When Chika Kako, the first woman chief engineer at Lexus, saw designs for the brand’s all-new UX subcompact crossover, she thought of childhood days spent watching anime cartoons with her brother. The SUV’s rear lights reminded her of Mazinger Z, a hulking manga robot on the small screen in the late 70’s and early 80’s. It was a good look for an animated character, she …
Beijing-based comic designer and illustrator Satan Lucky—a light-hearted name choice he made as a teenager—is not a dark character at all. On the contrary, he’s a smiling, cheerful young man with a very independent spirit and a true passion for storytelling. Since his childhood, Lucky has been fascinated by manga culture and the late Japanese master Osamu Tezuka (author and creator of the iconic Astro …
Writer Daniel H. Pink took a cue from the East in creating his Johnny Bunko character. While the Japanese comic format, manga, is generally left for children and a fringe group of aficionados in America, it's omnipresent in Japan. In fact, a full 22 percent of all printed material is manga. With this in mind, Pink decided to target American adults with his manga creation, …
