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Happy birthday! :)

Well you're saying that older stuff or something like Cat's Eye won't sell without it being hyped up, but like, it's not like your generic light novel gets "hyped up" either. After all, in the early days of manga publishing overseas, it was the publishers' taste and choices that defined to a large degree (in addition to rights negotiations) what would and would not be published. It's not like back in the 90s or 80s or even earlier a lot of people in the U.S. knew who was this or that manga author, the publishers were supposed to "hype them up" and make potential readers discover them. And they did (sometimes sloppily, sometimes successfully, occasinally trying to pander to more elitist audience by trying to make comparisons with American comic authors like is the case with Robert Crumb and Yoshiharu Tsuge for example, though it took a while for indie publishers to pop up, there still aren't many)

Regarding the protests and their role in popularizing Middle East in pop culture, I think there's an interesting case here - there're stories that deal only with the protests (plenty of 60-70s manga thematized them and some later stuff like Unlucky Young Men or Red - and not necessarily in a good light), stories that go from Japan to MidEast and present both sides against each other but not separately (like Tezuka did in Adolf ni Tsugu), and then there's this bizarre subjenre of shoujo manga which basically features female gaze type stories about getting married to a beautiful Arab sheikh or to a harem lol (often appears in journals like Harlequin). Or BL stuff with Arab or other MidEastern guys. I'm currently reading Yukari Ichijo's Yuukan Club and there was a story with such a subplot as well (though the girl gets outraged when she finds out about the dude's harem and that she wasn't the only one). For some reason I can't see Jewish characters being present with the same frequency in the stories and with attention to some Jewish cultural attributes (not even caricatured ones, just nothing), thought it was just an interesting observation

Maybe it also has to do with the kind of domestic comics that are popular, American comics are generally less 'artsy' than European ones (at least I think so) which is why maybe the audiences there are more into niche stuff like retro series, gekiga, various award-winning series from Japan and so on, and American market is more about more mainstream shounen stuff with superhero vibes. Although, I just generally wonder why it's so easy to publish, e.g., an enormous amount of webtoons or light novels from newbie authors but you can have basically nothing from a legendary manga artists for decades. I don't think artists would just refuse to get published if publishers actually approached them. Like, they can publish Kamimura in Italy but not in the U.S.? I think it's just weird.

Tezuka was writing a lot of manga in the period where Middle East politics were relevant and somewhat known to Japan due to some domestic groups like JRA, I think if there were no Anpo protests and the whole debacle with the various Japanese leftist groups, we'd have even less mentions of Israel in manga.

Yeah I'm really puzzled with the English manga publishing industry. While French, Italian and Spanish publishers often make lots of efforts to publish classic authors and generally high-quality manga, English industry seems more interested to put out endless streams of rather low quality stuff with occasional decent picks

I'm honestly shocked myself that so many series by this duo (as well as other artists who worked with Kazuo Koike) have never been translated. You'd think that the guy who did Lone Wolf and Cub would get enormous amounts of manga published overseas given the original's popularity, but no, they didn't even bother to do Lone Wolf and Cub sequels lol

Anyway, your stack and my initial finding prompted me to dig up some other manga I recall involved Jewish characters and/or took place during WWII, so I remembered a couple of others:

This manga by Hisashi Sakaguchi (Tezuka's close colleague) set in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia:
https://myanimelist.net/manga/18669
I'm not sure how much it focuses on Jewish characters since it seems to focus on the Yugoslav partisans but judging by the wiki mentions there're some Jewish characters in the story as well
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%9F%B3%E3%81%AE%E8%8A%B1_(%E5%9D%82%E5%8F%A3%E5%B0%9A%E3%81%AE%E6%BC%AB%E7%94%BB)
It also won a prize on Angoulême festival a couple of years ago.

And another shoujo-esque (tragic love story?) by a different author
https://myanimelist.net/manga/13132/1945

Hi there, you might want to add this to your interest stack:

https://myanimelist.net/manga/28671/Apiru
https://myanimelist.net/stacks/69046

Hello, first of all, it's a pleasure to meet you, and if you accept the request, thank you for that.

I'm actually looking for you because I happen to be watching Gundam and making a stack as I watch it. I found your Mobile Suit Gundam order very interesting.

My order is based on a Spanish-speaking YouTuber who uploaded the chronological order (which I haven't seen in full yet, but will at some point).

I had seen videos, but this was the one I liked the most, since the one I had seen before said this:

1. Step 1 = Find a poster that shows all the Mobile Suits.
   For example, this one:
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Step 2 = Choose the Gundam you like the most.
   
3. Step 3 = Research where that Gundam appears.
   
4. Step 4 = If the Gundam you liked happens to appear in the Universal Century timeline. Bad luck, find another one 😂
   

So, this person seems to be trying to prevent people from watching the UC first because of its complexity, which is why they prefer the other one (of course, this one tells you to skip the 1979 one and go straight to the three movies). By the way, you answered my question about how much they cut from this one.

Impressive manga list.

You're most welcome ~

Happy belated birthday! :)

You're welcome 🤗

Happy Birthday! I hope you had a good one! Take care and God bless!

Happy Birthday Fellow GITS enjoyer

Happy birthday :D

I agree with you, don't see it as criticism, but as an exchange of perspectives.

You're right, the grades we give and the reviews we make of anime/manga also follow our subjective criteria in the end of the day.