent reason. It was kind of a morally bankrupt love story: two individuals who should not be related or attached to each other in any way do just that, and the story is what tragically culminates of that relationship.

If I may make a quick aside after that last sentence. I say "kind of" a love story because, well......Esther is 13. She doesn't really know what that kind of love is. And as soon as I said "love story" in context to a grown man and a 13-year-old girl, I'm sure everyone will be having certain thoughts, but........it really isn't meant to be anything like that. I just want everyone to know that I'm not positing underage relationships by way of this story - it's meant to be quite innocent, yet visually unnerving. But not in an explicit manner. The focus of the "relationship that should not be" is more on the fact that she's an innocent citizen and he's a convicted killer, not so much their age difference. I know there's no reason to defend myself because it's my own story, but I just want to be as honest as possible since this once hints at a subject some may find quite unsettling. But anyway.....even that story is not quite the final story I aimed to discuss today. Even that is not what eventually became E.O. Catalyst.

Themes:
Well, I'm fibbing a bit. Catalyst, at its heart, is a morally tragic drama about the relationship between two individuals who should never have any kind of relationship in a logical world. That is the heart of the story, but I felt it lacked context. It lacked any kind of world-building that makes this kind of story possible. Esther becomes enamored with a murderer for no reason other than she's a curious young girl. Maybe some people are okay with that level of simplicity, but I felt like the story needed something more to tie everything together. To "connect" it all together, rather. So I found it. There is one pivotal scene of the story in which the man shares his past with Esther on an incredibly personal level. I imagined a kind of merging of souls (again - this is all meant to be quite innocent); a moment where Esther truly was experiencing the pain of this man's past, and it breaks her heart. I took this scene and the idea of intimate connection to another level for the final aspect of the story - the technology. The world of Catalyst is set in a distant future, taking place entirely within the walls of a city (also named Catalyst) that has grown far in technological advancement. Their claim to fame is the "E.O", a data chip designed to be the missing link between man and machine. Many human beings born in Catalyst City are implanted with the E.O. chip (attached to the brain) and interface tools and become a subset of ever-growing test subjects. Everything in Catalyst is digitally enhanced, and human beings possessing the E.O. can reveal a connection wire from a small hole bored into the left side of the skull. This wire can be directly connected to any authorized device in the city; information is sent to the E.O. chip and amplified directly to the user's brain. This device provides the overall theme for the story - connection. In a future where connection has become all about technology and how to continually interface man with the machines they created, suddenly a morally questionable relationship between a young girl and a murderer can be viewed with more meaning. Because it's a REAL connection between two people not brought about by technology. That in a nutshell is E.O. Catalyst: it's a tale that warns against the advancements of technology that will eventually dehumanize the human race. How can we attempt to connect everything, if we forget how to meaningfully connect?

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And that's it, everybody! Thank you all so much for sticking with me for this month of manga stories. These were just sneak peaks into the worlds of my stories, so I hope you enjoyed the little glimpses I let through. As it is currently, I only have these four established stories running through my head, but I'm sure as the years go on I'll dream up more and more. And perhaps I'll share them here, too. But you can definitely count on seeing artwork from all of these stories appearing here at some time or another (though I imagine Gogyouo-Sama will still be my primary focus). With that said, we'll be returning to regular unscheduled updates for awhile, so thank you again for joining me on March Manga Madness!

One quick extra note: I've just added Email Alerts to the blog. Just enter your email address into the prompt on the side bar and submit and you'll be notified whenever I post!

Originally I was planning to do a rather artsy piece. It was going to be very minimalist - just Esther facing away from the viewer with her arms spread like wings before a burst of light, and in the foreground behind her would be a collection of symbolic imagery placed deliberately to convey the mood of the story. This drawing was being planned in my head several months in advance. BUT, I then did the Freebird drawing. Girl with arms spread was out. Then I did the drawing for D/4-Laws, where I tried adding a collection of symbolic images, and it came out ok, but it did not look very profound. That was out too. All I knew was that I wanted to draw Esther, with her attention shifted away from us. I decided to try an angle that I don't often draw full poses for: a direct side angle. It's another one of my weak points, but I think I did well here. As usual I totally fail when it comes to clothing. I can never seem to decide what kind of clothes I want a character to have, so I usually just throw some kind of robes or one-piece cloth on them, because they're easy to draw. One of these days I'm going to meaningfully plan out what a character is going to wear before I draw it, I swear. You can also see my amateur attempt at a "future city" in the bottom left. The structure in the center is supposed to represent the control tower that houses all of the connection wires that keeps Catalyst running. I don't know where a barren clif like this would be inside the walls of a technologically advanced future city.

