Yamatogawa

A mangaka with a young but nevertheless impressive career who has caught my attention is 大和川 / Yamatogawa; his works are currently limited to only two compilations, but they are conspicuous through their extremely high quality.

His first compilation is “Aqua Bless”, a collection of short to medium length stories. The stories are original, varied and highly entertaining, and the art style he has developed is unique and very well executed. I particularly appreciate the way he manages to centre many of his stories around a novel and interesting device (such as psychic powers and the like).

“Witchcraft”, his second compilation, is even more impressive than the first, having been realised as a complete and continuous story; the story is quite strange, even leaving aside the focus on psychic yakuza, which naturally makes me think all the more highly of it. Characters are also well realised and humour is omnipresent. The high standard of art is also maintained and improved.

His works currently only span two compilations, with their publication separated by a year; a fairly auspicious start to his career, so hopefully he will be able to continue this. With only two compilations, I don’t think it is really possible to comment on the direction his career or work (other than to say he clearly prefers rather well endowed male protagonists) is taking, although I would be confident in saying that it looks extremely promising.

This is from Tenma, not published in a compilation as of yet. Hopefully he will meet with enough commercial success to warrant the assistants required to increase his output. Waiting another year for a compilation is a trial indeed…

I’m not aware of any other works by him other than those published in Tenma or in compilation form, and those works are popular and easy enough to get. There is almost no information regarding Yamatogawa around and he doesn’t seem to have a homepage, so there’s not much else to say.

It’s highly evident even from only two compilations that Yamatogawa is an artist well worth following, who can skilfully combine art and story telling in producing novel works, and I am certainly anticipating his future works eagerly; his works possess a broad appeal, so there probably aren’t many who wouldn’t profit from giving them a look.