BONUS: Interview with Samuel Sattin, writer of Unico: Awakening
Christopher and Deb talk Tezuka with Sam, along. with comics for kids, manga Kickstarters, and much more!
Hey y’all! This posting is the EXTENDED show notes for our Mangasplaining: Listen To Me! segment with Samuel Sattin, co-creator of Unico: Awakening. This interview takes place during Mangasplaing Episode 62: My Love Mix-up!, and you can click the link to go check that out, and get the audio of this interview and more!
We broke this out into two posts because we’re pretty sure this week was already one of our longest show-notes ever, and that’s before we added in this interview’s material! So please enjoy these ‘bonus’ show notes, complete with a TON of never-before-seen process artwork by Gurihiru for Unico: Awakening.
[Deb:] Also, check out our deep dive into the origins of Osamu Tezuka’s Unico!
In this episode of Mangasplaining: Listen To Me, we talk to writer Samuel Sattin about his new collaboration with Japanese artistic duo Gurihiru and Tezuka Productions to produce a brand new ‘reimagining’ of Tezuka’s Unico. They’re using Kickstarter to raise funds for this project, and as of the day that we’re posting this interview, there’s 15 days left to jump in and reserve your copy, plus get in on some of the cool prints, books, pins, t-shirts and other goodies that you can only get if you kick in some $$ for this Kickstarter campaign.
About Samuel Sattin:
He is the author of graphic novels Wolfwalkers, Bezkamp, and Legend, and recently partnered with Patrick Macias to write Crunchyroll’s Essential Anime: Fan Favorites, Memorable Masterpieces, and Cult Classics. Earlier this May, he and his team launched the Kickstarter for UNICO: AWAKENING, in coordination with Tezuka Productions Japan. He’s a friend of Deb’s too, which is super neat! You can find out more about him on his website, www.samuelsattin.com.
57:00 So yeah, I kinda tripped over this question, absolutely my bad. Let me try to fix that. In Japan, Gurihiru tend to be illustrators and designers working on a variety of projects! They’re maybe most famous within Japan for their work on Marvel superheroes merchandising.
But most of their sequential comics work has tended to be originally published by Western publishers. Luckily Deb and Samuel catch my error, and point out just some of their (many) works, including (Eisner Award-winning!) Superman Smashes the Klan with writer Gene Luen Yang, published by DC Comics, Power Pack with writer Marc Sumerak, published by Marvel Comics, and Avatar: The Last Airbender, written by Bryan Konietzko, Gene Luen Yang, Michael Dante DiMartino and published by Dark Horse.
They’ve got a really extensive Wikipedia entry about Gurihiru, actually! Go check out all of their many, many comic book credits. Please forgive my slip-up.
Also as Sam mentioned, they are now working on a Japanese manga property in Japan, the spin-off manga Ultraman: Another Gene, which is coming later this year. Here’s the Twitter announcement from Tsurubaya Productions.
1:03:00 Poor Artax.
1:03:25 The Amazing World of Gumball is awesome.
1:06:50 As Sam mentions, there are some really, really unique items being added to the Unico Kickstarter, from beautiful prints to zines, to the picture book he mentions by Maddie Copp.
1:08:10 The Tezuka Moderno stuff really does look good. I apologize for not getting a photo of my bookshelf as promised, look for it on our Instagram this week.
[Deb:] Christopher mentions an acronym, “SD” = “Super Deformed,” a term that refers to how characters can be adapted into smaller, sometimes cuter versions of their original character designs.
1:13:40 We bleeped out the company name. But it’s not hard to figure out…!
1:14:30 Hey, since we’re mentioning a lot about Unico, you can check out the amazing resource Tezuka in English to read their write-up of Unico and see more about it.
[Deb:] There’s also an entry for Unico at the official Tezuka Pro website too!
1:20:00 Look, things have been completely insane for the past little while. You could easily forget that there was a whole defense of assault weapons in Arkansas based around the worry of swarms of feral hogs.
1:22:45 MW is a very complicated Tezuka work that’s totally worth reading. Published by Vertical Inc./Kodansha.
[Deb:] So here’s Kodansha’s description of MW:
A secret U.S. chemical weapon called “MW” accidentally leaks and wipes out the population of a southern Japanese island. Though Michio Yuki survives, he emerges from the ordeal without a trace of conscience. MW is manga-god Osamu Tezuka’s controversial testament to the Machiavellian character and features his most direct engagement of themes such as transvestism and homoeroticism.
MW is a chilling picaresque of evil. Steering clear of the supernatural as well as the cuddly designs and slapstick humor that enliven many of Tezuka’s better-known works, MW explores a stark modern reality where neither drive nor secular justice seems to prevail. This willfully “anti-Tezuka” achievement from the master’s own pen nevertheless pulsates with his unique genius.
-Kodansha
[Deb:] So you’d think that the only thing that a dark, complicated story like MW has in common with Unico is that both were created by Osamu Tezuka. And yes, that is mostly true! But if you think about it, Tezuka was deeply concerned with telling stories about power, corruption and redemption. The many dimensions to his creative curiosity is one reason why he’s called the “God of Manga.”
1:25:15 Haha, I was badly rambling at the end there, thank you David for cleaning that up.
BONUS: As a special treat from Team Unico, they sent along some concept sketches by Gurihiru, as a little Mangasplaining exclusive:
Unico Concept Sketches
Chloe the cat concecept art
The West Wind concept art
The Night Wind concept art
Byron concept art.
Also, here’s a look at some process sketches for Unico pages/illustrations by Gurihiru:
I actually really love getting to see the ‘rough pencils’ of work before it’s completed, this is pretty cool. Thanks so much to Sam for the interview, and to him and his team for hooking us up with this awesome behind-the-scenes artwork!
That Kickstarter link again is: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1803389958/unico-awakening-manga-by-gurihiru-and-samuel-sattin
Now head back to our My Love Mix-up! episode for the audio of this interview and much more!