Also, there is a dog. No reason, there's.......just a dog. I felt like Esther needed a pet sidekick, so I gave her a dog. :p

Manga Madness #3: Dead/Four-Laws

Here we go, Manga Madness Week 3! Today's manga is an action thriller that goes by Shi-Housoku, or Dead/Four Laws.

Full Title: Shi-Housoku
Translation: Laws of Death, The Four Laws, Dead/Four-Laws

Synopsis: Ryuusuke Yamanaka, age 28, is the newest rookie in Criminal Investigations at the Ebetsu Police Station. His goal is to become the best investigator in Hokkaido and stop at nothing to bring criminals to justice, as atonement for his late wife who lost her life in an attempted robbery. As the days grind on, Ryuusuke hears various tidbits and tall-tales from his colleagues; apparently, Ebetsu Station is cursed. Every 25 years, an ex-cop known only as the "Policeman's Ghoul", a man who is supposed to be dead, comes to town in late fall and makes people disappear. Ryuusuke barely pays any mind to their stories. However, one day he begins to hear whispers in the streets as he leaves work. And when a man wearing a cop's badge unlike any he's ever seen before begins tailing him in the shadows, Ryuusuke just might become a believer........

Origin:
For the longest time, Gogyouo-Sama was the only story to my name. My entire focus was spent on developing it and nothing else. But when I came up with Hyozan, I realized how fun it was to make up more new worlds and stories - I suddenly was driven to create a bigger library of characters to pull from. I started brainstorming and eventually dreamed up two new stories - the first of which being this one. Both Gogyouo-Sama and Hyozan were shounen action works at heart, so this time I wanted to try something different. I decided to try a horror/mystery action work, and I came up with it from a very simple concept: a pun. In Japanese the character for death (死) is prounced "shi". The character for the number 4 (四) is usually pronounced "yon", but in some instances it can also be pronounced as "shi". The two kanji have similar radicals as well. Because of this, 4 is a very unlucky number in Japan, and is often not even used in certain places since it gives allusions of "death". I challenged myself to create a story based on this, and Shi-Housoku is what came of it. I also give it the fancier English title of Dead/Four-Laws because the actual translation (Death Laws) sounds a bit too much like Death Note.

Character/Plot:
For my past works, I had already utilized a teenager and a child as protagonists. D/4-Laws is a darker story meant for a more adult audience, so I wanted to try out an adult protagonist. Enter Ryuusuke Yamanaka, a spineless wimp aiming to make it big. If I could compare him to any characters from my other works, I would pick Masashi from Gogyou; although he doesn't live in to the "spineless wimp" stereotype quite as strongly. He's a wimp, but he's also quite friendly and social, despite his insecurities (he's had those white streaks in his hair since his adolescence, and is constantly teased about them). He also has drive - in his early 20's as a young married man, he tragically lost his wife when a burglar broke into their home while he was out on the job (working as a night-shift security guard); the two had a struggle that brought about his wife's death. This event drove Ryuusuke to work towards becoming a full-fledged cop so he could actively pursue criminals, and hopefully prevent the same tragedy that befell his wife for others.

