A requiem for Mitsuteru Yokoyama

As sad as so many young people around the world still feel, Akira Toriyama has finally joined the Goat Pop Culture Heaven as of this writing. 

Mitsuteru Yokoyama died at nearly 70 years old in April 2004, when I was only turning three. He was an overworked smoker, who otherwise made Babel II and the most iconic Romance of The Three Kingdoms manga in the world. He truly was the father of the mons trope, but with a super robot named Tetsujin 28Go, who is so cute even grannies wanna hug him. Giant Robo’s also an honorary candidate, since it has one of the greatest miniseries in anime history and one of the most memetic Tokusatsu hits before the birth of Super Sentai. 

Sally the Witch, although a sleeper hit in the world of Shōjo manga oldies, had the first of magical girl anime adaptations, which gained a surprisingly more mature remake/sequel for the Heisei period’s beginning. Princess Comet was a pioneer for fellow girly franchises, which came in both Tokusatsu and manga forms. The former gained a girlier 1970s sequel, while an anime adaptation came out decades later. 

The Mars manga tells one of the most heartbreaking stories in the world of Shōnen manga oldies, where a humanlike amnesiac of an alien boy warns human civilisation of an apocalypse coming within. 


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