Calling all manga fans! Grab this special opportunity to meet famed mangaka (Japanese word for comic artist) Yoshihiro Tatsumi at this event happening at Kinokuniya Singapore Main Store, Crossroads on 17th January 2010, Sunday at 2.00pm.

The 74-year-old mangaka began drawing manga as a child, but he quickly rebelled against the form’s aesthetic limitations. manga was aimed largely at children, and its emotional and intellectual palette was limited. He then went on to create a bolder, darker and more realistic form of manga, which he termed as gekiga. And he became one of Japan’s most important comic artists.

Home-grown film-maker Eric Khoo, who is hugely influenced by Tatsumi when he was writing and drawing comics in his early 20s, has decided to make a full-length animated feature after he came across Tatsumi’s autobiographical A Drifting Life.

Among many of Tatsumi’s works in Japanese, you can find some of his mangas translated into English also available at Books Kinokuniya – Good-Bye, Abandon the Old in Tokyo, The Push Man and Other Stories.