《龙珠》创作者鸟山明 | 经济学人讣告
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Cece,消防人+经济学人粉丝
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Obituary | From strength to strength
讣告| 以力致力
Obituary | From strength to strength
讣告|以力致力
Toriyama Akira was probably Japan’s greatest manga master
鸟山明可能是日本最伟大的漫画大师
The reclusive but tireless creator of “Dragon Ball” died on March 1st, aged 68
这位低调却勤奋的《龙珠》创作者于3月1日去世,享年68岁
He had lostit again. It must have slipped down somewhere, between his papers and the low table he liked to work at. He was so careless with his stuff—all his stuff. But this was urgent. With steadily rising anxiety, he rummaged through his office. No sign. And yet he couldn’t draw properly, therefore couldn’t function, without it.
他又找不到工具了。想来一定是掉到他的画稿和他用来创作的矮桌之间的什么地方了。他总是粗心丢东西—什么都丢。但是这件东西至关重要。他越找越着急,在办公室里翻箱倒柜却还是没找到。没了它,他无法好好画画,整个人都焉了。
It was his pen-holder he was looking for. His old wooden pen-holder, pinkish-cream and black. Nothing to look at. Over the years he had worn it down with sharpening, sandpapering and simply drawing manga, Japan’s dynamic version of the graphic novel. He had customised it, cutting the business end so that the nib went in deeper. Whenever it broke, he had fixed it. Of course he had tried others, but he couldn’t get on with them. Over thousands of pages, with that little scratching sound it made (he often used the worst paper), it had become his beloved and his friend.
他要找的是他的笔杆。这支粉奶油色和黑色互配的木质笔杆颇有年头,外观毫不起眼。多年来,不管是削笔、砂纸打磨还是画漫画,他一直都用这根笔杆。在日本,漫画就是动态的图画小说。他按照自己的习惯调整了笔杆,把笔杆实用的那端切了,这样笔尖就能插入得更深。每当这支笔杆坏了,他都会把它修好。当然他也试过其他笔杆,但是都用不惯。鸟山明用它创作了上千上万张画,笔在纸上发出轻微的沙沙声(他经常用最差的纸),这支笔杆也成了他的挚爱和好友。
Toriyama Akira’s whole career was mapped out by it. He was 14 when he bought it, randomly, somewhere. It drew the first story accepted byWeekly Shonen Jump, the best manga magazine, when he was 23, and the first one Shonen Jump serialised, “Wonder Island”. For four years from 1980 the pen-holder worked overtime on “Dr Slump”, his first colour comic, which when printed as a separate volume sold 35m copies in Japan. But far greater things were to come. In 1984, having retired Dr Slump, he introduced a character who, for the first time, carried manga successfully to the West and then across the globe.
鸟山明的整个职业生涯都是靠这支笔杆画出来的。而这笔杆是他14岁时在某处随手买的。23岁那年,鸟山明就是用它完成了第一部作品《奇迹岛》,并被选中连载在最好的日漫杂志《周刊少年Jump》上,成为该杂志的首部连载漫画。1980年往后的四年里,鸟山明创作出《IQ博士》,这支笔杆也一直超负荷工作。《IQ博士》是鸟山明的首部彩色动画作品,作品单册在日本卖出了3500万册。更了不起的事情还在后头。1984年,他的《IQ博士》停更后,他创作出了一个新的角色,首次把日本漫画成功引入西方国家,并享誉全球。
备注:Weekly Shonen Jump:《周刊少年Jump》(日语:周刊少年ジャンプ)由日本集英社发行,于1968年(昭和43年)7月创刊,当时是双周刊,于1969年转为周刊,每周一发售。刊载作品以动作冒险类为主,多带有幻想味道,并刻意张扬个性,追求情节的峰回路转。间或也有部分恋爱、运动及历史题材的作品。多数作品人物造型唯美,因此亦拥有大量少女读者。
That character was Son Goku, the greatest hero on Earth, and his story was “Dragon Ball”. The plot was simple enough, based loosely on a classic Chinese novel, “Journey to the West”. Goku was a human boy, but with oddities: a monkey’s tail and extraordinary strength. Rather than keep failing at his martial arts lessons, he teamed up with a girl, Bulma, who was on a quest to collect seven magic balls scattered over the Earth by a terrifying dragon. Each time they were all collected, the dragon granted one wish. Then it scattered the balls again.
