Animation Legend Rintaro’s Autobiographical Manga, a Reverse Import from France

1-byo 24-koma no Boku no Jinsei (Ma Vie en 24 Images par Seconde)
by Rintaro (Kawade Shobo Shinsha)

By Kanta Ishida / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

12:00 JST, January 17, 2025

“Ginga Tetsudo 999” (“Galaxy Express 999”) in 1979, “Genma Taisen” (“Harmagedon”) in 1983 and “Metropolis” (2001) are all landmark works in the history of Japanese animated films. “Ginga Tetsudo 999” is the greatest of the original anime adaptations of Leiji Matsumoto’s manga, and “Genma Taisen” was a film for which manga legend Katsuhiro Otomo worked as a character designer, starting his foray into film making. “Metropolis” was the first film adaptation of Osamu Tezuka’s famous early sci-fi manga and an ambitious attempt at combining 3D computer graphics with 2D animation.

Now, I wonder how many people will immediately recognize that these three films were directed by the same person.

That director’s name is Rintaro. While he is not the type of director who presents a powerfully charismatic public image like Hayao Miyazaki, he is definitely a hardcore master who has worked in animation in post-war Japan since its early days.

This book — “1-byo 24-koma no Boku no Jinsei,” literally “My life at 24 frames per second” — is the Japanese edition of his autobiographical manga first published in France in early 2024 as “Ma Vie en 24 Images par Seconde.” The term “24 frames per second” comes from the fact that anime is usually displayed at 24 frames every second.

Rintaro is known for bringing into his animation a production style noted for a sharp contrast between light and shadow, something he learned from his film-loving father.

The book begins during the childhood of Shigeyuki Hayashi (Rintaro’s real name). Born in the year of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, he evacuates from Tokyo to a village in the countryside. When he is 8 years old, he becomes fascinated by the magic of films that he sees at a traveling cinema. His first employer is Toei Doga Co. (the predecessor of Toei Animation Co.) The company invites Osamu Tezuka to produce an animated film, but Tezuka clashes with its staff and resigns.

Rintaro then leaves Toei Doga to join a new production studio created by Tezuka and devotes himself to the production of “Tetsuwan Atom” (“Astro Boy”), Japan’s first domestically produced TV anime series. Tezuka’s production studio is a revolutionary place that overturns accepted “common sense” related to animated expression, while at the same time it is a place of pandemonium every day and night.

“Tetsuwan Atom” is ridiculed as an electric kamishibai (picture-story show) by the staff of Toei Doga because the number of drawings per second is kept to a minimum. The merits and demerits of “Tetsuwan Atom” in this respect remain a matter of debate today, but there are many fascinating scenes which could only have been drawn by Rintaro, a man who knows both production studios. A case in point is Tezuka’s humorous and ghoulish appearance, which Rintaro witnesses up close. This alone makes this manga a first-rate historical document. I have watched almost all the animated works that appear in this manga book in real time, many of which were directed by Rintaro. Oftentimes I felt quite embarrassed with an inner cry of, “Oh, so that was Rintaro’s work, too!”

It is food for thought that the book was originally published not in Japan but in France, as a bande dessinee, a French-style graphic novel. According to an afterword included in the book, Rintaro took six years to draw this manga in place of a failed animated adaptation of his autobiography that a French animation company had tried to produce.

Now it is apparent that Rintaro’s reputation as an animation director is much higher in France than in Japan. It would have been impossible in Japan to get approval for a proposal to publish Rintaro’s autobiographical manga in such a luxurious format (an A4-sized hardcover), which I find frustrating. For this reason, I also feel that this “reverse publication of a translation” is a very significant event.

◆ Vol. 1 and 2 of the e-book “Must Read Manga!”, compilations of selected installments of this column, are currently available on various e-book platforms.