Masamune Shirow is a well-known
manga artist and writer. He is most popular for his
science fiction works, and the philosophical ideas that he presents in his work.
Masamune Shirow was born in
Kobe City,
Hygo Prefecture,
Japan on November 23, 1961, with the name
Masanori Ota. He went to the
Osaka University of Art and studied
drawing and
oil painting. During his time at the Universtity, he wrote his first published
manga,
Black Magic.
After graduating, he went on to teach
high school art, and also wrote
Appleseed in 1985,
Dominion Tank Police in 1986. In 1986, he also won the
Galaxy Award(similar to a
Hugo Award), for
Appleseed as
Best Science Fiction Comic. Shirow realeased three more volumes up until the release of the fourth in 1989.
After
directing and doing
character design in an
anime production of his first work,
Black Magic, he went on to do
Ghost in the Shell. The first episode appeared in 1990, and also during this time
Dominion Tank Police was made into an
anime series.
After writing many episodes of what might or might not become
Appleseed Volume Five, he decided to take a
hiatus from his life work,
Appleseed. Also he had been working on the
Neurohard series. A series of books on how to make
animation,
comics,
games,
etc.
In 1995, he released a new
Dominion Tank Police, Conflict 1. In November 1995, he began the sequel to
Ghost in the Shell,
Man-Machine Interface. This date also was the release date of the
Ghost in the Shell anime movie, directed by
Mamoru Oshii.
Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface has been finished in
Japan, and will be released into a single volume, hopefully, in June 2001. The American release will probably come almost a year later, and will have two versions, the "non-sex scene" version and the "more graphic sex scene" version, which will be more graphic than the original Japanese version.
Shirow is well-known, for drawing rather perverted scenes in his comics, but most of the time, it's rather small, and in the case of
Ghost in the Shell, actually introduce more science fiction ideas.
Shirow is very private, and does not allow his picture to be photographed as Shirow, nor does he go to
conventions. The birth name was found through a search on
IMDB, and could be unreliable. He enjoys reading, and likes to keep pet spiders.
His fans look upon him with great respect except for one small fault. It takes him forever to finish a manga. Sometimes equated to "
Kubrick in Slow Motion", many fans have volunteered to send him
amphetamines. Of course, most people accept that they can't rush Shirow's work. Though he is known to throw out completed pages of work, much like
Hayao Miyazaki.
Bibliography:
Sources:
Ghost in the Shell - Masamune Shirow
IMDB - http://us.imdb.com