Manga 1977

It’s a truism of anime and manga journalism that all roads eventually take you to the doorstep of Osamu Tezuka, the world-renowned “God of Manga.”

This Time Machine explores a lesser-known connection to Tezuka through the pages of Monthly Manga Shonen (Manga Boy) magazine, which was established by Asahi Sonorama as a vehicle for Tezuka to continue his epic Phoenix series. It wasn’t the first magazine to use the name; an earlier edition with an all-kanji title was founded in 1947, and Tezuka manga was frequently published therein.

This version ran from August 1976 to May 1981 and featured a genuine dream team of talent: Leiji Matsumoto (Miraizaban), Keiko Takiyama (Toward the Terra, Andromeda Stories), Shotaro Ishinomori (Cyborg 009), Kaoru Shintani, Monkey Punch, Go Nagai, Fujiko Fujio, and many more. By all accounts, if you were looking to find Japan’s best and most respected manga creators all in one place, Manga Shonen was the place to go. And readers certainly went for it – over 24 million of them for the first issue.

With that introduction out of the way, here’s how Manga Shonen specifically connected to Yamato: one of its editors was Yoshikazu Hirose, who actually worked on the series in the area of color design and published the first magazine to specifically cover anime, titled Fantoche. It gave Yamato an early spotlight in April 1976, in a cover story that can be read .

With Hirose on staff, there was a ready-made advocate for new coverage. TV cartoons, newly-christened with the term “anime,” were gaining ground fast, and Manga Shonen was only too happy to devote pages to this emerging phenomenon. The material presented here appeared throughout 1977 when the first Yamato series was finally striking ratings gold via TV reruns, and the first feature film hit Japan like a freight train.