Minetarō Mochizuki

He grew up in a single parent household and spent a lot of time alone at home, which is when he would start drawing on the shoji at home. He became an avid reader of the horror manga of Kazuo Umezu in elementary school.^[1]

Mochizuki graduated from Tokyo Design Gakuin. In 1984, he won the 11th Tetsuya Chiba Award for outstanding newcomer for the short story "Tadatada Honobo no Heart".^[2] He wanted to participate in the competition, because he respected Tetsuya Chiba and knew that he would be one of the judges.^[3] This newcomer award led to his first publication as a professional manga artist in 1985 in Kodansha's seinen manga magazine Weekly Young Magazine. He immediately published his first series, Bataashi Kingyo, which became a success and ran until 1988. In the comedy, an unpopular high school student joins the swimming team of his school for his romantic interest, even though he cannot swim.^[4][5]

He continued working for Young Magazine and was successful throughout the 1990s. He drew the horror manga Zashiki Onna (1993) and the comedy Samehada Otoko to Momojiri Onna (1993–1994). One of his biggest successes came with Dragon Head, which he serialized in Young Magazine from 1994 until 1999. The manga follows a high school student whose train enters a tunnel and has an accident. When he manages to get out of the tunnel, he finds the world devastated and tries to unravel what happened.^[5]

In the 2000s, he started working for the magazine Morning instead, although still with Kodansha. He published the series Maiwai (2002–2008) and Tōkyō Kaidō (2008–2010) in the magazine.^[3]

In the 2010s, he started to work for Shogakukan's seinen magazines as well and shifted his focus towards adaptations rather than original stories. He drew Chiisakobee, based on a novel by Shūgorō Yamamoto, for Big Comic Spirits from 2012 until 2015. After a break, he drew a manga version of the animation film Isle of Dogs upon Wes Anderson's and Kunichi Nomura's request and serialized it in Morning in 2018.^[6][3]

Mochizuki was influenced by the New Wave movement that came up in the late 1970s and early 1980s.^[7][5] He cites especially heta-uma artist Yoshikazu Ebisu as an influence in his work.^[3]

In the 2000s, with Tōkyō Kaidō, his style became gradually more streamlined, with more attention to details and to body parts. He thought that limiting lines and choosing them well would make the series stronger.^[3]

Three of his works have been adapted into live-action films. Bataashi Kingyo (1990) was directed by Joji Matsuoka, Samehada Otoko to Momojiri Onna (1999) by Katsuhito Ishii and Dragon Head (2003) by George Iida.^[6] Ochanoma was adapted into a TV drama in 1993.^[8]

His work has been translated into English,^[6] French,^[9] Spanish,^[10] Italian^[11] and German.^[12]

He won the Award for Excellence at the 4th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize^[13] and the Award for General Manga at the 21st Kodansha Manga Award for Dragon Head. For Chiisakobee, he received an Excellence Award at the 17th Japan Media Arts Festival in 2013.^[14][15] The manga also won the Fauve D'Angoulême - Prix de la Série at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2017.^[16]