The Making of Wings of Freedom

By Harley Acres

In 1985 Shonen Sunday was celebrating its 1,500th issue. To celebrate their stable of talents came together to record this album alongside little known musicians of the day. Some of the mangaka were at the peak of their careers in 1985, others were just beginning and had their masterpieces still awaiting their apotheosis.

On the jacket of the album there are a number of songs that are listed as being from certain series, though in truth these are “image songs,” songs inspired by manga but that make no appearance in any other media associated with the title. All of the songs listed as being “from” a series on this album never appeared in any anime or a later soundtrack. Their sole association with the series is simply because this album states as much.

Additionally, no major series that already had an on-going anime at the time were associated with the music of this album, however mangaka that had a series running in Sunday at the time recorded messages or sang back-up on some of the songs appearing here. Consequently, there are no songs inspired by Urusei Yatsura, or Touch as those series already had an on-going anime in 1985.

Because the manga artists were not professional musicians their vocals tended to be choruses throughout the album rather than highlighting any solo performance. Most of the singing was left to professional, up and coming musicians. However, some mangaka were more involved in the album. To-y creator Atsushi Kamijo was responsible for composing Taikutsu wo Buttsubuse, Satoshi Yoshida composed Ki Ma Ma Kamikaze, Fujihiko Hosono wrote the lyrics for Shinjuku Dreamy Town which was listed as coming from his golfing manga, Aozora Floppy and Asayake no Time Limit had its lyrics written by Kaoru Shintani. The only creator to perform a song was Ragnarok Guy’s Tsuguo Okazaki.

The mangaka also recorded brief messages that fill the album. Many of the creators that appeared still have lasting careers to this day, though some saw their largest success in Sunday in the 1980s around the time Wings of Freedom was released.

So who were the creators involved in Wings of Freedom?

Pictured here from left to right are Juzo Yamazaki, Atsushi Kamijo and Kazuhiko Shimamoto.

Yamazaki is responsible for writing the long-running Tsuribaka Nishi (Fishing Nut’s Diary) that has run continuously in Big Comic Original since 1979. Additionally, Yamazaki was also responsible for writing several short series for Weekly Shojo Comic that were illustrated by Mitsuru Adachi including Nakimushi Koshien and Gamushara in Shonen Sunday. At this time Yamazaki was writing Tenchi Muyo with artist Kenji Okamura. This is a rugby series not to be confused with the popular anime series of the same name from the 1990s.

Next to Yamazaki is the stylish Atsushi Kamijo. Kamijo’s unique art style calls to mind 1980s icon Patrick Nagel with its spare compositions and sparse tonality. Kamijo’s most iconic manga is To-y which was running in Sunday at the time. To-y follows the career of To-y Fuji, lead singer of Gasp as he navigates the challenges of the Japanese recording industry, while struggling to maintain his artistic integrity and resist becoming another manufactured pop idol.

To-y was eventually adapted into a single OVA from Studio Gallop in 1987, which was two years after the Wings of Freedom album. Despite creator Kamijo writing the song used to represent To-y here, the song Taikutsu wo Buttsubuse was not included in the OVA. ^[1]

Decades later Kamijo contributed a drawing of Lum for the re-publication Urusei Yatsura, one of a number of artists that contributed to the “MyLumx34" drawings that were included in each volume. ^[2] Takahashi returned the favor and illustrated To-y and Niya for the 2020 Tribute to To-Y artbook celebrating the series 35th anniversary. ^[3]

To the right of Kamijo is “the burning mangaka” himself, Kazuhiko Shimamoto. Shimamoto is known for his hot-blooded, enthusiastic characters who live life passionately and burn with desire. Like Kamijo, Shimamoto has also contributed to the “MyLumx34" series of illustrations ^[4] as well as appearing as a character in Takahashi’s autobiographical manga Kemo Kobiru no Nikki which can be found on Rumic World. ^[5]

Shimamoto is a self-professed major fan of Takahashi’s work and in his 2019 manga Aoi Honoo he depicts the main character watching the first Urusei Yatsura film in the theater with a near religious reverence. ^[6] The character, a struggling manga artist, professes his undying devotion to the ideas Takahashi espouses and later chapters revisit Takahashi’s work during the 1980s.





Next we have Kei Satomi, Tsuguo Okazaki and Koichirou Yasunaga.

These three mangaka never had the major hits of the other creators listed here, however each continues to work in the industry today. Kei Satomi was publishing Night Bird in Shonen Sunday during the Wings of Freedom recording. Satomi has continued to have a lengthy career in manga. Satomi stayed in Sunday until the early 1990s with his series Smile for Mii and would later publish manga in Super Jump and Young Champion.

