About me

Name: Lucas...
is a hyper-advanced cyborg- his body consists of all of his active drives; his memory of all of his active sources. These are all variable, but on a periodic basis his bio components crave energy and sleep and remind him of his basic identity-layer (yes, I crave sleeping)...

Email: lucas2501@gmail.com
Location: Malaysia
Mechanical Engineer

Holiday Notice: 18th to 22nd Aug 05
See you guys when I get back! ^_^

The works featured are copyrights to Masamune Shirow and the respective companies. All copyrights infringements on my pages are un-intentional and these pages are NOT in any way for commercial purposes.
Please inform me of any inconsistencies, mistake or copyrights breach on my part and it will be ammended/corrected.
Also, Views & Opinions on the MSHP are my own (Lucas) and not that of Shirow or the respective companies.

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What's Dai Gassaku?

A little something from my humble little Shirow collection...

Dai Gassaku [ 大合作 ] Tony Takezaki (Part 1) / Kenichi Sonada (Part 2) / Yoshitoh Asari (Both) Afternoon KCDX 1504 Kodansha Release Date: 22nd February 2002 ISBN4-06-334504-1 C9979 Recommended Price: 1000Yen 158 pages Contributing Manga Artists: Kosuke Fujishima (Aa Megami Sama!), Hiroaki Samura (Mugen no Junin), Masamune Shirou (Independent), Megumu Okada (Shadow Skill), Yuzo Takada (3x3 Eyes), Satoshi Shiki (Kamikaze), Hiroyuki Utatane (Seraphic Feather), Kia Asamiya (Silent Moebius), etc... (Total no. of 30+ artists each part)

Dai Gassaku / 大合作 first appeared in Monthly AFTERNOON magazine (Kodansha) Feb 1997 issue to commemorate the magazine's 10th anniversary. It was a special collaboration project bringing together 30+ artists who are contributing / had contributed to the magazine's monthly manga installments at the time. The artists combined their unique art styles to come up with 50 pages of what could be best described as: madness and chaos! ^_^ The end result is a somewhat strange yet entertaining short manga mega-mix. The project was repeated again in Feb 2001 issue with Dai Gassaku / 大合作 Part 2 for the magazine's 14th year anniversary. These two parts were later collected in tankubon form in year 2002. Tony Takezaki was team captain for Dai Gassaku part 1 while Kenichi Sonada took charge for part 2.

For the Dai Gasaku project, all the major Afternoon stable of artists came out in full force with the popular ones contributing more artwork than the rest- names like Kosuke Fujishima, Hiroaki Samura, Kenichi Sonada, all are manga artists well-known worldwide. It is a bit of weird case for Masamune Shirow to be even included in this mix. Shirow Sensei's contribution were only in Part 1 about 3 pages worth, and an absolutely fabulous Belldandy in a massive group-art ^_^. In the credits page for the artists, all the contributors had some manga attributed to them... except Shirow! He was credited as a freelancer. I don't think Shirow Sensei ever contributed to Afternoon Mag before this project... 

For this Dai Gassaku project, Shirow contributed his trademark Takochu- or "Biological Weapon Masamune" as it was known in this manga strip. Its function is to shock the brains of evil man-eating dinosaurs into submission, but sadly the Takochu spawns (with numbers to rival Orion's massive Octopus fest) also attached themselves to the good guys. So it had to be destroyed for the story to progress. Poor Tako.... :) (warned you it made no sense!) By the way, in typical Shirow fashion, he's the only artist to include lenghty footnotes in his first appearance panel.

Biological Weapon Masamune Attack!
Notice the footnotes by Shirow Sensei...

Dai Gassaku is definitely one of the weirder ones in my Shirow collection. The main odd factor is the fact that this is the first time I've seen Shirow collaborating with other artists (and almost 30 of them no less!), which is very much different than contributing a short story of his own to the various mags and doujins. If you are inclined to get this book for your collection, be warned that this Dai Gassaku has some disturbing scenes of gore and violence (which is to be expected when you put Manji of BOTI in a crowd of weirdos! ^_^). For me, I am happy enough with the 3 pages of Takochu and a Shirow Belldandy, plus I do follow works of Hiroaki Samura, Kenichi Sonada, Satoshi Shiki.. most of the Afternoon artists, so its all good!

Feel the power of the Masamune Shock!

::::::: a little note :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Since we're on the subject of AFTERNOON magazine, I am really curious about something that was advertised many years ago. In this Afternoon mag advert for Summer 2000 manga line up:

Remember this item (Fujinsho?) from the old MSHP news?

Well, year 2000 has come and gone, and many years passed since. What on earth happened to this Shirow project? My impression after looking at this is an almost a done deal between Shirow Sensei and the Afternoon editors. What could have happened? Was the project dropped or delayed or...? I have no idea. It wouldn't be surprising for Shirow Sensei to drop announced projects, but I am curious as to the reason why this was unsuccessful. I sincerely hope this project has not become Galgrease or something in Uppers...! That would be a big shame.

posted by: Lucas at 03/25/05 11:21 | link | comments | Category: shirow misc, lucas collection

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