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Studio Proteus: American Manga Awards Hall of Fame Spotlight

It's no exaggeration to say that the manga industry—and manga fandom itself—would not be what it is now without the historic contributions of Studio Proteus, the San Francisco-based studio responsible for selecting, acquiring, translating, and localizing some of the most influential manga titles of the 80s, 90s, and 00s. Founded in 1986, the studio worked with publishers like Dark Horse to introduce a generation of fans to titles like Ghost in the Shell, Oh My Goddess!, Appleseed, and more.

Studio Proteus was celebrated this past weekend when they were presented with the Manga Publishing Hall of Fame award at the 2nd American Manga Awards held at the Japan Society in New York City. Recipients included late founder and editor Toren Smith; translators Dana Lewis, Alan Gleason, and Frederik Schodt; manga artist and letterer Tomoko Saitō; comic creator Adam Warren; and comic letterers Tom Orzechowski and L. Lois Buhalis.

Orzechowski was on hand over the weekend at Anime NYC's Studio Proteus panel, joined by Dark Horse Manga editor Carl Horn and PEOW Studio's Patrick Crotty, who announced their upcoming release of Kow Yokoyama's S.F.3.D Chronicles and S.F.3.D ORIGINAL reprint edition, in partnership with Zimmerit. The panel was moderated by writer and Mangasplaining podcaster Deb Aoki, who also oversees the Planning Committee of the American Manga Awards.

For those unaware of this slice of manga history, Dark Horse was one of Studio Proteus' biggest clients—much of their manga line was curated and translated by Studio Proteus, especially with Toren Smith at the helm. Not only did he hand-select their titles, but it was together with his then-wife, Tomoko Saitō, that they first introduced American audiences to a new paradigm of localized manga—re-lettered sound effects, and the later demonized “flipped” left-to-right pages, which were a request from the Japanese licensors.

Orzechowski, who first met Smith in 1987 at Bay-Con in San Jose, where Smith was running one of the anime rooms, regaled attendees with stories about what it was like re-lettering in the days before the modern era of digital fonts and typesetting software. Back then, pages were delivered in stacks of oversized, pre-press film, which needed to be printed in a darkroom before large-volume reproduction. This also meant that all typesetting and lettering—including sound effects like your typical POW!s and WAAAAH!s needed to be meticulously done by hand. The original dialogue bubbles or sound effects were carefully cut out of the film and replaced with acetate on which the new dialogue or letter art could be hand-painted. It was helpful that Orzechowski had extensive experience doing just this. Before joining Studio Proteus, he had already had a long and illustrious career working with Marvel Comics, where he worked on projects like Black Panther, Spawn, and several X-Men titles, notably Uncanny X-Men.

The panel also included a video message from manga artist Masamune Shirow, best known for classics like Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed. He congratulated Studio Proteus on its accomplishment and remarked on the studio's contributions to the manga industry. And speaking of Shirow, there was an anecdote from Orzechowski about translator Frederik Schodt, whose translation work introduced English-speaking audiences to works like Phoenix, Astro Boy, The Rose of Versailles, and, of course, Ghost in the Shell. At one point, apparently, he had faxed Shirow in frustration over one passage he was having difficulty localizing. “I don't know what you mean by this passage?” he had written, to which Shirow had responded, “Actually, I don't know what I meant by that passage either; just do whatever you want.”

The bulk of the panel reviewed the history of Studio Proteus, beginning with its origins under Toren Smith, and highlighted the accomplishments of members recognized with the Hall of Fame award.

Perhaps nothing sums up the panel like an exchange during the Q&A, in which an audience member asked Orzechowski if he had any comments about his hand-lettering days. “I miss it,” he said. “It was like my own blood flowing out of my pen… Manga was magical.”