Tensai Bakabon, Akko-chan Creator Fujio Akatsuka Dies – Anime News Network.
Anime News Network do as good a job as they can in trying to get over his importance, but it’s hard when his work hasn’t had that much of an impact in the English speaking world.
I’d learnt of Tensai Bakabon via Schodt’s “Manga, Manga, Manga”, but it wasn’t until I wrote about Akko-chan while going through that Top 100 list, that I got an idea of where he stood in pantheon of important manga artists.
His gag manga style is one that you can recognise even if you don’t know who did it. And its influence can still be seen today, in some of the character designs in Kaiba, and in Oh! Edo Rocket. He is definitely one of those creators that we should know more about in the west – his work is a missing piece of the puzzle that helps us understand the current manga market’s foundation.
As we’re only now getting a broader range of Tezuka’s work, it may be wishful thinking hope that we begin to get the work of the creators who immediately followed him into print in English.