| Masakazu Katsura | |
|---|---|
Masakazu Katsura with fan |
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| Born | December 10, 1962 Fukui |
| Occupation | Manga artist |
Masakazu Katsura (桂 正和 Katsura Masakazu, born December 10, 1962) is a Japanese manga artist who is best known for several works of manga, including Dream Fighter Wingman, Shadow Lady, DNA², Video Girl Ai, I"s, and Zetman. He has also worked on the character designs for Iria: Zeiram the Animation, which was based on the movie Zeiram.
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He was born in the prefecture of Fukui in Japan. The turning point in his life was an illness for which he was bedridden, during which time he taught himself a different way to draw. This is noticeable by comparing the style of Wingman (which he started before getting ill) with that of his later works, more realistic.
Video Girl Ai was made into a six episode OVA, starting with the first volume. This has been released in North America. A live-action movie was also made of the story. The main action of the five-volume series DNA² was made into an anime television show that did not sell well enough to finish, so the story was concluded with a short OVA, which was also released in North America. I"s was made into at least two anime OVAs: one two-episode side story, and one six-episode summary of the manga.
Katsura also performed as a vocalist on the songs "Tomorrow Will Be Tomorrow" and "Unseen Dream" from the two soundtracks for the Video Girl Ai anime.
He is also a huge fan of Batman, something which has influenced his work, most clearly seen in Shadow Lady. The occasional Batman reference pops up in his works from time to time. For example, in Video Girl Ai, the two main characters, Yota and Ai, go to see a movie called Batman which shows the famous scene of the thug at the beginning of the movie ask "Who are you?" and Batman (actually holding a baseball bat) replies "I'm Bat-Man". This is in homage to the 1989 Tim Burton film. Also, in the early chapters, Yota imitates Batman whenever he grows angry that he is known as "Dateless".
In I"s, there is a brief scene with Ichitaka Seto watching a Zetman (before he wrote Zetman) Movie that has a costume similar to Batman's. He was also fighting a villain similar to Mr. Freeze. Itsuki Akiba did the statue in the movie.
In 2008, Katsura did a design illustration of the Batman costume, based on the costume used in the film The Dark Knight, for Bandai's "Movie Realization" action figure line.[1]