Katsuhiro Otomo: The creator of

Katsuhiro Otomo was born in April 1954 in Miyagi, a rural province situated 400 kilometers northeast of Tokyo. Even in his youth his love was for the screen and he often endured a trip lasting for three hours to visit the nearest film theatre. He was mostly impressed by american films of the seventies like "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Easy Rider". After finishing school he moved to Tokyo in 1973 and released his first comic on the very same year: an adaptation of "Prosper Merimée's" In the years afterwards he created a great number of short stories for "Action" magazine which have been reprinted in four books. 1979 he released his first longer comic story "Fireball". Otomo's style caused enthusiasm right away. The journal "Asahi": "Just like the New-Wave-Movies that have closed the chapter of the old-fashioned Hollywood-style Otomo is now going to break with the traditions of the japanese comics." His story "Domu" of 230 pages he wrote from 1980 to 1982 has ranked number one of the bestseller charts with 500,000 copies sold in 1983 and earned him the "Great Science-Fiction Award" which formerly have been awarded only to novels.