Key of Heaven PR Article

Written by Ross Locksley on 20 Jul 2006

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At the tail end of 2005, I was approached by one of Sony's marketing companies to write an article introducing the game as a "manga-influenced" RPG. Unfortunately the artist was Korean, so after educating them over the phone, here's what I came up with. I've posted the Sony-edited version rather than my original, more UK centric piece.

Manga, the Japanese term for comic books, has become a global phenomenon, but other than its country of origin and distinctive, wide-eyed appearance, many people remain unaware of the significance of this art form and its huge impact on world culture and cinema.

Contemporary cinematic manga is largely acknowledged to have begun with Osamu Tezuka’s postwar release of New Treasure Island in 1947, where the unique visual style and attention to detail was a revolution for the time. This work went on to influence a generation of artists, and has led to the almost storyboard-style manga we see today.

Unlike the West, the Japanese have embraced comics as an everyday part of their culture, with adults, children and teenagers all catered for. The comics industry in Japan is so large that it dwarfs the collected comics output of both the United States and Europe combined. In fact, in the 1990’s manga sales accounted for over 600 billion yen!

This wide ranging audience has lead to a myriad of topical manga, with titles covering both the extraordinary tales of other worldly demons or aliens, (such as Rumiko Takahashi’s wildly popular Urusei Yatsura), through to more everyday themes such as high school clubs, sports events and even manga about wannabe manga artists, such as Comic Party by Sekihiko Inui.

It’s not just a variety of topics that make manga such an appealing medium – it’s also the variety of drawing styles. Many people think of manga as a single “style”, but in fact there are so many different styles within manga that it’s impossible to box it into one category. For example, Studio Clamp’s delicate trademark artwork, with its impossibly thin characters is in stark contrast to Osamu Tezuka’s cartoonish and chubby characters in Astro Boy. In fact, many enthusiasts collect volumes of artists work in coffee table “Artbook” format, and with over 3,000 manga artists currently active in Japan today, the number of collected volumes is an industry in itself.

It comes as no surprise that a force as creative and diverse as manga should break out of the confines of the Japanese market and influence the West. The most notable example of this appeal on western comics was Marvel’s Manga Heroes line, where it took popular characters such as the X-Men and Spider-man from its own universe and recreated them in a manga style, with new storylines and adventures taken from a fresh perspective.

It was also the influence for many of the stylistic ideas within Quentin Tarentino’s Eastern homage Kill Bill, as well as the Wachowski Brother’s Matrix Trilogy which went on to create its own global franchise. East meets West has never been so popular!

In Europe, Italy and France have embraced manga wholeheartedly. This is largely due to the amount of anime broadcast on local networks from the late 1970’s to the present day. Series such as Ranma ½ and Mysterious Cities of Gold were common viewing for European youngsters in the 1980’s. There have been some notable co-productions too, with Ulysses 31 being one of the most popular. This French/Japanese series featured the Greek hero Ulysses in his battle against the Gods in a sci-fi setting.

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