After Satomi is Tsuguo Okazaki, the author of Ragnarok Guy and the only creator to actually sing the primary vocals on a track, Guy no Ballad an image song for his manga. Ragnarok Guy was never animated and so outside of the manga this song is one of the few bits of media associated with the series. Despite the obscurity of the manga, Ragnarok Guy was one of the early wave of manga to be translated into English by “Sun Comic Publishing” in the early 1990s. Okazaki would also publish Toki Doki Heartbeat in Sunday and a manga adaptation of Super Dimensional Fortress Macross II.

Koichirou Yasunaga is another manga artist that has never had a huge hit but has worked in the industry for decades. At the time in Sunday he was publishing Rikugun naka no yobikou. Worth mentioning is his strange Chotto Kankaku Analman from 1993-1999 published in Dengeki Daioh. Despite its six year run, Analman was only collected into a single volume in 1997 and the advertised volume 2 never materialized.



The next photograph shows Mitsuru Adachi, Yuu Koyama and Masami Yuuki.

Mitsuru Adachi is one of the artists most strongly associated with Shonen Sunday, having published weekly throughout the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Adachi moved to monthly publication around 2009. He has had a number of exceedingly famous manga with Touch being his most legendary followed by Nine, H2, Slow Step and Cross Game. Most of his works have a sports element in them, primarily baseball. Though he no longer publishes in Weekly Shonen Sunday, his work can still be found in Sunday’s sister monthly magazine Gessan.

Takahashi has enjoyed a close friendship with Adachi throughout her career. They have collaborated on illustrations together as well as published a short story about their early manga careers. They are often thought of in the same context due to the white hot popularity of Urusei Yatsura and Touch which both ran at the same time in Shonen Sunday in the 1980s and their long association with the magazine. Like some of the other artists we have mentioned Adachi also provided a “MyLumx34" illustration. ^[7]

Yuu Koyama is another long-running mangaka who’s recognizable style has been featured in a number of Shogakukan magazines. In 1985 he was publishing Sprinter, a running manga in Shonen Sunday. His famous hits include the boxing manga Ganbare Genki, Oi Ryoma and Azumi the story of a female assassin set in the early 1600s.

Hokkaido born artist Masami Yuuki is another famous name associated with Shonen Sunday. In 1985 he was publishing Kyukyoku Chojin R but would go on to further acclaim with Mobile Police Patlabor and Birdy the Mighty in Big Comic Spirits. He is also fondly remembered for his 1994-2000 horse ranch manga set in Hokkaido Jaja Uma Grooming Up! which also ran in Shonen Sunday.

Masami Yuki and Rumiko Takahashi also share a common collaborator- Mamoru Oshii. Today Oshii is best known for directing the two Ghost in the Shell films, however his earlier work includes highly acclaimed directorial duties on the anime adaptations for Urusei Yatsura and Patlabor, both of which received theatrical film adaptations under Oshii’s supervision.



The next collection of artists includes Osamu Ishiwata, Rumiko Takahashi and Ryoichi Ikegami.

Ishiwata was working on his series B.B. (short for Burning Blood). B.B. also had an image song, Platinum Rival on the Wings of Freedom album. The manga deals with a trumpet player who gets into a brawl one night after a session at a night club. Meeting a man he could not defeat he falls in with the yakuza, is shipped off to America and has adventures as a mercenary, all in preparation for the day he’ll return for a rematch against his rival in Japan. B.B. would eventually receive an anime adaptation by Osamu Dezaki, who was already well known for his boxing anime including Takahashi’s One Pound Gospel and the legendary Ashita no Joe.

Next to Ishiwata is Rumiko Takahashi who was still at in the first decade of her career when Wings of Freedom was made. Takahashi was deep into her run on Urusei Yatsura in 1985 and was simultaneously publishing her other mega-hit Maison Ikkoku. Takahashi has been a mainstay in Shonen Sunday since 1979 and still publishes every week there as of 2022. Because the Wings of Freedom album was mostly dedicated to music inspired by series that did not yet have an anime, there are no songs here that have any connection with Takahashi’s work at the time.

Next to Takahashi is her manga idol, Ryoichi Ikegami. Ikegami published a number of series in Shonen Sunday, but it is more mature seinen works which he is most strongly associated with. Ikegami has one of the most distinctive art styles in all of manga and is well known for his fashionable characters, elegant designs and painterly style. At the time Ikegami was publishing Mai (known as Mai the Psychic Girl in the United States which was one of Viz’s earliest manga releases in English).

Takahashi has always spoken of her admiration for Ikegami, and he himself has long been associated with Takahashi’s mentor Kazuo Koike. Ikegami’s other works include the excellent Crying Freeman about a potter-turned-assassin who still weeps for the victims he is forced to kill. Sanctuary is the political thriller about two childhood friends who survived the killing fields of Cambodia and made a promise to one another to create their sanctuary one through political power and the other through criminal enterprise.



