The Mike Toole Show

Saint Shingo

Well guys, I hate to have to keep talking about this, but we lost another one. Anime Factory probably didn't help. But Araki's one of those guys who's always been there for anime, and I just got the sense that he was going to keep going and going and going.

But who is this top-class craftsman of animation and character design, this kung fu master of taking already striking manga art and adding to it remarkable depth and nuance? I absolutely guarantee you, no matter where you are and no matter how old you are, you've seen his work-- and you might've even enjoyed it, too! Let's check it out.

I'll tell you one thing-- it's hard to get a read on Shingo Araki's personal life, or his background. It's been pretty easy to find biographical information about guys like Osamu Dezaki, who applied to Mushi Pro right out of high school, or Babel II which would make him a fixture at Toei for the rest of his career; he worked as animation director and character designer on each show, and it really shows. Take a look at this:

See, the first few waves of color anime were still pretty limited. Tezuka's Kimba, the White Lion team excelled in painting magnificent backgrounds, but the characters were extremely simple-looking. The same goes for early Cutey Honey looks dramatically different from the manga - sleekier, sexier, and remarkably enough, still easy for Toei's legions of animators to crank out drawings of.

During the production of Cutey Honey, in fact, Shingo Araki came across what would become a pretty astonishing secret weapon - his partner! He teamed up with Cutey Honey animator Mahō no Mako-chan, so he was down with magical girls, but Meg-chan would be another showcase for his talent in creating excellent, memorable character designs.

As you can see, he took the opposite approach to some of his earlier stuff; Meg's adventures were drawn in great detail by a few different mangaka (most of the scanned pages I turned up were actually in color!), but Araki had to make something simple and memorable. If you look at Meg's eyes and her spiky, wavy hair, you'll see Araki's trademark style developing. The show was a success-- if you search Grendizer, the following year.

Here, Araki took Gō Nagai's unabashedly primitive character art and transformed it into a vision of a tough, smoldering Japanese Clint Eastwood. Boys loved Grendizer for its crazy robot action, but a surprising amount of girls paid attention to space prince Duke Freed's awkward, doomed romance with earth girl Hikaru Makiba - and you can chalk that up to Araki's fine character artwork. After this point, something interesting happened - the newly-formed Araki Production duo signed on to Leiji Matsumoto's original character designs to animation, while he would serve as animation director. But Araki injured his hand during production, and his wife simply took over for him. It would be the first fruit of a long partnership.

The next fruit, and one of the most famous, is 1979's Ulysses 31. Yes, I'm talking about Ulysses 31 again, deal with it! (Also, watch this hilarious recreation of the OP by hipsters using household items.) Anyway, the TV series we all know and love was actually preceded by a pilot film. The pilot is awfully similar to the finished first episode, but the artwork is very different. Shingo Araki did the character designs for that pilot. For the final series, his work was touched up and refined by Himeno. Let's take a look at how they stack up.

Interesting, isn't it? You can see that Araki had a clean, simple look in mind - but Himeno both made the characters look a touch more western, and gave them (particularly young Telemachus) that signature Araki Pro look. As the 80s progressed, Araki would find work in a variety of places-- character artwork for Saint Seiya.

You were all waiting for me to talk about Saint Seiya. Fine, I'm talking about Saint Seiya! Saint Seiya was already a popular franchise that still generates new animation and merchandise every few years. The show was directed by Kozo Moroshita, who's certainly no slouch-- he directed Grendizer and the Sunbow Transformers cartoons, including the movie-- but he doesn't have that instant association with the series that its creator Kurumada does. But Shingo Araki? Yeah, he's the Saint Seiya guy, for sure! And you can bet that as well as he drew Seiya and Ikki and Hyoga suiting up and kicking ass with cosmos-exploding attacks, Himeno was right there backing him up with surprisingly elegant, restrained artwork of the show's female cast, like Athena and Seiya's mentor, Marin. Despite its broad popularity, Saint Seiya TV was left unfinished, only to be dusted off over a decade later for some more OVAs and films. The character designer for these new works? Why, that'd be one Shingo Araki. Himeno, of course, had his back.

Araki's next big project has become a favorite of mine in recent years, simply because it's finally (albeit via dubious means) available for English-speakers to enjoy. In 1991 he was tapped to provide character designs for Toei's TV version of Mitsuteru Yokoyama's long-revered adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. This series, focusing mainly on Liu Bei and his pals' fights against the corrupt Han dynasty, is full of big fights, machismo, and wonderfully fun, borderline superheroic takes on the story's heroes. The show sometimes looks a little too 1990s, but it suits Araki's macho-yet-elegant style wonderfully well. The entire thing has been fan subtitled; if I had my druthers, I'd somehow compel Toei to put it up region-free on Hulu so we could all enjoy it legally, but if you're curious enough, you'll probably be able to find it anyway.

Another product of the 1990s was an Ring ni Kakero. Seiya looks like Ryuuji, and so does Fuma's titular Kojiro.

Oh, did I say Ring ni Kakero? I guess I'm jumping ahead, but that's a show worth mentioning. A favorite on the Ring ni Kakero 1! There's still new Ring ni Kakero anime coming out to this day, and it bears Araki Pro's signature look.

To bring things home, I'll point out what is unquestionably Shingo Araki's most widely-recognized work. If you're too young for Saint Seiya but too old for Ring ni Kakero, don't worry-- you saw his stuff on TV anyway, I'm betting. I'm talking, of course, about Kazuki Takahashi's original manga by a team that included a pair of character designers-- Michi Himeno and Shingo Araki. Araki wasn't involved in the seemingly endless reel of spinoffs, but he did handle design work for the first two TV shows. You didn't see the first one; nobody in the English-speaking world did, because it didn't have enough plot elements that could be turned into children's toys-- but chances are you saw the second one, and the movie. This isn't a great series, but it's something that an awful lot of people saw-- which means that an awful lot of people saw the nightmare fuel that is the Shingo Araki-designed Yugi's Grandpa.

Bwah! Anyway, I love Shingo Araki's artwork, and while he had a hell of a career, it's a shame that he's departed; this industry is weakened by it. By examining his body of work, it becomes obvious just how important good character design is in creating great animation. No one sticks around forever, but Araki has always been great at leaving you wanting more. Michi Himeno is still around, which is already leading to speculation on whether she'll continue to work on future Ring ni Kakero and Saint Seiya projects. What do you think? Is Seiya her destiny as well as his, or would it be like John Oates doing a sad, acoustic cover of "Method of Modern Love"? Finally, which was your favorite Shingo Araki production? Somebody's gonna be all mad that I didn't talk about Maple Town or Kindaichi Files, and if that person is you, let us know in the comments!