One of the
brightest and sickest minds in the manga industry is leaving.
To the enormous sadness of the entire community, the
legendary mangaka Hiroya Oku, world-renowned for being the creator
of the violent and successful Gantz franchise, has just
confirmed that he will retire definitively from the restiradores. Her farewell
will be official once the publication of her current work, entitled The
SWEET Sixty Princess, is finished.
During a
recent interview, the author was painfully honest about the motives behind this
difficult decision. On the verge of turning sixty, Oku confessed that he simply
no longer has the energy or physical stamina to withstand the brutal pace of
work required to develop, illustrate and maintain long-term serialization.
Although he made it clear that his head is still full of ideas for new stories,
he acknowledged that his body no longer responds to him in the same way,
considering this latest project as his shukatsu, a Japanese term to
refer to the final preparation before closing his career
Far from
the bloody alien massacres to which we have been accustomed since its debut in
the nineties, its farewell manga has a much more reflective tone. The
SWEET Sixty Princess tells the story of a group of mature men who live
together, where one of them physically transforms into a young girl after
ingesting a mysterious drug. Loosely based on the members of its own production
team, this story marks the end of a brutal legacy of more than three decades,
leaving us with unforgettable gems such as Inuyashiki and
the controversial Gigant
Knowing
that his works always stood out for mixing visceral action with crude
criticisms of human society
