Masamune Shirow

I tell people, like again, that's me.

I, I said, "Shirow is such a big influence on everything I did in, in X-Force.

Everything.

All of it."

I tell people, like again, that's me.

I, I said, "Shirow is such a big influence on everything I did in, in X-Force.

Everything.

All of it."

I love the heights he goes to in Maximum in some of the illustrations I've seen there.

But I think this is him saying, like, "Look, I can draw in a way that I like and resonates with me that I'm comfortable with." But actually something that I've wrestled with a lot on this podcast, even talking about Masamune Shirow's work last week, who's probably one of my favorite illustrators, he's like, "Well, you could be the best artist in the world, but if you can't tell a story [laughs] properly, then what are you doing?"

Hmm.

And I think that's such an interesting thing for him to be able to point out.

The original magazine where Ghost in the Shell was published.

And so this is a new manga being written by Shiro Masamune.

The

art or the manga is drawn by Naoki Azuma.

Let's see, I have a link to the first chapter that should be free to read over on their website in Japanese.

The beginning of the chapter is just like the beginning of Ghost in the Shell, drawn in Shiro Masamune's style, so that's kind of strange.

But then it just like kind of jumps to, you know, the artist's art style.

And so what this is, is this is a side story about the Puppet Master, which is a major character in Shiro Masamune's Ghost in the Shell manga.

in Ghost in the Shell, which I think is very, very charming.

Yeah, for people who don't know, uh, Dominion Tank Police, uh, was another manga, um, by Masamune Shirow, who did Ghost in the Shell, and there's, there's some crossovers.

I think most people associate it with the two giant, like, '80s, uh, hair biker cat girls.

Yeah, yeah.

They have no idea.

So the, this thing looks exactly like the art from that manga by Masamune Shirow.

The only thing missing are the halftone dots and black and white.

So it's a very colorful beautiful version.

Because of copyright conflict, the Ghost in the Shell standalone complex TV series was unable to use the term Fuchikoma.

So the boss man, Masamune Shiro himself, designed the Tachikoma for the show.

Interesting.

So they got the rights to Ghost in the Shell, but they couldn't use Tachikoma.