Frederik L. Schodt | |
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Born | January 22, 1950 |
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Frederik L. Schodt (born January 22, 1950) is an American translator, interpreter and writer.
Schodt's father was in the US foreign service, and he grew up in Norway, Australia, and Japan. The family first went to Japan in 1965 when Schodt was fifteen. They left in 1967, but Schodt remained to graduate from American School in Japan in Tokyo in 1968. After entering the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), in 1970, Schodt returned to Japan and studied Japanese intensively at International Christian University (ICU) for a year and half. He graduated from UCSB in 1972, and after a brief bohemian stint at a variety of jobs and traveling, he became a tour guide in Los Angeles for Japanese tourists, also escorting them to Canada and Mexico. After trying to interpret for a group once at Sunkist, he realized that he could become an interpreter, but needed further training. In 1975, he was awarded a scholarship from Japan's Ministry of Education, to return to ICU and study translation and interpreting. After finishing his studies at ICU in 1977, he began working in the translation department of Simul International, in Tokyo. In mid-1978, he returned to the United States, and since then has worked in San Francisco as a freelance writer, translator, and interpreter.
While working in Tokyo in 1977, he joined with several university friends in contacting Tezuka Productions. They sought permission to translate the Phoenix comic into English. [1]
Schodt is notable in manga and anime fandom for his translations of works such as Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix , Tezuka's Astro Boy , Riyoko Ikeda's The Rose of Versailles , Keiji Nakazawa's Barefoot Gen , Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama's The Four Immigrants Manga and others.
His best known book is Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics , published in 1983 and reprinted several times, with an introduction by Tezuka.
Manga! Manga! won a prize at the Manga Oscar Awards in 1983. Furthermore, in 2000 Schodt was awarded the Asahi Shimbun's Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize "Special Prize" for his outstanding contribution to the appreciation of manga worldwide. [2]
Schodt has written eight books, translated several novels and manga, and published articles and columns in such newspapers and periodicals as Mainichi Daily News, The Japan Times , Anzen , Mangajin , Japan Related , Animag , Animerica and others.
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Astro Boy, known in Japan by its original name Mighty Atom, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka. It was serialized in Kobunsha's Shōnen from 1952 to 1968. The 112 chapters were collected into 23 tankōbon volumes by Akita Shoten. Dark Horse Comics published an English translation in 2002. The story follows Astro Boy, an android young boy with human emotions who is created by Umataro Tenma after the recent death of his son Tobio. Eventually, Astro is sold to a robot circus run by Hamegg, but is saved from his servitude by Professor Ochanomizu. Astro becomes a surrogate son to Ochanomizu who creates a robotic family for Astro and helps him to live a normal life like an average human boy, while accompanying him on adventures.
Osamu Tezuka was a Japanese manga artist, cartoonist, and animator. Born in Osaka Prefecture, his prolific output, pioneering techniques, and innovative redefinitions of genres earned him such titles as "the Father of Manga", "the Godfather of Manga" and "the God of Manga". Additionally, he is often considered the Japanese equivalent to Walt Disney, who served as a major inspiration during Tezuka's formative years. Though this phrase praises the quality of his early manga works for children and animations, it also blurs the significant influence of his later, more literary, gekiga works.
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Machiko Hasegawa was a Japanese manga artist and one of the first female manga artists. She started her own comic strip, Sazae-san, in 1946. It reached national circulation via the Asahi Shimbun in 1949, and ran daily until Hasegawa decided to retire in February 1974. All of her comics were printed in Japan in digest comics; by the mid-1990s, Hasegawa's estate had sold over 60 million copies in Japan alone.
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Phoenix is an unfinished manga series written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka considered Phoenix his "life's work"; it consists of 12 books, each of which tells a separate, self-contained story and takes place in a different era. The plots go back and forth from the remote future to prehistoric times. The story was never completed, having been cut short by Tezuka's death in 1989.
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Akimi Yoshida is a Japanese manga artist and a graduate of Musashino Art University. She made her professional debut in 1977 with the short story Chotto Fushigi na Geshukunin, published in Bessatsu Shōjo Comic magazine. Yoshida is best known for the crime thriller series Banana Fish, which received an anime adaptation produced by MAPPA in 2018.
Astro Boy is a Japanese television series that premiered on Fuji TV on New Year's Day, 1963, and is the first popular animated Japanese television series that embodied the aesthetic that later became familiar worldwide as anime. It originated as a manga of the same name in 1952 by Osamu Tezuka, revered in Japan as the "God of Manga". It lasted for four seasons, with a total of 193 episodes, the final episode presented on a Saturday, New Year's Eve 1966.
Machiko Satonaka is a Japanese manga artist. She made her professional debut in 1964 during her second year of high school with the one-shot Pia no Shōzō. She has since created nearly 500 manga in a variety of genres. Two of her most notable works are Ashita Kagayaku, which won the 1974 Kodansha Publishing Culture Award, and Karyūdo no Seiza, which won the 1982 Kodansha Manga Award. In addition to creating manga, Satonaka teaches at the Osaka University of Arts as the head of the Character Creative Arts Department and serves on the board of various manga-related organizations in Japan.
Yoshihiro Yonezawa was a Japanese manga critic and author. He is also known for being Comiket's co-founder and president. He died of lung cancer at 53. He won the 2007 Seiun Award in the special category and 2010 Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize Special Award.
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