Obits 12
Makoto Ogino (1959-2019)
Makoto Ogino, who died of renal failure on 29th April, spent his whole life preoccupied with the wheel of karma. On the day of his very first sale, his father, an education officer responsible for censuring unsuitable books, pleaded with him not to become the sort of manga creator whose works would get denounced in […]
Kazuo Koike (1936-2019)
Kazuo Koike, who died on 17th April, was a man of many names. Born Yuzuru Tawaraya in what is now Daisen, Akita Prefecture, he died as Seishu Tawaraya, a Buddhist name, and wrote song lyrics as Fumihiko Azuma. But as a writer, it is the Koike pen-name that found him the greatest fame, in a […]
Monkey Punch (1937-2019)
Kazuhiko Kato, who died on 11th April, always had the air about him of a man who had won the lottery. Born in Hokkaido in 1937, his knack for cartooning soon caused him to drop out of electrical engineering college and move to Tokyo, where he moonlighted as an artist, at first in the below-the-line […]
Fred Patten 1940-2018
Fred Patten, who died yesterday aged 77, was one of the foundational pillars not only of anime fandom in America, but of American anime fandom’s sense of its own history. Graduating with a Masters in Library Science in 1963, Fred was already active in American science fiction fandom when he entered the job market. For […]
Isao Takahata 1935-2018
To many people, Isao Takahata will be remembered as the man who directed Grave of the Fireflies, the saddest Japanese animation ever made. Yet his work brims with the joy of life, from Heidi frolicking in the Alps with Peter in Takahata’s landmark 1974 series, to a gang of mischievous children calling “Li’l Bamboo!” to […]