黒田硫黄

Born: 1971

Genre: Youth (青年)

Language complexity: Light

I was first drawn to Iou Kuroda’s work by his art.  I’m tempted to think of Suehiro Maruo and Iou Kuroda’s styles as opposite ends of a spectrum. Maruo’s work parrots retro graphic design in clean lines and gradient screentones. Kuroda, in contrast, relies on powerful brush strokes and cross hatching to bring his drawings to life. His style has an unstable quality that reminds me of gesture drawing. It is well suited to the moments of frenetic energy that punctuate his work, like in the bike race above.

In drawing as in content, Kuroda’s strength is his versatility. The first Kuroda manga I picked up was Nasu (literally “Eggplant”). It’s an omnibus containing stories ranging from contemporary drama to historical drama to science fiction, all of them deal tangentially with eggplants. Here Kuroda is able to flex his story telling muscle, moving across genres and tempos. The first piece in book 1 is about two runaways who drop in unexpectedly on a rural farmer. The farmer takes things in stride, welcoming them into his home. I translated the following page, which should be read right to left.

The teenagers seem lost as to where to go in their life, marking a sharp contrast to the farmer who is grounded in the calm rhythms of a simple life. Even when the young couple’s uncertainty crashes against him, he is a rock.

I am drawn to manga as a medium because of it often plays with the line between real and unreal, and Kuroda is no exception. Robots and elephants are recurring characters in his work, but never in a way that seems ridiculous or unnecessary. Again, Kuroda’s strength is his versatility, shown here in his ability to move from the mundane to the fantastic while maintaining a consistently engaging story.

Kuroda’s most famous work is probably Sexy Voice and Robo. You can read it online in translation here if you like. There have been several anime and live action adaptations of Kuroda’s work, the most famous of which is the anime Nasu: Summer in Andalusia, which was tangentially connected with Studio Ghibli.

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