Contemporary Creatives — Hirohiko Araki
Hirohiko Araki is a manga artist, whose most popular work is “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure”, a currently 8-part series of manga. He is 62 years old, born in Sendai, Japan. Growing up, he read 70’s manga and his father’s art books, which Araki assumes informed his motive to create manga. In 1982, he began his signature series, which is still ongoing to this day, with a number of spin-off manga, books and games.
Each part follows a protagonist’s journey to take down a major antagonist. While not every battle is won, they learn to rise up once again with renewed strength. Araki himself says that the theme of his manga is “an affirmation that humanity is wonderful.”
His style of drawing his characters changes significantly over time, adopting a style with more realism over time. His approach to writing the story and battles also changed, leaning more towards strategy instead of brute force. Fans of his work can clearly see how Araki lets his art grow with his series, and it is well-received, giving each part a fresh feel and look.
His style stands out from other manga and anime titles. His style of drawing is much more stylised than other manga. Araki cultivates a sense of strangeness and eccentricity in his stories and characters, and together with his use of bright colours, unique character designs, dynamic posing and perspective, it tells readers from the start that they should expect something out of the ordinary. The whole series exudes its own unique character, and he embraces it fully.
Araki has mentioned that Paul Gaugin and his approach to colour theory had influenced the way he selects his colours as well. His characters’ gestures in volume cover art and illustrations are inspired by various media, like illustrations by artists including Antonio Lopez and Tony Viramontes, horror movies, photography for fashion brands, even panels from other manga. The poses that he draws his characters in become a popular part of the series due to their eccentricity and extravagance.
Araki and his manga does influence other works by bringing many new ideas to the genre of shonen battle manga. He allowed for abilities that did not focus on use in a fight, or he would include strong female characters in his stories despite it being discouraged at the time. Such aspects of his work would pave the way for other authors.
Because of the popularity of his series and his artwork, Araki was requested to do a number of works. Most prominently, in 2009, Araki was selected by the Musée du Louvre to create an original work set at the museum, and in 2020, he created an official poster for the Tokyo Paralympics.
On a personal note, I love Araki’s manga because he has a unique spin on the challenges he puts the heroes in. The abilities he gives all his characters makes for exciting and memorable fights. Sometimes, not a single punch is thrown in these high-stakes battles, making it hard to tell if the heroes will pull through.
image sources in order: here here and here (← i can’t find an official picture of it, hopefully that will do)