This is Ryuusuke's backstory that brings us to the starting point of the series, where he has achieved part of his goal and become a Criminal Investigations officer in Ebetsu. The story begins with its serious tone, but also rather light-hearted, as we see Ryuusuke adjusting to his new position and co-workers at Ebetsu Station. He learns quickly that several of his fellow officers are heavily into the occult and all things supernatural, forming a sort of "occult gang" within the station. It turns out Ryuuske's assigned partner is the president of this so-called gang, and he gets coerced into joining them in their hobby, even though he has no interest in the occult. While taking a weekend excursion to a ghost town, the gang tells Ryuusuke of the supposed "curse" of Ebetsu Station. In the early 1900's, there was a special cop who worked at Ebetsu Station who was sort of a spy; he would infiltrate criminal hideouts and leak information back to the police. He was a sadistic man who loved his work far too much; he would often kill criminals in cold blood without giving them proper trial, which gave the other cops reason to fear him. They called him "The Policeman's Ghoul" because of his pale complexion and sunken-in eyes. The man's corruption became worse and worse over time; he began acting as a spy not only for the police, but also for the criminals he was supposed to be spying on. The final straw was pulled when the Ghoul murdered a fellow officer in broad daylight. No-one knows what caused him to snap, but he went on a rampage, officers left and right, until the remaining police force of Ebetsu pinned him down and shot him dead. The incident became a legend in Ebetsu - and the Occult Gang is convinced that every 25 years, the Ghoul rises from the grave to seek revenge on the Ebetsu police. Ryuusuke, of course, thinks the story is ridiculous and doesn't believe a word of it, especially the '25 years' bit. But as the days go on, Ryuusuke can't help but let his mind wander back to the story; though he did not believe it, the story itself chilled him to the bone. The story continues to haunt him as strange things start occurring wherever he goes in town, and he discovers that someone really is haunting him. One day he is led by strange happenings and whispers to an abandoned subway tunnel, where he finds a man waiting for him. The meeting of Ryuusuke and this man sets forth a series of events that will plunge the town of Ebetsu into chaos once again.

Themes:
The title Dead/Four-Laws refers to a set of cryptic, unwritten rules that are the Ghoul's credo - the way he performed his work and how he balanced his dual nature as a cop and a criminal. In this story, the sides of right and wrong as defined by the "law" is a prevalent theme. Ryuusuke is a moral man - he always follows the rules down to the letter, and he vows to not let any criminals get away with "breaking the rules" after the death of his wife. So, what would happen if Ryuusuke himself were forced to break some of these rules? Or what if he was made to follow a new set of rules that contradicts the old rules? Is he still a moral man because he's "following the rules", regardless of what the rules are? These are the kinds of situations that D/4-Laws examines: satirizing the legal system by presenting its corruption as a supposedly antagonistic entity and a slew of moral dilemmas for those who uphold it. Honestly, the whole "occult ghost story" setup is mostly a backdrop for these bigger themes, but there are still plenty of supernatural themes and events in the story that ultimately drive the plot forward and will truly put Ryuusuke's morality to the test.

That's three down, one to go. Tune in again next week for the finale of Manga Madness, Part 4!

It took me awhile to figure out exactly what kind of image I wanted to represent D/4-Laws. The mood is radically different from my first two stories, so I wanted a mood shift in the imagery as well. After several test images and one re-do, I ended up with this image of Ryuusuke in despair, being towered over by the Ghoul (that's not really what the Ghoul looks like - it's just how I've chosen to depict him here). As for the imagery in the background: the sign on the right is a Japanese stop sign that says "tomare" (止まれ　- imperative of the verb "stop"); the words in the frame on the left say "Ebetsu Station"; the badge is based of the design of an actual Hokkaido policeman's badge; and the gravestone is meant to be a possible image of the Ghoul's grave. I know it seems really weird that they would put "GHOUL" on the grave instead of his actual name, but I haven't given him one yet and I was running out of ideas at this point in the drawing. ^^; Once again, the images for the logo were drawn by hand and then combined and touched up in Photoshop. The shading in the background was also done with Photoshop.

Clover in the Window

I'm taking a quick break at the halfway point of Manga Madness to wish you all a happy St. Patrick's Day! As a gift for you all, I drew up this image at the last minute. It's a little special this time, so be sure to check out the Linear Notes section for more on it. Other than that, it's a short and sweet post today. Whether you're out with friends, having a party, or just relaxing over the weekend, enjoy yourselves! ^_^ I'll see you next week with my third manga story!

The quality of this image itself I would say is kind of poor. I decided on Thursday I wanted to do a quick image for St. Patty's, so I drew this image of Chloe (the girl, whom I have chosen this name for just now while typing this). It was rushed, which is why the curtains aren't very symmetrical. I was trying to give an effect that there was wind coming from the left, but it hardly shows. It's not really a St. Patty's image so much as it's an image with something St. Patty's-related in it. Anyway, as you can clearly tell, I've done something very different in this image than usual - color.

