Japan's Next Top Comic Book Artist

The country’s premier manga creator is ending Attack on Titan, a blockbuster series about maneating behemoths. The pressure is on his publisher to find a new gargantuan thing

- Joshua Hunt

ONE DAY LAST JULY, HAJIME ISAYAMA SPENT A MORNING strolling through a chic modern art gallery on the 52nd floor of the Mori Tower, which looms over Tokyo’s upscale Roppongi neighborhood. The gallery walls, which have since been adorned with paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat, were lined with original artwork from the manuscript pages for a bestselling manga, or comic book, Isayama’s Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan). The exhibition commemorated the 10th anniversary of this gory epic, which is set in a world dominated by flayed, vascular, man-eating behemoths, tall as the Mori Tower itself, who terrorize walled-off cities where humanity has taken refuge. In the decade since Titan was first printed in Bessatsu Shonen Magazine, its antagonists have left their gigantic footprints all over Japan’s popular culture. The country’s largest publisher, Kodansha Ltd., has issued about 100 million copies of its 31 serialized volumes. The animated television adaptation is an international hit that has in turn generated a live- action film franchise, several video games, and merchandise including toys, tote bags, and limited- edition packaging for a popular Japanese laundry detergent.

At the exhibition, Isayama draped his wiry frame in a plain hooded sweatshirt, and he wore a medical mask to disguise himself from the fans who’ve made him by far the most successful manga artist of his generation. But the mask only accentuated his distinctive hair, which hangs down the sides of his face like angular black drapes. At 33, he’s achieved a level of fame at home that would be unfathomable for a comic book artist in America. Practically everyone in Japan reads comics, whether serialized in weekly or monthly manga magazines such as