To celebrate Weekly Shonen Jump‘s 25th anniversary, Shueisha decided to create a new style event to promote it’s history for the fans. The name of the event was called “Weekly Jump Multi World” and was a exhibition that was held in the Tokyo Dome Prism Hall between July 28th through August 15th, 1993. The event cost 700 yen for admission and guests were able to receive as special booklet which highlighted some of the items on display. The booklet was never available for sale directly. Over 48 authors provided new illustrations and congratulatory messages for this anniversary and are documented in this booklet and this is one of them. To help provide context to this profile that was captured in 1993, we have included some additional information to supplement the transcription and rough English translation.
| Name | Masakazu Katsura (桂正和) |
| Date of Birth | December 10, 1962 |
| Birthplace | Fukui Prefecture |
| Blood Type | A |
| Debut Work | “Tenkousei wa Hensousei!?” in 1981 ’81年『転校生はヘンソウセイ!?』 |
| 1st Jump Serialization | “Wingman” 『ウイングマン』 |
| Additional Info | Has created “Cho Kidouin Vander” and “Present from Lemon.” The hugely popular “Video Girl Ai” series was made into a well-received anime. 『超機動員ヴァンダー』『プレゼント・フロム LEMON」などを発表。大人気を誇る『電影少女』 はアニメーションになり好評を博す。 |
To celebrate Weekly Shonen Jump‘s 25th anniversary, Masakazu Katsura provided this illustration and comment, which have been roughly translated below:
25周年おめでと—-♡
Happy 25th anniversary~~♡
子供の頃、ボクはテレビっ子で、 マンガは読んだことがなかったのですが、少年ジャンプと、その中のマンガのことは知ってました。まわりが、その話題でもりあがってるからです。「読んでなくても知っている」。 すごいことだと思います。いつの間にか、そのすごいジャンプで仕事しているわけですが、まだまだジャンプの“すごさ”の力になれてません。
この先30周年、40周年とすごいジャンプとして続く歴史の中で、その“すごい”力のひとつになりたいですね。25周年おめでとうございます。
In my childhood, I was a TV kid and I never read manga, but I had heard of Shonen Jump and the series in it. Everyone around me was always talking about it. It’s amazing how much you can learn without actually reading it yourself. Before long, I was working for this awesome Jump line, but I don’t think I’ve done enough to contribute to its “greatness” yet.
I still want to be a part of this awesome Jump line and provide some more “greatness” for the 30th and 40th anniversaries in the years to come. Congrats on reaching your 25th anniversary.
He also provided this shikishi for the event from his recently ended series, Video Girl Ai:
The remaining sections of article then provide a brief summary for the Wing-man, Video Girl Ai, and Shadow Lady manga. Notably the Shadow Lady manga at the time was only serialized in the V-Jump magazine between 1992 and 1993.
The Cho Kidouin Vander manga series started in Weekly Shonen Jump a few issues after the conclusion of Wing-Man in issue 52 in 1985. The series would only run for 20 chapters and end in issue 21 in 1986. The Present From Lemon manga series ran between issues 33 and 51 in 1987’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine for a total of 19 chapters. Neither of these series have been officially released in English.
The Shadow Lady manga would later have a oneshot published in Issue3-4 in 1995 of Weekly Shonen Jump. This would then lead into a standard serialization in issue 31 in 1995 for Weekly Shonen Jump, but would only run for 23 chapters. The 3 volumes of the manga from Weekly Shonen Jump would later be published by Dark Horse Comics in English between 1999 to 2001, but is now long out of print.
The Video Girl Ai manga has been licensed by Viz Media and completely translated and released into English for all 13 volumes. Between issues 19 and 31 in 1992, the spin-off manga of Video Girl Ai, called Video Girl Len, was published in Weekly Shonen Jump. These stories were then collected and released as volumes 14 and 15 for Video Girl Ai (which was also published by Viz Media). At the time of this article, this was his most recent manga series. The anime series was released as 6 OVA episodes in 1992 covering the first portion of the manga series.
While not listed in this article as it was written before it was published, the DNA² manga started in issue 36-37 in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1993. This manga would run for 42 chapters and conclude in issue 29 in 1994.
