Welcome ! This site is entirely dedicated to Masakazu Katsura's work, and also to Japan.
- Masakazu Katsura -

Amano, Junta Momonari, Wingman, some of the characters created by Masakazu Katsura. But who is he?

Masakazu Katsura was born in the Japanese prefecture of Fukui on the 10th of December 1962. As a child, he turned out to be very talented as a drawer. He decided to become a mangaka, a manga-author, after a friend had congratulated him on one of his drawings. A few years later, he won the Osamu Tezuka (Astroboy's creator) contest.
His name became famous throughout his native country in 1983, when was published his first series, a manga called "Wingman". 13 volumes were drawn and the TV series derived from it was broadcast in Japan. As Katsura himself confesses, this series wasn't exceptional, but thanks to it, Katsura had forged himself a name.

In 1989, he launches a new manga, "Video Girl Ai", who tells the sentimental story of a young student, Yota Moteuchi, who gets the help of Ai Amano, a video girl, who comes out of his TV set. This time, 15 volumes were edited, including short stories with the same guideline. Video Girl Ai is Masakazu Katsura's master piece and placed him among the most famous mangakas.

Then later, in 1994, a new series is born: DNAČ. In the future, overpopulation has become a crucial problem, that must be resolved. We learn that around our time lived a "Mega-playboy", a boy called Junta Momonari, who made a hundred girls pregnant. Since it has become so important to regulate births, a DNA operator, Karin Aoi, is sent in the past to alter Junta's DNA, to turn him back into a normal boy. This series was shorter than the previous two: only 5 volumes were drawn.

In 1995, Katsura tells the story of a "Batgirl" in Shadow Lady. 3 volumes were published. Two years later, he starts another long series called I"s, that tells the story of three young people: Iori Yoshizuki, Ichitaka Seto and Itsuki Akiba. Ichitaka is a boy in love with his classmate, Iori. After hard times, he finally succeeds in getting a little closer to Iori. But this is the moment when Itsuki, a childhood friend of Ichitaka, comes back from the United States...Of course, this is not all of Katsura's work. But his other mangas, like Vander and Present from Lemon, weren't as successful as those above. Many OAVs derived from the series.

Katsura's main theme is the internal conflicts that torture those who are in love. The characters make a triad of young people, in which the boy can't figure out which one of the girls he's in love with. The main character is tortured by his hesitations and can't guess what his feelings are, despite they're evident. Katsura is very successful in this field, and reading Video Girl Ai/Len or yet some passages of DNAČ immediately reveals how talented he is in describing human questions raised by love. The feelings described are universal, so that everyone can find a part of himself in it.


Thanks to Christophe Boribon
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