This was also a last minute decision. I wanted to see if I was capable of coloring an image using Photoshop. The result is what you see above. One problem is I really didn't do it right. If I wanted to do a proper color image with Photoshop, the initial sketch would need to be straight-up lineart, with no shading at all. I had shaded pretty much the entire image. Again, you can tell that I decided to do this at the last minute. This was my first time doing this, so the final result is very amateurish. As it is, it's kind of a mix between a digital and graphite sketch as opposed to one or the other, which IS its own style. But one day I hope to be able to do color images that look crisp and clean. I am a beginner at this kind of thing, so any criticisms or advice is appreciated. Let me know what you think and if you'd like to see other drawings done like this. For now, I'm still going to focus primarily on grey-scale sketches as I'm more familiar with them, but I'd definitely like to try out color some more in the future.

Manga Madness #2: Hyozan

Good day everyone, and welcome to week two of Manga Madness! Without further ado, let's jump right into today's manga; a piece set in Japanese history known as, Hyozan.

Full Title: 魔滅する者ヒョザン (Mamessuru Mono Hyozan)
Translation: Devil Douser Hyozan (Iceberg)

Synopsis: The year is 1869 - the aftermath of the Meiji Restoration. In this new era, broken strands of the past continue to linger throughout the land. One day in the Kitakami Mountains, a village is assaulted by a band of marauders declaring that all who practice evil must appear before them to be 'judged'. But when an unknown wanderer passing through town wielding a samurai's sword challenges them in the village's stead, the marauders cast judgement on the entire town by burning it to the ground and killing everyone in it - as a lesson to the interfering wanderer. Only a young boy and girl survive. Without a home to return to, they now head out on a mission: to seek out the ones who destroyed their home and the man who provoked the destruction.

Origin:
For one of my lit classes in high school, we were given an assignment to write a collection of four short stories in a booklet. I put a significant amount of time into all four, but I made one in particular the main focus; the feature presentation, if you will. It was called, "Wandering Swordsman: You Who Stole my Pride". In it, a young boy named Toshi attempts to befriend a passing wanderer who sleeps in the streets - refusing lodging and food from the other villagers. In the middle of the night, a demon attacks the young girl Sakiko, who was out late in the fields. Toshi rushes to her aid but nearly gets himself killed, until the wanderer appears brandishing a sword and slays the beast. Toshi's childish pride is broken by the event, since he was unable to save Sakiko on his own and had to be rescued, and his curiosity for the wanderer grows into jealous hate. Toshi vows to become a greater swordsman than the wanderer ever was, and the story ends. A year later, I had another assignment for a different lit class in which I had to write a screenplay for a movie. The Wandering Swordsman story had left me with a rather delighted impression, and I was overcome with desire to revisit it for this new assignment. I tweaked the original story and came up with new ideas to make it fit the length of a movie, and it became "Hyozan: The Lost Soul Moves". "Devil Douser Hyozan" is basically the same as that screenplay, trimmed down into more of a regular series format.

