Top Manga Artists Release New Anthology With Historical Figures as Manga Characters

Highlights

• The manga industry legends are revamping History of the World to educate readers about historical figures and events in an engaging way.
• Contemporary mangaka like Kohei Horikoshi and Yusahisa Hara are creating new cover art and adding extra pages to attract old and new fans.
• The anthology features famous historical figures on the covers, such as Caesar, Leonardo da Vinci, and Napolean Bonaparte, drawn in unique styles.

Some of the biggest names in the manga industry are working together on revamping a huge project for one of the best-known manga publishing companies, Shueisha. It is not a typical kind of manga story, though, but something altogether different. This special anthology doesn’t tell an original story but is meant to be educational, as it turns historical figures and events into a manga to help people learn about history.

The anthology is called Educational Manga-History of the World (herein History of the World). To help garner new interest in the project, which began publication more than twenty years ago, the mangaka behind titles like Spy x Family, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, My Hero Academia, and more have been brought together to do the illustrations. These artists will be making new cover art for some of the existing issues, as well as adding to the stories.

A History of History of the World

As mentioned above, History of the World has been published for more than twenty years. The series began in 2002, and is a collection of manga across multiple volumes with the goal of teaching readers about history in a fun and engaging way. As the collection currently stands, it is 18 volumes long, and covers more than a thousand years of history. History of the World is currently complete, but this new project is meant to give the old series a renewal and hopefully get people interested in checking it out for the first time.

What makes this new project special is the artists that are involved, and what they are doing. While the original manga stories will remain, they are all going to gain about 50 extra pages of material, which is enough to hopefully draw back old fans as well as entice new and curious ones to check out the series. Meanwhile, a slew of contemporary modern mangaka are re-drawing the cover art for every volume, depicting these famous historical figures in their signature styles. That has most certainly been done to try to attract the eye of people who have never read History of the World before.

A Star-Studded List of Manga Artists

These are the artists that are involved in the project, and the name of the volume they will be designing the cover of, along with what historical figure on the cover:

• Yusahisa Hara (Kingdom) – Civilizations of the Orient and Mediterranean featuring Ramses II
• Posuka Demizu (The Promised Neverland) – The Renaissance and Reformation featuring Leonardo da Vinci and Advancing Globalization
• Kohei Horikoshi (My Hero Academia) – The Glory of the Great Roman Empire featuring Caesar and Cleopatra
• Hirohiko Araki (JoJo’s Bizzare Adventure) – The French Revolution and the Road to Becoming a Nation State featuring Napoleon Bonaparte
• Yusei Matsui (Assassination Classroom) – The Advancement of Modernization and Imperialism featuring Hirobumi Ito and Otto von Bismarck
• Tatsuya Endo (Spy x Family) – World War II and the United Nations featuring Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler
• Hiroyuki Asada (Tegami Bachi) – The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization and the Chinese Empire featuring Qin Shi Huang
• Kozueko Morimoto (Gokusen) – The Islamic World and India featuring Suleiman I and Akbar the Great
• Yuki Tabata (Black Clover) – Christianity and European Development featuring Joan of Arc and Charlemagne
• Fusako Kuramochi (Itsumo Pocket ni Chopin) – Mongolia and Eastern Asia featuring Kublai Khan
• Io Sakisaka (Ao Haru Ride) – The Sovereign Nations of Europe featuring Elizabeth I
• Hikaru Miyoshi (Moriarty the Patriot) – The Industrial Revolution and American Independence featuring Abraham Lincoln
• Masanori Morita (Rookies) – The Opium Wars and Xinhai Revolution featuring Sun Yat-sen, Puyi, and Empress Dowager Cixi
• Satoru Noda (Golden Kamuy) – World War I and the Russian Revolution featuring Vladimir Lenin
• Shinichi Sakamoto (Innocent) – Populist Politics and the Great Depression featuring Franklin D. Roosevelt and The Cold War and Conflict Between the East and West featuring Mikhail Gorbachev, Mahatma Gandhi, and John F. Kennedy
• Mari Yamazaki (Thermae Romae) – The Multipolar World featuring Yasser Arafat, Nelson Mandela, and Deng Xiaoping

The list has quite a few massive names in the manga industry today, along with some more classic ones as well. This new reprint of History of the World is set to go on sale from October 4th in Japan, with each volume priced at 1,100 yen ($7.25 USD). If you like world history or are just interested in seeing history portrayed in a new way, it is definitely worth checking out.

Source: SoraNews24