Some of the biggest names in shonen and shojo manga turn their pens to redesigning the king of American cartoons.
In Japan, being an anime otaku and loving Disney isn’t the either/or selection that it is in many other parts of the world. With both styles of animation readily accessible from a young age, there are plenty of people who like both, including some of the brightest stars of the anime/manga industry.
For example, while the happy fairy tales of the Disney animated collection are the tonal opposites of bleak humanity-versus-man-eating-giants saga Attack on Titan, the series’ creator and manga artist Hajime Isayama recently drew an awesome-looking version of Mickey Mouse wearing his series’ iconic Survey Corp outfit, wielding a giant fork and spoon.
Isayama’s illustration is part of the Spring Manga Festival promotion from Kodansha, the company that publishes Attack on Titan as well as numerous Disney-related books, including guidebooks to the Tokyo Disneyland and Disney Sea theme parks. Four other artists have also contributed their reworkings of the Mickey Mouse character design.
Oh! Great, creator of Air Gear and the unabashedly violent and risque Tenjho Tenge, gives us this team of Mickeys assembling a Mickey Mecha.
Hikaru Nakamura, artist for Arakawa Under the Bridge, shows us Mickey and Minnie sharing a cozy Japanese apartment, evoking the scenes of Jesus and Buddha as roommates in his Saint Young Men series.
This intimidating Mickey, perhaps glaring at his longtime antagonizer Pete, comes courtesy of Tsutomu Nihei, displaying the gritty aesthetic of his Knights of Sidonia and Blame!.
And finally, Yuki Suetsugu, of Chihayafuru, doesn’t draw Mickey himself, but instead gives us a scene of an integral part of the Disney fan experience: gushing over cute merch.
While the illustrations aren’t available for individual purchase, they are being given away, while supplies last, as book covers to customers who buy any Kodansha-published manga during the Spring Manga Festival promotion, which runs from January 25 to April 19 (a full list of participating bookstores can be found here, and includes the Tokyo Akihabara branches of Animate, Gamers, Melon Books, Tora no Ana, and Yurindo). The book cover you receive is random, however, so if you’re looking to complete the entire set, or have your heart set on getting one design in particular, you might need to splurge and go on a bit of a manga-shopping spree (and if you end up draining your entertainment budget in the process, at least that awesome Final Fantasy Moogle bed can still be yours for free).
Sources: Comic Natalie via Hachima Kiko, PR Times, Kodansha
Images: Kodansha
Follow Casey on Twitter, where he’d like to see Kia Asamiya do a Mickey Mouse illustration.