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Shōjo Manga Pioneer Moto Hagio Heads to Comic-Con
posted on by Egan Loo
Fantagraphics Books has announced on Monday that shōjo manga pioneer Moto Hagio will appear as a special guest at Comic-Con International in San Diego this July. Fantagraphics will announce more details on Hagio's planned speaking event and panel at the July 22-25 convention soon.
Hagio helped pioneer both modern shōjo manga and modern science fiction manga. Along with To Terra's Keiko Takemiya and Rose of Versailles' Riyoko Ikeda, she co-founded the Year 24 Group — a group of innovative female manga creators who were born in or around the Year Shōwa 24 (1949) and who shaped the now diverse field of shōjo manga. Along the way, Hagio earned the Shogakukan Manga Award, Seiun Award, Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize, and Nihon SF Taisho Award.
Although Hagio debuted in 1969 and has been popular in Japan ever since, only a handful of her works have been released in English until now. Viz Media published A,A' and They Were Eleven, while Fantagraphics' The Comic Journal published her "Hanshin" short story along with an interview in a special shōjo manga issue. They Were Eleven was eventually made into an anime movie of the same name which Central Park Media distributed in North America.
Hagio's appearance will mark the launch of Fantagraphics's new manga line in September. Fantagraphics will ship A Drunken Dream and Other Stories (a collection of short stories by Hagio) that month, followed by the first volume of Takako Shimura's Wandering Son (Hōrō Musuko) manga in December. Kyoto Seika University cultural anthropologist and veteran manga translator Matt Thorn had conducted Hagio's interview in The Comic Journal, and he is now editing Fantagraphics' new manga line. Both of the announced books will be hardcover in the original right-to-left page-turning format.
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