这个角色就是孙悟空,地球上最伟大的英雄,这个故事叫做《龙珠》。故事情节十分简单,大致以中国古典小说《西游记》为创作蓝本。悟空是个长得有些怪异的男孩:他长着条猴子尾巴,且力大无穷。因为在武术课上老是不过关,他转而与女孩布玛结伴,寻找被恶龙散落在地球各地的七颗龙珠。每次集齐七龙珠,恶龙都会兑现一个愿望。接着恶龙会再次把龙珠散落各地。
There was no reason why such a story should ever end, and it hardly did. It ran for ten years in Shonen Jump, filling 42 volumes, before migrating to 153 anime tv episodes and to film. As it ran it changed. Goku aged, became a father, acquired greater powers and took on more and more snarling enemies. He lost, even died, but was revived, still with his orange gi and his shock of black hair, which turned blond as his power level rocketed to over 9,000 and electricity blazed from his hands. The earlier volumes had part-likeable villains and fights staged as tournaments, but by “Dragon Ball Z” in 1989-96 all-in brawls were exploding from almost every page. Cries of Haya!!! Arghh!!! and HWOOO!! spiralled out of the frames as the characters sprang to destroy each other. That crazed action was what teenage boys in America, reading the comic books or watching on Toonami, especially seemed to go for.
这样一个故事毫无理由会完结,事实上它也的确从未完结。它在少年漫画杂志《周刊少年》上连载了十年,共42卷;随后被改编成153集电视动画及电影。《龙珠》连载期间,情节也不断展开。悟空逐渐老去,成为了一名父亲,拥有更大能量,同时也对抗更多的恶敌。他也败过,死过,但被复活了。他依旧身穿橙色武道服,头发乌黑浓密,能量值飙升超过9000并且手中放电时发色会变黄。早期《龙珠》连载中还有些可爱的反派角色,打斗也以擂台赛的形式展开。但在1989年至1996年发行的《龙珠Z》中,几乎每页连载都有各种打斗场景。各种漫画人物跳起互相攻击,画面中尽传出嚎哭声,惊叹声,出招声。这似乎正是美国年轻男孩们看漫画或观看美国知名节目区块品牌Toonami时特别喜欢的疯狂动作。
His new fame and new wealth astonished Mr Toriyama. Dr Slump’s success was surprising enough, when the main star was not the genius inventor with his crazy machines but Arale-chan, a plump, shortsighted robot girl in blue dungarees. Now the whole world had apparently gone mad for “Dragon Ball”, which he had thought up only to make Japanese boys happy. Fans of his work found grand themes there of friendship, kinship and hard work, but he went only for fun, gags and kung-fu fighting, and seldom sat down to draw with any idea of where the plot was going. He made it up as he went along. The surest part of the exercise was the perfect fit of the pen-holder in his hand, perfectly conveying to the blank page his characters’ next expression.
《龙珠》赢得的名气和财富让鸟山先生十分震惊,《IQ博士》的成功已经足够令人吃惊了,毕竟《IQ博士》里的主角并不是拥有疯狂机器的天才发明家,而是一个身穿蓝色粗布棉裤、胖乎乎还戴着近视镜的机器人女孩阿拉蕾。如今,全世界的观众显然都为《龙珠》着迷,而这部漫画起初只是鸟山明为了迎合日本男孩而创作的。虽然其粉丝在漫画中找到了关于友谊、亲情及努力工作的宏大主题,但鸟山明画《龙珠》只是为了娱乐,为了插科打诨和功夫打斗场景。他很少先构思情节再坐下来画画,而是边画边想。他创作漫画的过程中,最可靠的部分无非是笔杆完美贴合在手,他也完美地将人物的下一个表情在白纸上完美传达。
Manga had not been his first idea of how to spend his life. He went into design, but it didn’t suit him. By his early 20s he was broke, reduced to begging 500-yen notes from his mother. Since that could not go on, and he was good at drawing, he tried manga. On one level he loved it, letting his imagination rip unconfined. But it was really rough, too. Working on Dr Slump, he once pulled four all-nighters in a row to meet his relentless deadlines atShonen Jump, even calling on his family to ink in the black bits. He scarcely believed it was possible to do so much drawing. That part got easier: the colouring was soon done digitally, and eventually the characters left the page for the screen. But then new characters would come into his head to be thrown into even wilder adventures, into other universes, or through time. Goku’s great wish was to defeat ever-stronger enemies, one-on-one, so his creator provided them in numbers. None pleased him more than the Great Demon King Piccolo, Goku’s first arch-enemy. Piccolo went swathed in a white cloak, white turban and terminally brooding look, but he came good in the end, and saved the Earth.
