Masamune Shiro
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The Man
Masamune Shirow (士郎 正宗 Shirō Masamune or Shirou Masamune) is, at best, a technophile and a tremendous artist. His work is rife with political analyses, technical breakdowns, and a serious amount of Man vs. Machine. Among his own noted influences are Macross, Gundam, and Miyazaki Hayao of Studio Ghibli fame.
Masamune Shiro is also not his real name. While he proudly states in almost every one of his portfolios that he hails from and remains in Kobe, that is about the closest you will ever get to knowing who Shirow really is. Among the most celebrated manga-ka, Masamune protects his privacy like no other celebrity, not even so much as showing his face to the world. He has never appeared at a convention (insofar as anyone knows, of course).
In fact, he even had a short stint as a high school teacher, but soon left to start work on the famous Ghost in the Shell. It is very doubtful that his students knew who he really was.
Moreover, he enjoys caricaturing himself in two forms, neither of which give any clues to who the man really is. The first and most common form of Shirow is Takochu, an octopus with some seriously heavy-set eyebrows. Variations include a metal version, as well as a version where the octopus' "snout" is replaced with a minigun. The second is the beloved author caricature, in which a man in a ghille suit with two bulbous eyes normally peeks out from behind group shots in super-deformed shape (see some Appleseed layouts).
However, that is not to say that nothing is known of the man. He has an intense love for insects and keeps a collection of spiders for pets (who, subsequently, heavily influence his mecha designs). Though he will proclaim it himself, it is clear from his collected works that he has a deep love for science, military strategies and ordinance, official procedure, biology, genetics, and nanotechnology among other things.
The History
Masamune originally got his start in college, working on a short manga story for a fanzine, resulting in what fans know today as Black Magic. From this work, Harumichi Aoki, president of Seishinsha magazine, brought Shirow into the limelight.
Even from the get-go, Shiro's start was out of the norm. His first commercial work, Appleseed, was not self-standing. It was, instead, the beginning of what Shiro would call his "pet project," and more notably, an ongoing series. At the time, and probably still to this day, debuting with a series rather than a self-contained "pilot" was unheard of. Still, Appleseed worked and threw Shiro into the eyes of the public. It featured intense technological detail, a war-torn post-apocalyptic world, and a thorougly fleshed-out geography. Even still, as Shiro claims, he was drawing fingers out of trigger guards (proper gun handling) before anyone else. Truly, he made his mark the second he put his pencil to paper, thanks in no small part to his organic mecha designs (as inspired by insects).
While his artwork took a while to mature, Shiro's style is distinctive and recognizable. A steady progression of crude angles to smooth flowing lines is especially evident when looking at the original Appleseed versus work in Ghost in the Shell.
Moreover, as he matured and continues to mature as an artist, Shiro is constantly searching for new ways to improve his art. Moving from watercolors to digital paints, and now commonly mixing his work with CG (his manga is devoid of this, but he makes use of CG in covers and posters), each new piece is a perfect example of the Man vs. Machine that this artist seems to love so much.
While Appleseed's storyline still hangs in the air, Shiro continues to work on promoting himself. On top of his manga work, he has released a calendar of pin-ups every year, and has released at least three portfolio compilations, the latest of which is a collection of posters that's not intended for children. On top of that, throw in lithographs, a busy toy line, and several magazine covers and it's clear that, though his "pet project" hasn't propelled forward, he is constantly at work.
His most recent manga is Ghost in the Shell 2, a full-color work filled with his trademark manga and digital landscapes.
The Work
Masamune Shiro has come to be synonymous with 'pretty girls' and 'massive mecha'. Though most people would probably hate to be pigeonholed in such a way, Shiro has embraced his fan base and provided them with increasingly erotic images over the years, but it wasn't always so. It all began with Black Magic.
Black Magic is a crude fanzine publication that garnered Shiro the attention of a major publisher. It was a story set on Venus involving one Duna Typhon, the bioroid. Her only job was to stop the government from gaining too much power and would sabotage military targets to do so. However poorly done, it was done well enough to get Shiro a foot in the door. He really began his career with Appleseed.
There is much to say about Appleseed but it won't be said here. Needless to say, it is Masamune's self-proclaimed "pet project", a work that will likely take most of the span of his life to complete. Not necessarily because it is long, but because work done on the series is sparse at best. Book Four was released several years ago and there is still no news of Book Five. Still, Appleseed introduced the world to Masamune's intense love for machines, science, guns, and military procedure. Almost every technical detail was annotated in a released collection of notes. As an example of the detail presented in the book, you can use a pen and paper campaign setting (like Forgotten Realms for Dungeons & Dragons) as a reference. Moreover, all the information is presented in true science fiction form: one will truly believe that everything he creates is technically possible. Appleseed itself is a story of political intrigue, with a deep focus on terrorism, military strategy, and a pair of freelance mercenaries: a human woman named Deunan Knute, and her robotic cyborg lover Briareos. Unfortunately, the order of things here gets mucked up, so we'll proceed in artistic maturity. Something to note, however, is that Appleseed is produced on and off between the following productions.
Dominion
Dominion: Tank Police was Masamune's attempt at comedy. While still rife with technological information, the series was clearly light-hearted and humorous, detailing a ragtag bunch of police officers who just happen to drive tanks (in the style of Metal Slug, if you will) around town to defeat various foes, including the famous henchladies Ani Puma and Uni Puma.
Ghost in the Shell
A serious work overflowing the political intrigue and an in depth look at trying to technically define exactly what the human soul is. In the case of one Kusanagi Makoto, an extremely sexy commander of a special anti-terrorism unit called Section 9, her pursuit of a cyber terrorist known only as The Puppeteer will truly test the strength of her own "ghost". Among the more notable mecha presented in GITS, one of the more interesting designs are the Fuchikoma, spider-like multi-purpose transports, capable of acrobatic maneuvers. They did not, however, appear in the anime.
Ghost in the Shell 2
Currently being released, GITS2 was actually released in an earlier edition in Japan, but re-edited for mass market release some time later. The most notable difference is that there is an explicitly erotic scene that was removed from the original run and a 24-page epilogue appended to the end. The current version being released in the west is the re-edited version.
Other works that may or may not have come to North America are Orion, Pile Up, and Gun Dancing.
External Links
Categories: Manga | Anime | Book
