My Visit With M Part 6: Arion in Hong Kong, Chinese Comics & Musings on the Future

 

(The cover of the Chinese, moreover Hong Kong edition of Arion's artbook, one of two volumes. This booklet was sold for $8 HKD at the time of the film's release.)

"Are you sure you'd want them?"

I have long been back home in the United States after my rather whirlwind, if not life changing, trip to Japan. I've learned a lot, garnered a deeper appreciation of a culture I no longer feel a somewhat perpetual outsider to and have in the process met several individuals that I will cherish for a lifetime. M and I's correspondence waned once I left for the United States, though on a particular evening while I was unpacking some of the loot from my trip (many who follow me on Twitter will know that, while temporarily staying in LA for a job, I received crate after crate of items I purchased while in Japan) I received a message from him.

M contacted me via email and asked me if I had a safe trip back all things considered, and once contact was established again, he thanked me for visiting and rekindling memories that he held so truly dear. As a genuine old head Otaku, M was happy to know that someone on the outside was relaying aspects of his very unique career and lifestyle to others worldwide - events in which hadn't been discussed or cracked open in over 40+ years even. 

There then presented itself an opportunity to speak further about the future of my archiving work and what his contributions to my public internet library would ultimately mean. We connected over video call, where I greeted his wife and his nephew who had come to visit - M had been telling his family and friends about meeting me and they were elated that his collection was finally being given its due. 

There are aspects of M's collection that will, based on the availability of my own personal funds and other factors, that will probably not see the light of day anytime soon. During our video call, I appealed to M about the prospect of acquiring more pieces of art, books and media in an effort to have them archived. M's collection, while stout and important, was also very much part of his personal life and full of memories. As a former industry member and collaborator in the earliest days of both late 70s fandom culture and Comiket, M's stories should be shared, so I told him, though to the extent that he wished for me to do so. 

After some further conversation, bartering, laughing and even more deep personal musing, M agreed to part with more works on the condition that I not only keep them, but share them with the world at large. I naturally agreed, and after a while he began to show me over call several pieces that I was simply astounded by. Astounded, in honesty, doesn't even come to encapsulate the emotionality of the viewing, though I think it summarizes it well. 

The pieces shown to me were found while both cleaning and upon some personal considerations from M himself. Initially, I was shown zines, though many of the pieces in question didn't appeal to my current efforts. I make note of this to keep a public, open record about this conversation as I personally find it important to do so - when I expressed to M some particulars, we seemed to align on a different wavelength; "Ah, so you want to see those things!" 

While I have already discussed via Twitter the major documents that I did acquire, I would like to make note of what this genuinely means to me. In the depths of my heart, I feel overwhelmed with a genuine sense of both love and satisfaction. The ethos of trust also comes to mind, and I don't like sounding a modicum of academic when expressing genuinely raw human emotions. I feel, for certain, blessed to have the opportunity to share what will become a major part of my efforts for everyone in the world who is able to see these pieces. It affirms something deeper beyond the nature of social media triviality - backs, in this case, don't need to be patted. 

One piece that now is a part of my collection is a curious artbook for Arion, Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's ethereal heroic fantasy film adaptation of his all the more enthralling manga series. Yasuhiko's work, while a major reasoning behind my trip to Hyogo, reared its head ever more frequently during my video call with M. We had gone to the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art together on my final day in the city before I headed to Osaka with my host Tosaku. Our visit together, right at the earliest of opening hours, was exceptionally intimate - M's accounts of working in near proximity to Sunrise and his knowledge of not only Yasuhiko's work, but his understanding of its role in strengthening the visual culture of Showa era animation, was emotional. Quite cheekily, this meeting was brought up as we spent a considerable amount of time then viewing Yasuhiko's paintings, manuscripts and sketches for Arion at the exhibit. 

Being allowed to purchase this booklet, however, peeled open another layer of Arion's historical presence outside of the Japanese sphere. I was long aware, since childhood even, of Hong Kong's peddling of anime. In my most tender of years, I was exposed to a kind man named Jim who worked at my local library, a man so instrumental in my love for anime and manga, as he was a genuine American Otaku himself. Jim would bring our small gaggle of "media club" friends untranslated manga, laserdiscs, as well as a very unique video format that appeared to be then-early Chinese fansubbed tapes of the original Mobile Suit Gundam. These tapes, however, were from as early as 1985 to 1987, and had to be played on a particular piece of hardware. 

