License Wishlist Wednesday!!!!! The manga of Kazue Kato

I've been wanting to do this for a while, and I'm pretty excited about it, actually. Today is License Wishlist Wednesday! This will be a regular feature here, where I'll talk about a series I want licensed in the US- on Wednesdays. I might not do it every Wednesday (I'll try), but it'll probably be on Wednesdays only. I'll see how it goes. Sometimes I'll know some info about the manga and have quite a bit to say (like today), and sometimes I won't know much about them at all beyond the fact that they look cool, and thus won't have much to say. Also, save for a small bit, I can't actually read Japanese, so most of my impressions will be based on visuals, scanlations, an anime if there is one, or what I've read about the series. I'll mainly stick to doing one series per installment, but for today, since this is the first time, and since the mangaka only has two series (one of which is short, while the other is fairly new), I'll do a two for one special!
So here we go:

Today's LWW subject is: The works of mangaka, Kazue Kato!
That's her!
One day (maybe in 2005 or 2006) I stumbled upon the website for Kodansha's Shonen Sirius manga anthology. Browsing through the website, most of the series, with a few exceptions, seemed kind of "meh," at least based on art. But one series REALLY caught my eye. Hard.
It was Space Traveller Robo & Usakichi

It's about a robot named Robin, and a rabbit named Usakichi. As the title suggests, they travel space. Robin is living by himself on a tiny planet when one day Usakichi lands nearby after escaping from jail. I've never read the series, but I can only assume Sci-fi hijinks ensue. As I mentioned before, this series instantly caught my eye, and the picture above should tell you why.

Look at it!! How could you not want to read that????


The series only lasted five volumes. I'm not sure if it was canceled or if the story completed at five volumes, but either way I'd love to own it. After the series finished, there was a follow up one-shot entitled Stargazer Robo & Usakichi.
Enough of color illustrations. How about a look at the inside?

A nice busy city and Robin in some weird transformation. The art looks lively and detailed without being cluttered. As far as I know, this was her first work. The style here is pretty impressive for someone's first series. Many mangaka's first manga usually suffer a bit in the art department and might appear a bit on the amateur side, though eventually improving. If her art was this good at the start of her career, I'd love to see how much it improves in several more years.

Who: Probably Del Rey.
Likelihood: Every time Del Rey announces new licenses, my fingers are firmly crossed for this to be among them. They've licensed several Shonen Sirius titles before, and (if it was indeed canceled) they're no strangers to 5 volume series that were canceled (Toto!). Sirius isn't particularly popular in Japan, and I'm not sure how well their series have done here, but Del Rey still picks them up occasionally. I'll say a 25% chance? (Del Rey, this is your cue to prove me wrong at this weekend's Anime Expo). If Ao no Exorcist, which I'll get to in a moment, becomes a hit, I could also see Del Rey bringing Robo and Usakichi to capitalize on the success of Ao no Exorcist.

Okay, moving forward. After Robo was done, Kazue Kato kind of disappeared for a bit. Then last year she had two one-shots for Jump SQ. This, of course, made me ecstatic. A well received one-shot in a Jump magazine could easily lead to a series, and Jump has a much higher profile than Sirius.

HoshiOta, about a high school student's encounter with some aliens, appeared in Jump SQ II (a seasonal issue of mostly one-shots, like Akamaru Jump), and that was followed by Miyama Uguisu Yashika Jiken (The Miyama Uguisu Mansion Incident), about an exorcist getting rid of a demon in a mansion, which appeared in the actual Jump SQ. The second one holds a special place in my otaku heart for being the first manga I ever attempted to read in Japanese (and vaguely understood!!!).

The second one-shot has now been turned into a series in Jump SQ called Ao no Exorcist (or Blue Exorcist). The protagonist from HoshiOta also seems to have made it into this series, being repurposed as the main character's brother.

The main character, Rin, is an exorcist whose dad just happens to be...Satan, which means Rin himself is a demon. His power is only released when he draws his sword (which has a blue flame, hence the title), and he uses that to fight demons, with the goal of eventually killing Satan. There's a bit more to it than that, like he and his brother being raised by a priest, who dies after being possessed by Satan, and the mysterious, flamboyant Mephisto Pheles who invites Rin to be an exorcist after that happens.

A story about exorcists, or about a demon fighting his own kind isn't really anything new, but where the plot actually goes matters more than the basic concept. From the bit I've seen, it doesn't seem quite as imaginative as Robo & Usakichi does, but this is just starting out, so we'll see. Although, what I have seen I really like.

Who: Viz. Who else? It's Jump.
Likelihood: 100%. It's a Jump series with action, swords, monsters, and nice art. It's a no-brainer. The question is when. This is a monthly series, meaning the volumes take a bit longer to come out, so it'll be a while before we see this here, unless Viz were to put it in Shonen Jump like Ultimo (which seems doubtful). The series will probably stick around; Jump SQ is far more forgiving than Weekly Jump when it comes to series cancellations.

So that's all she wrote. Or all she's written and drawn so far. Kazue Kato is one talented lady, so I hope I've sparked your interest in her, if only a tiny bit. If you wanna see some more of her artwork, be sure to check out her blog: http://katoukikaku.jugem.jp/ She occasionally posts some drawing and sketches, and re-posts some art from her older (and now defunct) website.


I apologize if this post is a little too image heavy. I got a bit carried away, but I'm a big fan of her work, and I just wanted to spread the love. I found the images around the web, many from Kazue Kato's old and new websites, as well as the old Sirius website, and some I found elsewhere. The scanned pages from Robo and Usakichi were from some random forum I stumbled upon, so "thank you" to whoever scanned that, as well as the other scanned images.