他最开始并没想当漫画家。他先做了设计师,却发现自己不适合。20出头的时候,他穷得叮当响,连500日元都要找母亲要。设计的路走不通,画画又画得不错,于是他开始尝试画漫画。从某种层面来说,他喜欢画漫画,可以放飞想象;但漫画家的日子并不轻松。创作《IQ博士》的时候,有一回为了赶《周刊少年Jump》毫无回旋余地的截稿日期,他连续熬了四个通宵,甚至动员家里人给黑色部分上色。当时他觉得自己基本不可能完成如此大的工作量。绘画的工作量减轻了:没过多久,上色就可以用电脑了;最后漫画也渐渐依靠电子设备,不需要画在纸上了。可他的脑海里又得创造新的角色,构思一段更加疯狂的冒险、前往其他的宇宙、或者穿越时间。悟空的梦想是单挑击败更强的对手,于是他便为悟空画了许许多多的敌人。他对悟空遇到的第一个对手大魔王比克最为满意。比克裹着一件白色长袍、头戴白色头巾,让人不寒而栗,但他最后的结局还算圆满,并且拯救了地球。
Plenty of other projects flowed first from that pen-holder, including “Chrono Trigger” and designs for the video game “Dragon Quest”. Each anime or film (22 were based on his characters) was overseen by him. It was hardly surprising, given his workload, that he was a recluse. But that was his temperament anyway. With friends he would laugh, joke and talk nonsense, but he had very few. Most were manga artists, as his wife Yoshimi was. Living out in Kiyosu City, where he was born, rather than Nagoya, where he had his studio, he liked to play the rural hermit. His author portrait was a cartoon, usually smoking; his public persona became “Robotoriyama”, “Tori” for short, a cartoon cyborg with a gas mask and grabber arms. Sometimes Tori would wear Goku’s orange costume, the same one that now graced a statue on a street in Tokyo, toyshops from Shanghai to Paris and Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. At other times he wore green coveralls, like a workman.
鸟山明的笔下还诞生出许许多多的著作,包括《时空之轮》以及游戏《勇者斗恶龙》系列的设计原稿。这其中每部动漫和电影(包括22部以他笔下的角色为主角的作品)都是由他亲自监制。工作量如此巨大,他深入简出也就不足为奇了。不过他本性亦是如此。和朋友在一起时会笑、会开玩笑、会胡说八道,但这样的朋友并不多。他的朋友大都是漫画家,妻子由美也是。他住在老家清须市,不住在工作室所在的名古屋市,他喜欢过乡村隐士的生活。他的自画像是一个总在吸烟的卡通机器人,名叫“机器人鸟山”,简称“阿鸟”,头戴防毒面具,两只手都是机械钳。有时候阿鸟会穿上孙悟空的橙色武道服,在东京的大街上、从上海到巴黎的玩具店里以及梅西百货的感恩节游行上都有这个模样的雕像。还有些时候阿鸟会穿上绿色的连体衫,就像个工匠。
As a workman, he needed his special tools. Fans noticed that after he mislaid his old, precious pen-holder while finishing the serial “Sand Land” in 2000, losing it for good this time, he drew manga much less. He explained the tragedy as his excuse for being lazy. Yet perhaps it was a sign, nonetheless, that together they had fought, and yelled, and leapt, and saved mankind, just enough.
作为一名工匠,鸟山离不开自己的专属工具。2000年《沙漠大冒险》连载即将结束的时候,他把心爱的旧笔杆弄丢了,再也没有找到。从那以后,粉丝们发现鸟山的漫画作品数量大幅减少。他把弄丢笔杆说成是偷懒的借口。但这也许就是一个预兆:他和他的笔杆共同战斗、大声疾呼、闪转腾挪、拯救人类,是时候隐退了。
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