His early works were light-hearted gag manga, like Patman X and Horafuki Dondon, both published in Shonen Magazine. From the start, Akiyama was a riddle wrapped inside an enigma. In fact, he'd already put out 'The Storm Ninja' ( Arashi no Ninja) the year before as a kashihon manga. It's generally held that he debuted in 1966 in Bessatsu Shonen Magazine with 'The Skeleton Kid' ( Gaikotsu Kun). (He also insisted that he'd gotten his high-school diploma.) Whatever. But how much of this is true? In one interview, he claimed that he came up to the big smoke to become a TV personality, and that he became Morita's assistant by pure chance. Some time later he kick-started his career as a manga artist with a spell as assistant in the studio of Morita Kenji. And also that he quit high school to work at a book wholesaler's in Tokyo's Kanda district, the center of universe for bibliophiles in Japan. Long before they happened, both the Aum Shinrikyo death cult and the anime Evangelion are weirdly foreshadowed in his work.Īs for the more mundane details of his biography, who knows? A trawl through the internet will tell you that George Akiyama was born Akiyama Yūji in Tochigi (near Tokyo) in 1943. Fact 2: he has the true artist's gift of sensing what's coming down the line. Fact 1: he's a veteran manga artist who's spent the last thirty years and more at the cutting edge of the art-form, and he still shows no signs of slowing down. George Akiyama: the unstoppable King of Trauma MangaĪ lot about George Akiyama is shrouded in mystery and myth.
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