Character/Plot:
Hiruma Toshi (his first name is Toshi; for this story I am referring to the characters' full names in the traditional way since the story takes place in a traditional setting) lives in a small village at the base of the Kitakami mountain range. The history he lives in is one that comes from the real history of Japan, but with some added substance and facts to suit the story I'm telling. For example, the Kitakami Mountains are a real location - they can be found in the Iwate prefecture in Japan. Pretty much all of the story takes place within and at the base of these mountains. The marauders who attack his village, however, come from a special group of individuals of my own creation. As Toshi will discover later on, they are called the Taimatsu Group. Little seems to be known about this rouge group of ronin soldiers other than their M.O. - they seek out individuals who have broken the law and punish them, often at greater severity than the committed crime and while exposing danger to innocents close to the guilty party. They exist in the hectic aftermath of the Meiji Restoration - I chose this part of history because it was a radical transitional period; the Hyozan story is just one such event that "could have" occurred during this time when the old ways were hanging by a thread to make way for the new. One day, these men of the Taimatsu Group come to Toshi's village. They take a young girl, Rurikawa Sakiko, hostage, demanding that a certain man of the village, who they claim is guilty of a crime, appear before them. Being a close friend to Sakiko, Toshi steps forward to save her, but he gets quickly beaten to an inch of his life by the gleeful Taimatsu. As they move to kill the girl for the village's non-compliance, a mysterious man with a sword appears and saves her life. The Taimatsu seem to recognize the man, identifying him as "Hyozan" (the same as the title). Despite saving their lives, the appearance of this "Hyozan", who seems to be an enemy of the Taimatsu, is quite unfortunate. In a rage, the Taimatsu label the entire village as criminals and they go on a rampage, killing everyone they find and burning the village to the ground. In the initial confusion, Toshi and Sakiko manage to run and hide from the attackers, and the man called "Hyozan" vanishes as quickly as he appeared. This all is the main bait and hook of the story, but the real content begins following these events. After that traumatizing day, Toshi's heart grows sour and cold; he vows to seek out the Taimatsu and the mysterious Hyozan and make them pay for destroying all that he held dear. Sakiko stays by his side, despite her desire to move on from the past and rebuild their lives, as they travel through the mountains to find traces of the two elusive parties.

Themes:
Hyozan is a study of adolescence and the inner-workings of a mind that sees the world through inexperienced eyes. Toshi represents all of the negative aspects of a protagonist that you can think of. He's selfish and immature. He's prideful and cocky. After the day he lost everyone except his best friend, he becomes a demon of vengeance - his eyes become focused only on the goal of finding the ones who ruined his life. And his true desire for seeking out Hyozan is as petty as you can get - he's jealous because Hyozan had to step in and save Sakiko, the girl he loves, for him. What I wanted to emphasize most of all in this story was how one's shortcomings can come to a head and make a bad situation even worse. Most notably this is seen in how Hyozan's heroic deed dooms the entire village. Toshi exemplifies this as well as he takes the situation of his entire family and village being destroyed and makes it worse by effectively destroying himself - eradicating all his other emotions except for his hatred. As he begins in this tale, Toshi is honestly heading down the path of the villain more so than that of the hero. This is why Sakiko is with him - she acts as his emotional weight; she takes every chance she gets to try and bring him back to the way he used to be. I think it's interesting to see a protagonist who is supposed to be a hero go down a rather dark, villainous road almost immediately. This is another idea I like to play with in this story: the undefined lines of good and evil. We're never really sure who is good and who is bad. Toshi is the "hero", but he's driven to the path of vengeance. The mysterious Hyozan suddenly disappears when the fires start as if he were suddenly unable to help anymore. The Taimatsu themselves are committing horrible acts, but they claim to be on the side of justice. These undefined lines only continue to get more scrambled as the story goes on.

The word "Hyozan" means "iceberg". I picked this name for several reasons. One, it sounds cool. Two, more importantly, it creates imagery of that well-known saying: "the tip of the iceberg". I don't use this analogy to imply that things are bigger than they actually seem, but rather that our preconceptions are often misleading. Our actions don't always have the outcome we expected. Saving the children seemed like the right thing to do, but it ended up costing the lives of everyone else. That situation is extreme, but I construct those situations to specifically be extreme to make my point. In this story, I would really want the reader to question every action the characters take; to ponder if it's right or wrong, and what could happen as a result. Define your own lines surrounding the characters and try to figure out who is in the right.

Thanks for stopping in again, guys! Come by next week for Manga Madness Part 3!

I didn't mention it above, but this series contains an element of sword fighting action, which explains the shounen-style of the image. The boy and girl in the bottom right are Toshi and Sakiko (the same girl from my Freebird image); the man in the upper left is Hyozan himself. This time, since I was already using Photoshop to create the logo for the series (once again, the main features of the logo were hand drawn, then touched up in PS), I decided to use it to add a few after effects to the image and enhance it, namely the gradients creating the shadow behind Hyozan's head and faded texture of his clothing past the draw line. I think it's done pretty amateurishly, but it was a fun experiment and I'll definitely try it out in the future. I was going to add a background pattern as well, but I decided it distracted from the image too much. The diagonal text under the title says, "Let it fly, Hazumimaki!" The 'Hazumimaki' is Toshi's signature sword attack (He trains in swordsmanship in order to stand a chance against those who he's pursuing), and it's also what he's doing in the image. The rotating object is after-images of his shinai (a wooden training sword found in dojos) being quickly spun around by his right hand. The other text is an author credit; but for this piece I decided to use a Japanese pen name I made up for myself some years ago: Souzou Daiguchi. It felt more appropriate given the more traditional backdrop of Hyozan.