With that said, my further exposure to so called "Hong Kong comics" came about a few years ago upon purchasing a copy of a Crusher Joe comic strip from a seller residing in Singapore. While they were unable to tell me the original publisher, I soon found out through a friend that many of these books were sold at convenience stores and candy establishments for children. Often cheaply printed with sloppy CMYK 3 color separation, these books proved to be a unique exposure to Japanese media. So, what was to be noted about this particular copy of Arion?

(A scan of the cover of my personal copy of a Hong Kong comic of Crusher Joe, this being released in concurrence with the film's initial opening.)

M was quick to note to me that is was printed in an extremely professional manner, of which it was to a certain extent. Yasuhiko's gorgeous watercolor paintings are printed on the best imaginable photo cardstock with a glossy exterior, all of which amplify the colors, however, the rest of the book is printed on what honestly is no more than cardboard. When I took it upon myself to debind the booklet for archival reasons, it simply came apart with the easily pluckable staples simply sliding out. Reading further, a general break down of events is given about the plot alongside some notes that seem to be plucked from a few of Yasuhiko's interviews. Yasuhiko is named as the author on the front over, a manner of addressing that I only became familiar with via Facebook of all places. 

The presentation of this text, however, appears to have been for a particular set of individuals. While some corners are cut in its production, it still holds a sense of actuality. Researching further proved that this text had a sibling as well. A second copy, sold 3 years ago via Carousell, may possibly contain settei and other similar data. I inquired of M as to how he got this version, of which he told me that he purchased it while on a trip to Hong Kong in the late 1980s. This allowed me to put an accurate date in mind, and opened up more doors for discovery. 

(Page 4 of the Hong Kong Arion artbook, printed on what appears to be recycled cardboard fiber with a relatively professional print job. The layout of this text is unique to itself and has, to my knowledge, never been reproduced.)

Arion is, in fact, stupendously unique in its execution, preservation and ever constant presence in Japan. Til this day, I have genuinely accounted for the fact that it remains one of Sunrise's most iconic productions. With Yasuhiko at the helm, several of his so-called understudies and more drove home his aesthetic ethos in a manner that was a very stunning adaptation of its original source material. Where Arion allegedly falls short, its visual language has a particularly specific grasp of its intentionality as well as having long established itself as a hallmark of 80s animation. Its reach to Hong Kong, as noted before, doesn't surprise me. This booklet appears to have been, in part, supervised by Sunrise to an extent. The artwork, all official, could very well have been licensed. Deeper research has shown, just as with the Crusher Joe comic, that an immediate publisher is not on hand nor noted.

(Both booklets for Arion that were sold in Hong Kong in the mid to late 1980s.)

Was this genuinely a licensed product? I ran across the now defunct Hong Kong comics blog My Comics Era in which the author, Cheng, makes a very unique observation on Hong Kong comics, primarily that of the nature of Japanese licensing; "I remember when Japanese comics didn't have official copyrights in Hong Kong. The companies Howard & Johnson and Seal were the largest publishers of Japanese comics (in Hong Kong) and they split the original prints of Japanese comics into two thin booklets and published one issue every two weeks."

"The quality of printing and binding was far from the original Japanese version, but at that time there was no other choice to get these works. Howard & Johnson and Seal had been around for many years, so what I was most looking forward to was the one published every two weeks. The "Seal Edition" of male centric (Shonen and Seinen) works came out in during this period." At that time, Seal had officially obtained "copyrights" for particular books - this particular system served a purpose in which Hong Kong publishers acquired a license agreement for works that often times appear to have had dodgy copyright protections at the time. Later companies, such as Jade Dynasty, would go on to purchase the full and finalized licensing rights, sometimes even full copyright, of particular manga from the 1970s to early 1980s.With that said, a shift was made in quality productions. 

Ryoichi Ikegami's works particularly appears to have been exceedingly popular, especially iconic titles such as Crying Freeman, due to the physicality of Ikegami's characters as well as the plots presented. "They talk about gangster vendettas and school fights in Japan, and the characters use many Chinese kung fu moves."

(The "broken down" volumes of Ryuichi Ikegami's manga Otokogumi (aka Men's Gang) localized and licensed in Hong Kong as seen in the collection of Cheng via his now defunct blog.)

I can, with confidence, say that this booklet was indeed an officially licensed work and not a fan book at least. The organization, layout and printing suggest a higher level of dedication, and given the impervious printing methods mentioned even by Cheng, one can see a distinct correlation. M's offerings, however, didn't stop there, and there will be many more important, unique pieces in the following days.