Tensai Bakabon
A Missing Link in Japanese Gag Manga

Date：27, Jun, 2014
Investigated and Written by Misaka Youhei
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There are some cases which commenting directly means blasphemy when we are in charge of investigating and describing something. That is often words are not right to express it or words tend to make it fuzzy. If you said that it meant our inadequacy, that would be the end of it, but actually those cases are.

How about “Tensai Bakabon” written and illustrated by Akatsuka Fujio? Anyway, it is meaningless and unrefined to tell of the manga. It can do naught but divide broadly into two categories, who looks it over and get, or who reads countlessly and gets nothing. That is beyond any theories and any arguments.

Needless to say, that is not an underground masterpiece unworthy of talking about officially.

Started in 1967, and “Tensai Bakabon” infiltrated through the normal even there was no establishment of gag manga in Japan yet.

“I was so surprised at appearance of “Tensai Bakabon” when I belonged to a college. I thought it was alright with publishing that nonsense” said Tamori who has been a friend of Akatsuka Fujio. And also, “”Tensai Bakabon” is what gave me the greatest shock. So I was so happy when it started as an animated program on television” said Matsumoto Hitoshi, a Japanese comedian best known as the boke half the popular owarai duo “Downtown.”

Rung was the bell. Sunrise for Japanese gag manga is “Tensai Bakabon.” Akatsuka said “Namely, I only liked to describe nonsense.” Absolute nonsense became very popular. That is wonderful.

Before Akatsuka passed away, he said Japanese gag was making regress rather than progress. The best person of Japanese gag kept sticking to aesthetics and theories of gag, until all his life. Can’t make light of it as an old manga series, because “Tensai Bakabon” must still include something like a key to Japanese gag’s evolution.


Bibliography:
Akatsuka Fujio "Kore De E Noda" Media Factory, 2000