Manga Madness #1: The Gogyouo-Sama

Welcome to the first installment of Manga Madness! Today, we'll be starting out with the big one - the story that you've heard the most about from me already and that I spend more time and patience on than any other. It may seem strange opening the month with the big fish instead of making it the finale - but I figured I should save the stories you know nothing about for last. So without further ado, allow me to present the first manga I ever came up with, The Gogyouo-Sama.

Title: The Gogyouo-Sama
Translation: Lord of the Elements, King of the Elements

Synopsis: Sei Meshounen (alias Seikun) is tired of the daily grind of his mundane existence. He dreams of starting over with a new, exciting life that isn't so average. One night in the outskirts of Nerima, Tokyo, his dream comes true when he happens across a monster not of this world, literally! In the commotion that follows, Sei is spirited away through space and time to a world know as "Mukae". The inhabitants of this alien world seem not unlike himself, though he soon discovers that the differences between them may cost him not only his chance at a new life, but his own life as well. As the first human to ever cross the dimensional borders of these worlds, Sei must find a way to survive in a land of strange powers and even stranger characters as he does what he does best: anything and everything in the coolest way possible.

If I were a professional manga artist and were actually in a position to create the works I'm going to discuss this month, you could call "The Gogyouo-Sama" my magnum opus. Not in the quality of the work itself, but in terms of how much time I have spent developing it. And then you may find it interesting that my self-proclaimed magnum opus has such a generic sounding title like "Lord of the Elements". But, in truth, the Japanese word I am using here, "gogyou", is written with a kanji that normally does not translate out to "element" - so I consider "gogyou" an untranslated word in this title. But what is a "gogyou", then?

Origin:
Before that, let me explain how the story came to be. Around the time I started drawing Sei and anime-style characters in general was a period in which I had a very large and active imagination. I had many outlets of entertainment through television and movies that put impressions on me, and I would dream up stories based on those things all the time. I had a very quiet and reserved childhood, so I made up these stories as a way to entertain myself when I was alone. One day I decided I wanted to put Sei in a story as well. That was the day I officially started my 6-7-years-and-still-going on-again/off-again personal project to create and document my own manga series. I was heavily influenced by Dragonball Z and other shounen-style anime of the time, so that was the type of manga I designed: a fantasy battle manga.

Title/Theme:
And so to return to my original topic, a "gogyou" is a word of Chinese origin which refers to the five phases, or elements, of the world. These are earth, wood, metal, fire, and water. Each have variable weaknesses and strengths against each other, and placed together they preserve the balance. The alien world where the majority of my story takes place, Mukae, is governed by 7 (because 7 is any anime's favorite number) mystical elements called the Gogyou; they are based loosely off the Chinese gogyou elements and use the same terminology. The Gogyou"o-Sama" refers to one who is able to manipulate and control all 7 Gogyous. I say this because in the world of Mukae, the primary inhabitants (called Mukaeans, who look and act like human beings but are not the same) are able to tap into the worldly energy of the Gogyous and use their powers to defend themselves. An average Mukaean's body only has the capacity to use a single Gogyou, while stronger contenders can control two or even three. So the idea of a "Gogyouo-Sama" is a legendary concept of one person who would be able to control all 7 Gogyous at once. This is where most of the "battle" focus of this manga comes in. I wanted the story to have varied kinds of powers involving energy like you'd see in Dragonball Z, except I try to give explanations for where the energy comes from and how it is used. I think that kind of information is really interesting. Shounen-style manga tend to like to explain things that happen during battles to the reader, but I've noticed that a lot don't explain some of the basic aspects of battles, like the one I mentioned above. A huge focus of my writing in Gogyouo-Sama is spent on utilizing the fact that the story takes place in another world and scrutinizing that world to death - constantly explaining and comparing the physics and realities of Mukae with those of Earth.

