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Hiroki Otsuka's Samurai Beam Manga Posted Online
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
The Japan Society in New York has posted the first 14 pages of Boys of Summer artist Hiroki Otsuka's new manga Samurai Beam, which Otsuka has been creating as part of the Japan Society's first "mangaka artist-in-residence" program.
Samurai Beam centers on a "teenager who comes to Japan Society's exhibition as part of a school group. The student literally gets drawn into the artwork as [an Utagawa Kuniyoshi]-inspired warrior and is called on to save New York City from the multitude of monsters marauding throughout Kuniyoshi's prints."
Each week during Otsuka's residency a new episode of Samurai Beam will be made available online.
Tokyopop had released volume 1 of Otsuka's Boys of Summer manga in 2006, but it was pulled from numerous store shelves due to graphic content. Volume 2 was also scheduled for a 2006 release but was postponed indefinitely. Tokyopop began online serialization of volume 2 in September 2009.
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