Masa kawaguchi biography of michael

What's Michael?

Manga

What's Michael? (ホワッツマイケル?, Howattsu Maikeru?) is a Japanese manga series created by Makoto Kobayashi. In 1984, it began its serialization in the Weekly Morning magazine. The manga shows Michael, an orange American Shorthairtabby cat, his feline friends, and other domesticated pets in a series of humorous episodes. Michael is not a specific cat, but rather a feline version of the everyman as he appeared in drastically different settings across chapters: he's a normal cat in some chapters (with different owners in different chapters), an anthropomorphic cat in others, and he even dies in some chapters.

Dark Horse Comics released the series in the US as eleven volumes between 1997 and 2006, and in 2020 released the first volume of a "Fatcat Collection", which spanned the first six volumes.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] The manga was presented in the standard left to right American reading format, by Dark Horse, with the artwork flipped to change the reading style.

In 1986, What's Michael? received the Kodansha Manga Award for general manga.[14]

The manga was adapted into two animeOVA films in 1985 and 1988, and a 45-episode TV series in 1988–1989.

Story

Most episodes of the series fall into one of two kinds of stories. The first portrays the cats in a realistic way, living out normal lives with their owners. It finds humor in how humans observe their pets' naturally quirky behavior. The second type of story is complete fantasy in which all the animals are given anthropomorphic characteristics such as walking on two legs, wearing clothes, and being able to talk to each other; these episodes place the animals in a storyline that mixes up their human personae with normal animal behavior.

Chapters

No.Release date ISBN
1 18 January 19854-06-176507-8

Chapter 01-21

  1. Michael's Intro‼ (マイケル登場‼)
  2. Beauty and Kitty (美女と子猫)
  3. Terrorist (テロリスト)
  4. A Day in Michael's Life (マイケルの１日)
  5. Suspicious Niboshi Case (疑惑のニボシ)
  6. Michael VS. Rocky (マイケルＶＳ.ロッキー)

See also

Notes

  1. ^No single studio is responsible for the work. Various were subcontracted for each episode, including but not limited to Daume and Shaft.

References

  1. ^Kobayashi, Makoto (1997). What's Michael? - Michael's Album. Translated by Lewis, Dana; Smith, Toren. Dark Horse Comics (published 1 April 1997). ISBN .
  2. ^Kobayashi, Makoto (30 July 1997). What's Michael? - Living Together. Translated by Lewis, Dana; Smith, Toren. Dark Horse Comics. ISBN .
  3. ^Kobayashi, Makoto (1997). What's Michael? - Off the Deep End. Translated by Lewis, Dana; Sather, Jeanne; Smith, Toren. Dark Horse Comics (published 29 October 1997). ISBN .
  4. ^Kobayashi, Makoto (1997). What's Michael? - Michael's Mambo. Translated by Lewis, Dana; Sather, Jeanne; Smith, Toren. Dark Horse Comics (published 28 January 1998). ISBN .
  5. ^Kobayashi, Makoto (November 2001). What's Michael? - Michael's Favorite Spot. Translated by Kotobuki, Hisashi; Gleason, Alan; Lewis, Dana; Winkler, Erin; Smith, Toren; Hernandez, Lea. Dark Horse Comics (published 16 January 2002). ISBN .
  6. ^Kobayashi, Makoto (17 July 2002). What's Michael? - A Hard Day's Life. Translated by Lewis, Dana; Hernandez, Lea. Dark Horse Comics. ISBN .
  7. ^Kobayashi, Makoto (2003). What's Michael? - Fat Cat in the City. Translated by Lewis, Dana; Hernandez, Lea; Smith, Toren. Dark Horse Comics (published 19 February 2003). ISBN .
  8. ^Kobayashi, Makoto (2003). What's Michael? - Show Time. Translated by Lewis, Dana; Hernandez, Lea; Smith, Toren. Dark Horse Comics (published 17 September 2003). ISBN .
  9. ^Kobayashi, Makoto (2004). What's Michael? - The Ideal Cat. Dark Horse Comics (published 14 April 2004). ISBN .
  10. ^Kobayashi, Makoto (2005). What's Michael? - Sleepless Nights. Dark Horse Comics (published 22 June 2005). ISBN .
  11. ^Kobayashi, Makoto (2006). What's Michael? - Planet of the Cats. Dark Horse Comics (published 10 May 2006). ISBN .
  12. ^Kobayashi, Makoto (2020). What's Michael?: Fatcat Collection Volume 1. Translated by Lewis, Dana; Smith, Toren. Dark Horse Comics (published 12 February 2020). ISBN .
  13. ^Dark Horse comics (12 February 2020). "What's Michael? Fatcat Collection Volume 1 TPB :: Profile :: Dark Horse Comics". Retrieved 5 July 2020.
  14. ^Joel Hahn. "Kodansha Manga Awards". Comic Book Awards Almanac. Retrieved 21 August 2007.

External links