Character/Plot:
Sei Meshounen, the main character of Gogyouo-Sama, is from our world, Earth. He lives in Nerima, Tokyo in modern times. Through an encounter with an otherworldly creature one night, he stumbles into a dimensional portal that takes him to Mukae, where almost every other main character in the story comes from. That's right - all those other characters I introduced to you guys over the last few months, Suunuku, Mikioi, Masashi, none of them are human; they're Mukaeans. It was a conscientious decision on my part to make the main species of Mukae human-like, but still fundamentally different. In the case of Gogyouo-Sama, the differences are mostly non-cosmetic (e.g. the ability to utilize energy sources as attacks/defenses). The main focus of the story is Sei and his adventures in Mukae, as he travels the world and meets strange allies and nasty baddies. Sei is in a very dangerous position in this other world - most of the inhabitants have never seen a human before, and even though they look the same, many consider him a threat; something unknown that they don't understand. And despite being in this position, not to mention being stuck in a world all alone without his family, Sei enjoys it! He's actually given an opportunity to return home to Earth very early in the story, but he declines because he's come to like Mukae and its harsher, more demanding lifestyle so much that he wants to stick around and explore it all, with the aid of characters like Suunuku and Masashi who become attached to Sei in their own ways and help keep him safe from those who would hunt him down. But the young adventurer is not much for being cautious and staying under cover; he's loud and assertive, and always heads out looking for trouble because he wants to live as exciting a new life as possible. I like to think this quality of Sei makes him an endearing yet conflict-causing protagonist, even though I do my best to write him to be very stubborn and annoying too. If you want to know more about Sei and other supporting characters, be sure to check out my Profiles page, where you'll find an on-going collection of character bios from The Gogyouo-Sama.

What started out as a small innocent endeavor has grown over the years into pages and pages of information, characters, worlds, and storylines running through my head at all times. The Gogyouo-Sama is more than just a manga series to me; it's a state of myself. When I'm bored and start thinking about something to ease my boredom, I think Gogyouo-Sama. When I listen to music, I see and hear Gogyouo-Sama. I use every opportunity I get to play out scenes in my head, not only because I enjoy it, but because I am constantly being inspired to make changes. In its current form, the story is in its 4th revision, and I have no doubt I'll be revising it time and time again. It was thanks to this story, and the art inspired by it, that I created this blog in the first place. I have a lot to thank Gogyouo-Sama for. I apologize, by the way, if this examination of the story seems a bit chopped up and dry - I feel ambivalent to reveal information about the story in a strict sequential manner on the slight glimmer of hope that one day I might be able to release it to the public in a proper form. Even though it is quite possible that day will never come, I will never abandon The Gogyouo-Sama. I'll keep writing it, even if it's only for myself. But perhaps I'll be able to show it to you as well, my friends.

Stay tuned next week for another Manga Madness!

This image was originally planned to be used as a mock-up cover for The Gogyouo-Sama "Volume 1", and I guess you could say it still is. I drew Sei far in advance and added Suunuku and Masashi in later about a week ago once I got the idea for Manga Madness. I was pretty happy with Sei because I usually have a big problem drawing a character completely on the page without cutting off some parts due to drawing so big. I was going to do the same for Suunu and Masa, but it wasn't working out so I settled for adding the bounding circle around them. The logo was drawn as well, separately, and I used Photoshop to add color and insert it onto the cover image.

March Manga Madness!

Hey everyone! I don't have a drawing to post about today, but I do have an important update for you concerning the next few. I've decided to make the month of March a themed month this year, and that theme is going to be:

While some people are mad about sports, I am mad about manga. I'm also mad about creating my own manga stories. I've already shared a lot from one of my stories since starting this blog, but there are a few more you have yet to see. And that's what I'm going to share with you this month. Every week this month, I will be talking about the basic story and creation process behind one of my original manga stories, along with some art showcasing the manga in question. I won't be releasing these on any set days of the week, but I'm going to try my best to have one a week, so be on the lookout for them! You can expect the first installment in the next couple days. Hope you enjoy it, so let's go, manga madness! :)