Sketches: Manga Characters

I was able to pick up some scattered manga in the 80's.  It's hard to believe now, but there was a time you could easily collect all of the translated manga available in the US.

The Japanese editions of Newtype that I'd gotten all had manga features.  My favorite was Marionette Generation by Haruhiku Mikimoto, who created Minmay for Macross.  I later bought some of the translated volumes.  I was disappointed to find out that there wasn't really any story to it, but it sure looked good.  I forgot the name of the character here.

Mai the Psychic Girl, Kamui, and Area 88 were translated manga published bi-weekly by Eclipse Comics.  These along with Lone Wolf and Cub, published by another company, comprised all of the initial wave of manga in the US.  Area 88, about mercenary fighter pilots, was the one I collected, but I later picked up an issue of Mai and was entranced by the heroine.  I later the bought the collected volumes.   

Those initial comics led to more translated titles being released.  I loved the violent cyber action of Xenon.  The comic was actually a big influence on a superhero RPG game I created.  (No, I'm not going to post it.  It's embarrassing.  It mechanically worked, after a fashion, but would probably be considered unplayable by others.  It's irredeemable.)  Xenon's girlfriend was Sonoko, who is pictured here.  This might be the best hair I've ever drawn in a sketch.  I kind of wish I still had the comics even though the story did not have a proper ending.   

I also picked up some American produced manga.  This is Kenji from Metal Bikini (I think).

Mylene is technically an anime character from Macross 7, but I never saw it.  (Thank God.  Macross II was bad enough.)  The picture I sketched from was from an issue of Protoculture Addicts.  It was in black and white, so my colors ended up being way different than her correct ones.   

This is another American manga here, Kei from Dirty Pair.  Yes, Dirty Pair is an anime, but it was based on a series of SF novels.  Bizarrely, the only manga version at the time (I don't know if that's changed or not) was licensed by Eclipse.  Writer/artist Adam Warren, over the course of several series over the years, probably took the characters far afield of any Japanese version.     

So in the late 90's I was a fan of Evangelion and Gen 13.  This mashup was inevitable.  I made a color version of this, but gave it to a comic book shop for their fan art wall.  This might be the most complex thing I've ever drawn.