The next group includes Satoshi Yoshida, Fujihiko Hosono and Kenji Okamura.

Yoshida is the creator of Chotto Yoroshiku which has the image song Ki Ma Ma Kamikaze, on this album which Yoshida composed. Later Yoshida went on to do the popular manga Dada. Chotto Yoroshiku is the story of Reitaro Haneda, the prodigy child of a great artist and great pianist who has lived abroad. Returning to Japan to begin high school the character joins the rugby club. He soon begins a rivalry with Kaori Ichigaya and the two transfer from one school club to another as their competition to top one another grows to comedic heights. Additionally, Satoshi Yoshida is the brother of prolific gag manga artist Sensha Yoshida.

Fujihiko Hosono was another Sunday mainstay during the 1980s and was working on Aozora Floppy at the time which started out as a slice of life about a child who was left in a coin locker in Shinjuku Station, eventually the series evolved to focus on soccer and took a more comedic approach. Hosono had just wrapped up his popular series Gugu Ganmo, a gag series about a young boy nicknamed Hanpen and his odd chicken-like friend Ganmo. Hosono also created other popular series such as Crusher Joe, Biohunter, Gallery Fake and Dokkiri Doctor.

Kenji Okamura on the end was the artist of Tenchi Muyo at the time, which was written by the previously mentioned Juzo Yamazaki. Okamura still works in the manga industry today with series such as Bushi no Futokoro.



The last trio pictured is Hidenori Hara, Kaoru Shintani and Kazuya Kudo.

Hara was working on the baseball manga Just Meet about a group of freshman who were organized into a newly created baseball club and their coach, a former pro who is aiming to take them all the way to the Koshien high school championships. The series follows heroic Fumiya Tachibana, master of the forkball, as he leads the club. Following Just Meet most of Hara’s other works would be serialized in Young Sunday, Big Comic Spirits and Big Comic Original.

Kaoru Shintani is well known for his aerial combat manga Area 88 published in Big Comic as well as serving as an assistant for the legendary Leiji Matsumoto of Galaxy Express 999. Shintani published his motorcycle racing manga Futari Daka in Shonen Sunday around the time of Wings of Freedom.

The last creator is Kazuya Kudo, the writer that was working with Ryoichi Ikegami at the time on Mai. In addition to his work on Mai, he also wrote Nobunaga with Ikegami on art duties. In addition to his work with Ikegami, Kudo had also written Pineapple Army with a young artist named Naoki Urasawa who would go on to become the prolific creator of 20th Century Boys, Monster and Master Keaton. Much like Mai, Urasawa and Kudo’s Pineapple Army was one of the first manga Viz published in the United States. As for the musicians involved in the album, two songs were handled by “Rovebard” who are best known for their “Cup Noodle” television ad jingle. Rovebard worked on other projects with singer Miki Kakizawa who also appears on Wings of Freedom.

For the Wings of Freedom album, Kakizawa sang Futari wa Idol for Just Meet as well as Manga Kozo no Uta a song that is listed as being associated with Mezase Mangaka a “how to create manga” book that Shonen Sunday had published in the mid-1980s featuring the workspaces and techniques of a number of manga creators (Rumiko Takahashi included). It is an odd choice for an image song considering the book is non-fiction and mostly discusses the creative process.

The singer “Sweet Corn” seems to have vanished into obscurity releasing little else beyond their appearance singing Kimi ni Say Hello.

Tetsuya Itami sang Taikutsu wo Buttsubuse, the song listed as being an image song from To-y. He is another singer that seems to have disappeared after his performance here. Megumi Hayakawa sang Ki Ma Ma Kamikaze for Chotto Yoroshiku and then two songs for the 1980s OVA “The Humanoid” which made its way to America and could often be seen on shelves of Blockbuster Videos in the early 1990s.

Masahiro Taniguchi performed a number of image songs in the mid-1980s including songs that were associated with the shojo manga Peppermint Age and Naisho no Halfmoon. His contribution was singing Asayake no Time Limit and though the album does not list the song as being associated with any manga, the lyrics were written by Kaoru Shintani, so it is likely to have been inspired in some way by Shintani’s Futari Daka.

Lastly the eponymous Wings of Freedom song is sung by the “Sunday All Stars” the collective name of the manga creators mentioned herein. In addition to their singing duties on this song, each of the creators included a brief message on the album as well.

Ultimately, Wings of Freedom is an oddity, it was never released again. No CD was ever made. It has not been republished as a digital download. The vinyl is the original and only lasting legacy of its existence. It was a novelty, recorded to capture a moment of success in an age before Detective Conan, Inuyasha and Hayate the Combat Butler.



