Japanese manga series
Billy Bat (stylized in all caps) is a Japanese manga series written by Naoki Urasawa and Takashi Nagasaki and illustrated by Urasawa. It was serialized in the weekly magazine "Morning" from October 2008 to August 2016, with its chapters collected into 20 volumes by Kodansha. The story follows the comic book artist Kevin Yamagata as he draws the popular detective series "Billy Bat". When he learns he may have unconsciously copied the character from an image he saw while serving in occupied Japan, he returns to Japan to get permission to use it from its original creator. Upon arriving there, however, he becomes embroiled in a web of murder, cover-ups, and prophecy that all leads back to Billy Bat.
"Billy Bat" won the 2012 Lucca Comics Award for Best Series and the 2014 Max &amp; Moritz Prize for Best International Comic.
Premise.
The story begins in 1949 and follows Japanese-American comic book artist Kevin Yamagata, who creates the popular talking animal detective series "Billy Bat". After learning that he may have unconsciously copied the character from an image he saw while in occupied Japan, he returns there to get permission to use the character from its original creator. In Japan, he becomes embroiled in a web of murder, cover-ups, and prophecy that all leads back to the image of a bat. The truth is far larger than Kevin could ever have guessed, spanning across millennia and the world.
Production.
Longtime collaborators Naoki Urasawa and Takashi Nagasaki worked on story ideas for "Billy Bat" for four years. Nagasaki described the process by saying, "People often think he's the pitcher and I'm the catcher, but in our discussions for this story, I was the pitcher, he was the batter." One of the things they thought about when starting the series was the possibility of Billy Bat being like Jesus Christ with an ancient mystery around it. Nagasaki was also interested in the idea of having "the very first image of God that humans ever saw" being the Billy Bat symbol. Speaking on the mystery of the symbol, Urasawa said that "Human history is tied to that kind of thing [symbols], and it has always been the expression and source of culture. It has repeatedly brought out the good and evil in people and guides them in good and bad directions."
The postwar Japan setting of "Billy Bat" was partly inspired by David Peace's 2007 book "Tokyo Year Zero". Nagasaki said that, Peace had "told the story of postwar Japan so well... as Japanese, we couldn't let an Englishman tell our story better than us. I was a bit perturbed by that." Believing that young Japanese people were ignorant about the period and that society had completely forgotten about it, Nagasaki and Urasawa wanted to focus on postwar Japan to show how the country rose after World War II. Urasawa said, "I don't expect people to use this manga to study history, but I do hope to draw some attention to that period." Another inspiration was the Shimoyama incident, which is referenced in the manga to highlight the instability of the era. Nagasaki said, "It remains a mystery in Japan whether it was suicide or murder. There even were rumors that either the communists or GHQ was behind it. But we don't know. And Japan rose from this sort of gloom."
Nagasaki speculated that Urasawa wanted to tell the story of Walt Disney with the series, but said he personally had no intention of doing so. In 2019, Urasawa stated that he had slight concerns about "Billy Bat" being published in English because "major animation or film studios could take offence, or maybe draw some non-existent similarities between my work and their work."
The first two chapters of the manga are drawn as the fictional "Billy Bat" American comic seen within the series, including being printed in full color with brown edges to mimic aging paper. Although they received negative reactions from readers on the internet, Urasawa believed that plenty others suspected it was a "gimmick" and that he would not continue it in that style. Urasawa explained, "I want to experiment with the freedom to switch back and forth between styles and storylines; I don't think too far ahead in the story; I want to see if I can get the readers to follow along with me. That way, I can maybe push things further."
Publication.
Written by Naoki Urasawa and Takashi Nagasaki and illustrated by Urasawa, "Billy Bat" was announced in issue 45 of Kodansha's "Morning" in 2008. It marks Urasawa's first major manga to be published by a company other than Shogakukan. Its first chapter was released in the next issue on October 16, 2008, and its last chapter was published on August 18, 2016. When "Morning" launched its digital counterpart, "D Morning", in May 2013, "Billy Bat" was one of two series not included in the magazine's digital version. The series' 165 chapters were compiled into 20 volumes by Kodansha between June 23, 2009 and September 23, 2016. Before the release of volume two, a 70 meter by 40 meter geoglyph of the Billy Bat symbol was found in the mountains of Iwafune, Tochigi. To commemorate the release of the 20th volume, Urasawa planned and directed a 60-second video, which he also performed the music for. The video features the Billy Bat symbol drawn on about 600 different surfaces like a flip book.
Volumes.
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Reception.
"Billy Bat" won Best Series at the 2012 Lucca Comics Awards in Italy. The German release won the 2014 Max &amp; Moritz Prize for Best International Comic. In Japan, volume one was the fifth best-selling manga in its week of release, selling over 145,000 copies.
Cristoph Mark of "Daily Yomiuri" called the first two "Dick Tracy"-like chapters, which are drawn as the fictional "Billy Bat" comic seen in the series, "a refreshing change of pace" but noted how they were received negatively by fans on the internet. Speaking to Mark, Nagasaki opined, "When we were with [publisher] Shogakukan, I think our readers would've gone along with Urasawa's different style for "Billy Bat". But since moving to Kodansha, I think we lost a bunch of readers with the first couple of stories. There are mangaka who want to do an American-style comic, but nobody has succeeded with doing it".
"Anime News Network" described "Billy Bat" as having an American noir influence with its hard-boiled detective comic and "the haunting ambiguity of the bat and of the subject matter". Due to it being about the act of writing, they compared it to "Bakuman", but wrote that it utilizes the thriller format "so as to say something less conventional and more controversial". "Anime News Network" also noted how actions by characters in the story mirror the "ridiculous, creativity stifling" steps that The Walt Disney Company takes in regard to their own works. Mark Sammut of "Comic Book Resources" called "Billy Bat" a "fascinating manga that blends popular conspiracy theories and an engrossing mystery to craft a narrative that bends and twists seemingly every other page." He noted that the plot is "somewhat unfocused" over the course of its 165 chapters, but its first half is "incredibly strong and it has some great arcs".
References.
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