La Base Secrète

The Tumblr edition of a French website dedicated to Naoki Urasawa and his works : www.labasesecrete.fr

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Lifegoal achieved : meet and interview Naoki Urasawa (in Angoulême) ! https://labasesecrete.fr/angouleme-2018-lorigine-de-mujirushi-lhistoire-les-suites-rencontre-avec-naoki-urasawa/

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Billy Bat volume 20. The last one. Release scheduled on 09/23 in Japan.

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The Crossroad documentary on Naoki Urasawa months before the launch of his exhibition in Tokyo. Interesting parts : - from 10:00, Urasawa working on a Billy Bat panel (spoiler-free)   - behind the scenes of the exhibition from 20 minutes on (along with Urasawa casually bringing original panels from some storage room in his studio). - 44:00 and so on : Urasawa’s assistants visiting the exhibition along with famous manga authors/producers like Inio Asano, Katsuhiro Otomo...

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“Crossroad” followed Naoki Urasawa for months before the launch of his exhibition in Setagaya. Here is the teaser for the 1 hour documentary that will air on TV Tokyo on February 20.

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On January 16th, to celebrate our 10th anniversary, we invited two of Naoki Urasawa’s french publishers (Christel Hoolans from Kana and Mehdi Benrabah from Pika) along with Thibaud Desbief (who translated most of his works in France : Monster, Pluto, Master keaton). They talked about a variety of topics, from Urasawa’s works to how we publish them in France, their meetings with him... It’s obviously entirely in French and without subtitles but I thought it was worth sharing anyway, in case one of you understand French!

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We can’t afford to make the trip to Tokyo to visit Naoki Urasawa’s exhibition but we sure can share some pictures taken in the Setagaya museum’s entrance! See the whole gallery here!

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20th Century Boys’ perfect edition vol.1 will be released on January 29th. Here is its cover and its (huge) size difference with the previous edition.

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Billy Bat is back in Japan : the final arc has started, although we don’t know yet how long it last (8 chapters, which would mean volume 19 would be the last ? or more ?).

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2016 is going to be a very productive year for Urasawa. Short recap :  - Billy Bat will start its final arc in early 2016 after the release of volume 18, which is assumed to be the penultimate one.  - The Urasawa exhibition will take place from January to March. Tickets are now on sale. - A 272 pages book entitled Kaite Kaite Kakimakuru (« Drawing, always and forever ») will be released on January 27th. It will contain many color illustrations and the most famous scenes from Urasawa’s mangas, all of which were not published in Urasawa’s previous artbook, Manben (2008). Also included : a very long interview of Urasawa (it lasted 12 hours!) regarding his career and his future. - 20th Century Boys will get its own Kanzenban/Deluxe edition, which will include all the original color illustrations.  Starting on January 29th, one volume (containing two volumes of the original edition) will be released each month up until the last one (volume 12) in November 2016. And we could possibly (just speculating here) get Urasawa’s new manga during the year although he could also choose to take a one-year break or something. 

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Seen on Twitter : “Urasawa had warned us” (regarding the sad Paris attacks)

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An exhibition dedicated to Naoki Urasawa is planned from January 16th to March 31st in the Setagaya Museum of Literature, in Tokyo. The exhibition will celebrate his career 33rd’s anniversary and include original drawings.

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Okay I think tumblr can handle this image better now. I made this long ago and seeing Timmy made me want to come back to it again. I nixed one row that had choko-chan and some other ladies because i thought maybe they didnt really seem that similar after all. 

I finally got down to putting Tenma and Kevin in the same row. I hesitated because of Kevin’s more pronounced cheekbones in the earlier billy bat chapters but i feel like the resemblance is very strong nevertheless.

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“From Aum to Friend”, comparing the similarities between the real japanese doomsday cult, Aum, and Friend’s cult in 20th Century Boys. As always, the article is in french but hopefully Google translation and the pictures will do the trick!

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Urasawa no Manben’s episodes 1 (with Akiko Higashimura) and 3 (Inio Asano) are now available with english subs!

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Get an exclusive first-look at Naoki Urasawa’s upcoming one-shot (in the anthology “The Tipping point”, see our previous post), which takes place on another planet, where a couple argues about the husband’s long trip...

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This anthology gathers 13 international comics authors around the same theme : a tipping point, “the key moment when a clear-cut split occurs, a mutation, a personal revolt or a large-scale revolution”. Naoki Urasawa is part of the project, along with Eddie Campbell, John Cassaday, Bob Fingerman, Paul Pope, Atsushi Kaneko, Keiichi Koike, Taiyô Matsumoto, Katsuya Terada, Boulet, Bastien Vivès, Emmanuel Lepage, Frederik Peeters. Each novel will be in full colors. Release date : January 2016. Cover by Enki Bilal.

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The first episode of “Urasawa no Manben” is now available. No english subtitles so far, but it’s still worth a look, to see Urasawa working on Billy Bat before meeting Akiko Higashimura. From Crunchyroll : “A new educational television program hosted by manga author Naoki Urasawa is coming to NHK in September of 2015. The series, entitled Naoki Urasawa's Manben, will give a behind-the-scenes look at the lives and works of influential manga artists. The word "manben" is made up of the Japanese characters for "cartoon" and "struggle" or "endeavor".” Next up :

Kazuhiro Fujita, author of Ushio and Tora. (September 11)

Inio Asano, author of Dead Dead Demon's De De De De Destruction. (September 18)

Takao Saito, author of Golgo 13. (September 25)