Track Listing

1. Kimi ni Say Hello (singer Sweet Corn, Lyrics Machiko Ryu, Composition Hirofumi Banba)
2. Taikutsu wo Buttsubuse (from To-y) (singer Tetsuya Itami, lyrics Keiji Mizutani, Composition Atsushi Kamijo)
3. Shi-N-Ju-Ku Dreamy Town (from Aozora Shot) (singer Rovebard, lyrics Fujihiko Hosono, Composed Ichiro Nitta)
4. Futari wa Idol (from Just Meet) (singer Miki Kakizawa, lyrics Taniho Chiroru, Composed by CHAGE)
5. Platinum Rival (from B.B.) (singer Rovebard, lyrics Akio Asami, composition Takao Horiuchi)
6. Ki-Ma-Ma Kamikaze (from Chotto Yoroshiku) (Singer Megumi Hayakawa, lyrics Taniho Chiroru, composition Satoshi Yoshida)
7. Asayake no Time Limit (singer Masahiro Taniguchi, lyrics Kaoru Shintani, Composition Hiroya Watanabe)
8. Manga Kozo no Uta (from Mezase Mangaka) (singer Miki Kakizawa, Chorus Editorial Department, Dialogue Mitsuru Adachi and Rumiko Takahashi, lyrics Kazuyuki Sekiguchi, Composition Kazuyuki Sekiguchi)
   
9. Guy no Ballad (from Ragnarök Guy) (singer Tsuguo Okazaki, lyrics Masao Urino, composition Hiroaki Serizawa)
10. Wings of Freedom (singer Sunday All Stars, lyrics Keiji Mizutani, composition Yukihide Takekawa)
    
    

Photographs in Slip:

• やまさき十三Juzo Yamazaki, (writer of Tenchi Muyo, looks like a rugby manga)
• 上條淳士　Atsushi Kamijo
• 島本和彦　Kazuhiko Shimamoto (Honoo no tenkosei)
• 里見桂 Kei Satomi (Night Bird)
• 岡崎つぐお Tsuguo Okazaki (Ragnarök Guy)
• 安永浩一郎 Kouichirou Yasunaga (Rikugunnaka no yobikou and Chotto Kankaku Analman)
• あだち充 Mitsuru Adachi (Touch)
• 小山ゆうYuu Koyama (Sprinter, Ganbare Genki)
• ゆうきまさみ Masami Yuuki (Patlabor)
• 石渡治 Osamu Ishiwata (B.B.)
• 高橋留美子 Rumiko Takahashi (Urusei Yatsura)
• 池上遼一 Ryoichi Ikegami (Mai the Psychic Girl)
• 吉田 聡 Satoshi Yoshida (Chotto Yoroshiku!)
• 細野不二彦 Fujihiko Hosono (Gugu Ganmo, Crusher Joe)
• 岡村賢二 Kenji Okamura (Tenchi Muyo artist written with Juzo Yamazaki)
• 原秀則 Hidenori Hara (Just Meet)
• 新谷かおる Kaoru Shintani (Area 88)
• 工藤かずや Kazuya Kudo (writer of Mai the Psychic Girl, Pineapple Army)

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Footnotes

• [1] It is a strange irony that Atsushi Kamijo wrote this image song for his manga To-y but the single animated adaptation, a 1987 OVA, had no songs written by him. Of interest to Takahashi fans, the OVA's director, Mamoru Hamatsu (浜津守), directed Urusei Yatsura episode 121.
• [2] Takahashi, Rumiko. Urusei Yatsura, Volume 19 Shinsoban Edition. 188-189. Tokyo: Shogakukan, 2007. https://www.furinkan.com/uy/manga/shin19.html.
• [3] Kamijo, Atsushi. Tribute to To-y. 16-17. Tokyo: Shogakukan, November, 2020.
• [4] Takahashi, Rumiko. Urusei Yatsura, Volume 14 Shinsoban Edition. 188-189. Tokyo: Shogakukan, 2007. https://www.furinkan.com/uy/manga/shin14.html.
• [5] Takahashi, Rumiko. "Kemo Kobiru no Nikki Chapter 11." Urusei Yatsura Shonen Sunday Graphic, Volume 11. 75-79. Tokyo: Shogakukan, 1984. https://www.furinkan.com/rumictheater/ translation/kemo11.html.
• [6] Shimamoto, Kazuhiko. Aoi Honoo, Volume 26 Chapter 132-134. Tokyo: Shogakukan, 2022.
• [7] Takahashi, Rumiko. Urusei Yatsura, Volume 2 Shinsoban Edition. 194-195. Tokyo: Shogakukan, 2007. https://www.furinkan.com/uy/manga/shin02.html.

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You can watch a video by Harley Acres via the embedded clip above which shows more artwork from each of these talented artists and if you'd like to hear the Wings of Freedom album for yourself we've got it here. For more on Rumiko Takahashi music please watch our video about the Mermaid Saga radio drama and the Maison Ikkoku live-action film's soundtrack from Joe Hisaishi.