Cyber Blue: Research Notes

Tucker

Title: 

•  Cyber Blue

Author

• Story: Mitsui Ryuuichi

  • Meets-ɯ-ee, Ryɯ-ee-chee

• Art: Hara Tetsuo

  • Hah-rah, Tets-ɯ-oh

Characters

• Weiser

  • Probably supposed to be pronounced like the English word “wiser,” or, if trying to mimic the German pronunciation, like the English word “visor”

• Blue

• Fatso

  • Probably something like “Debu” in the original Japanese

• Rozalie

  • Probably meant to be “Rosary”

• Investigator Tsutsumi

  • Tsɯ-tsɯ-mee
    
    

Other

• Planet Sieg

  • Pronounced like “zeek” (S at the beginning of syllables in German is like English Z, G at end of words pronounced like “K” in most dialects)

  • Means “victory” or “victorious” in German. 

MaxyBee

Manga Details

• Original story - BOB

  • Notable people they were an assistant for

    • None known

  • Notable people they had as assistants

    • None known

  • Other works

    • None known, BOB is largely an enigma, though his author comment on volume 2 depicts him as an aspirational writer wanting to do films, novels, manga, and anything else he can get his hands on.

• Script - Ryuichi Mitsui

  • Notable people they were an assistant for

    • None known

  • Notable people they had as assistants

    • None known

  • Other works

    • None known, Ryuichi Mitsui is largely an enigma.

• Artist - Tetsuo Hara

• Notable people they were an assistant for:

  • Yoshihiro Takahashi (author of Silver Fang: The Shooting Star Gin)

    • Likely on Aozora Fishing (1981, 5 volumes) and Sho to Daichi (1982, 3 volumes), though he would have left the latter series before it was over.

  • Kazuo Koike (author of Lone Wolf & Cub)

    • Tetsuo Hara was a student under Koike at his Gekiga Sonjuku, a training school started to preserve gekiga, a style of comic that was considered more dramatic, mature and detailed than manga.

• Notable people they had as assistants:

  • Koji Maki (Godsider, Metal K)

  • Masanori Morita (Rokudenashi BLUES, ROOKIES)

  • Shinji Imaizumi (Kami-sama wa Southpaw)

  • Yasuhiro Watanabe (author of a LOT of baseball manga)

  • Hirohisa Onikubo (very accomplished hentai artist, chief assistant for Hirohiko Araki on Battle Tendency/Stardust Crusaders)

  • Katsuhiro Nagasawa (The Edge)

  • Tetsuya Hasegawa (Napoleon - Lion’s Era)

  • Yuuko Uramoto (The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up: A Magical Story, written by Marie Kondo)

• Other works (highlights):

  • Iron Don Quixote (1982, 2 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump)

    • Debut! A motocross manga, didn’t catch on. Currently being fan-translated, so future flop eligible with any luck. I mean I said this back when we did the Takeki Ryusei episode and they’re not done yet, but hope springs eternal!

  • Fist of the North Star (1983-1988, 27 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump) written by Buronson

    • You don’t need me to tell you what this is. Star-making, genre-defining, massively influential. You’re already dead.

  • The Magnificent Bastard: Keiji (1990-1993, 18 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump) based on Ichi-mu-an Furyuki by Keiichiro Ryu

    • Hara’s second hit, a fictionalised biography of Keiji Maeda, a somewhat flowery samurai gangster. Revisited many times since with Hara and longtime editor/partner Nobuhiko Horie overseeing sequels and spin-offs. Also literally just got licensed this February by Kodansha for a print release later this year, meaning this is a Shueisha-born title, owned by Coamix, and published in English by Kodansha. That’s bananas. 

  • Kagemusha - Tokugawa Ieyasu (1994, 6 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump) written by Sho Aikawa, based on work by Keiichiro Ryu

    • An alternate history of the first Shogun and founder of Japan, and the person who must use his likeness to become his ‘shadow’.

  • Takeki Ryusei (1995, 3 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump)

    • Want to know more about this one? Listen to Shonen Flop episode 81!

  • Sakon - Sengoku Fuuunroku (1997-2000, 6 vols, Monthly Shonen Jump) written by Shingo Futahashi, based on work by Keiichiro Ryu

    • A Monthly Shonen Jump sequel to Kagemusha about Shima Sakon, and his imagined life past history’s record of his (apparent) death. 

  • Fist of the Blue Sky (2001-2010, 22 vols, Weekly Comic Bunch) supervised by Buronson

    • A prequel of sorts to Fist of the North Star, set in 1930s Shanghai. A cool comic for cool people, and it had to be, as the flagship of Coamix, the new company Hara, editor Horie, City Hunter creator Tsukasa Hojo and others founded in the wake of Weekly Shonen Jump’s changing environment. Was in English for a while in the long-defunct Raijin Comics, a weekly-then-monthly competitor to Viz’s Shonen Jump in the early 00s.

  • Ikusa no Ko: The Legend of Nobunaga Oda (2010-2022, 20 vols, Monthly Comic Zenon) with Seibo Kitahara and Yuuta Kumagai

    • Hara’s last series as an artist due to a combination of a deteriorating eye condition and a desire to work with young talents and pass on his skills. A semi-biographical manga of Nobunaga Oda, focusing on his youth.

  • Cyber Blue - The Lost Children (2011-2012, 4 vols, Comic Zenon) art by Motoki Yoshihara

    • A remake of Cyber Blue, reimagining the story with an all-new artist involved. Immediately followed by:

  • X Battlers - Cyber Blue The Last Stand (2012-2013, 3 vols, Comic Zenon) art by Motoki Yoshihara

    • A sequel to the remake, promising the strongest opponents in any Tetsuo Hara work, which is a bold-ass claim!

• Publishing

  • Run Dates: 

    • November 22, 1988 to July 10, 1989

  • Series it replaced

• Godsider by Koji Maki (8 vols, did okay)

• Series that replaced it

  • Chameleon Jail by Kazuhiko Watanabe and Takehiko Inoue (2 vols, flop, SHONEN FLOP EPISODE 120)

• Series that started at the same time as it

  • Magical Taruruto by Tatsuya Egawa (21 vols, notable hit)

  • I am Shitataka-kun by Motoei Shinzawa (5 vols, did okay)

  • Dinoventure - Stories of Dinosaurs by Kishi Daimuro  (1 vol, flop, but Akira Toriyama loved it! Flop eligible, too.)

• Chapters/Volumes: 

  • 31 chapters/4 volumes

Manga Itself / Misc thoughts

• Curiously, Cyber Blue looked like a hit for most of its run. It received no less than two covers, four lead colour pages, and three centre colours. But either hyper or goodwill gave way to some sort of reality and its last two months saw its popularity bottom out and the series wrap up. It’s enough to make it feel unclear if this was a simple cancellation or if other factors were involved. 

• When witnessing Blue being blown to pieces in chapter 1, please remember that Robocop came out just the year before. It’s not subtle.

• When witnessing Blue reborn as a cybernetic being in chapter 1, please remember that Terminator came out just 4 years before. It’s not subtle.

• You can tell that Tetsuo Hara loves his pop culture, as characters resembling Mike Tyson, Madonna and Prince feature quite handily in this series, and Blue himself looks quite a lot like Mad Max and Billy Idol fused together, with a touch of Stallone sneer in for good measure.

• When reprinted by Tokuma Shoten in 2011 both writers’ credits are removed, declaring Tetsuo Hara as the only creator. A bit of revisionist history right before the remake series came out that year.