Inside the curious creations of Fujiko A. Fujio

The manga and animation world was in mourning on April 7, with the news of the passing of Motoo Abiko, aka Fujiko A. Fujio, creator of some of Japan’s best-known manga.

Born in 1934 in the city of Himi, Toyama Prefecture, Abiko’s initial dabbling in manga began during his elementary school years, where he befriended fellow enthusiast Hiroshi Fujimoto, with whom he would famously collaborate under the joint pen name “Fujiko Fujio” from 1954.

After the dissolution of the duo more than three decades later, Fujimoto continued writing under the “Fujiko F. Fujio” pseudonym, while Abiko adopted the nom de plume “Fujiko A. Fujio,” broadening his horizons through production work in anime, TV and film.

Although the duo are arguably best known for the Fujimoto-created manga series about a robot cat called “Doraemon,” Abiko earned significant admiration for his own quirky creations.

Among them was “Kaibutsu-kun,” which tells of the terrestrial travails of its protagonist “Monster Kid” (which is how the title was translated for audiences overseas) and other beings from Monster Land, which he turned into an acclaimed TV drama in 2010.

Indeed, the alien, or unusual being with magical powers intruding on everyday life on Earth, became a manga genre that was arguably the duo’s baby, and one that has been adopted and nurtured by countless adoring artists in the Japanese manga scene since.

Another of Abiko’s best-loved creations, “Ninja Hattori-kun,” also typifies this genre, featuring Kenichi, a shy fifth grader who is bullied at school but is saved when his “normal” life is interrupted by an extraordinary 11-year-old ninja named Hattori.

In this and other of his works, the departure of the “outsider” character signifies the end of childhood, and with time Abiko, too, started to move away from fantasy manga targeting a predominantly younger audience in favor of more adult-oriented themes.

Often these were highly bizarre creations, delving into the dark side of the human psyche with more than a tinge of black humor.

“The Laughing Salesman” is one classic example. Written in 1968 at the height of Japan’s economic growth years, it tells the story of the shady salesman Moguro Fukuzou and his promises to “fill the empty souls” of the dissatisfied underachievers he encounters in society.

Such themes and the mood in which they were written were until then unheard of, and came to be viewed by many as almost Abiko-esque.

Yet, he didn’t always get it right, and a number of his works have been labeled “problematic” and demoted to mere footnotes in his bibliographical history.

"Madman's Army," for example, is superficially a story about a baseball team, but also offers extreme content about mental illness, with many of its deranged characters representing well-known individuals in the real world, including baseball players, whose names are only minimally changed.

Consequently “Madman's Army” is one of several compositions to have never been published in book form, though Abiko himself was unapologetic about the work, reportedly saying that only manga “connoisseurs” could truly appreciate it.

Yet, he was never so hubristic as to think himself above reproach, and while his outgoing nature was a perfect foil for the more diffident Fujimoto, he could be disarmingly modest. During an interview in 2009, he referred to his creative partner as “a true genius,” who Abiko himself “couldn’t hold a candle to.”

It was a feeling he had from the first time they met, at the elementary school in Takaoka, Toyama Prefecture, where a 9-year-old Abiko had been forced to move following the death of his Buddhist priest father.

Of that first encounter, Abiko recalled how, on the first day at his new school, his teacher had introduced him to the rest of the class during lunch break, after which all the other children dispersed, leaving Abiko on his own — or so he thought.

“I just sat and did some drawing in my notebook, and the next thing I knew there was someone looking over my shoulder, and this skinny kid says to me in a thick Toyama accent, ‘So you like drawing, do you?’” Abiko recalled.

“I told him I did and asked him if he also drew. He showed me his notebook and I couldn't believe my eyes: He had drawn some manga and they were really good. ... From that day on we became close friends and hung around together pretty much every day. It was fate, I suppose."

Inspired by manga great Osamu Tezuka (whose “New Treasure Island” he described as “like a movie on paper”), Abiko invented a “dream world” where he and Fujimoto would become manga artists, though deep down he doubted that “two kids from Toyama” could ever realize that vision.

In fact, it was the more reticent Fujimoto who, after training to become an electrician, but lacking the social skills to hold down regular employment, urged Abiko to quit his job as a reporter at his uncle's newspaper, the Toyama Shimbun, and go to Tokyo in search of fame.

“I told him there was no way I could go, that my mother and uncle would blow a fuse if I told them I was quitting just at a time when I was beginning to be of some use to the paper,” he recalled. “But when I discussed it with my mom, she just said, ‘You must do as you wish.’ I still wasn’t sure what to do, but in the end I quit. I don't want to sound pretentious, but I decided to gamble on my dream.”

In 1954, and still just 19, Abiko left for the capital. Four years later, he took up lodging at the renowned Tokiwa-so, a two-story wooden apartment building in Toshima Ward that could rightly be labeled manga’s mecca.

It was here that some of Japan’s most revered manga artists laid the foundations for the global sensation that followed, among them Abiko’s hero, Tezuka, who he described as being “to Japan what Shakespeare is to Britain.”

“Japan doesn't know how lucky it is to have had someone like that,” he said. “If he had not chosen to write manga I am sure manga would never have developed here in the way it did.”

Although he was conferred with two significant awards in his later years, many would argue the same could be said for Abiko, the lad from Toyama who tested the boundaries of the manga genre, introducing readers to unforgettable characters who, like Fujiko A. Fujio himself, pushed themselves to achieve their dreams.