These drawings are characters from Hasegawa Machiko's 1946 4 panel comic 'Sazae-san'. Born in 1920, in many ways Hasegawa was a very independant and progressive woman. She never married, and always worked alone and had no other manga artist friends, which was and still is, rare in the industry. She was one of the first female mangaka and made her debut in her local newspaper. She is often credited as one of the first people to use the 4-koma (4 panel comic) format in manga. Set in post-war Japan, the comic stars Sazae (drawn in the first image) who is a 20-something year old tomboyish and free-spirited woman. She has a very bright and cheerful personality. She lives with her parents, 54 year-old father Namihei, 50-something year-old mother Fune, 11 year-old brother Katsuo, 9 year-old sister Wakame and later, her husband 28 year-old Masuo from Ōsaka and young son Tarao, affectionately named Tara-chan.

All of the main characters are named after sea related things. This was done to remind the readers at the time of having lots of food and full bellies before the war. When the series was turned into an anime, Hasegawa was very hands-on and had many requests for it. The anime was to be made only if it was aired on Sunday evenings and had to have at least one reference to the comic per episode.

The anime has been on air since October of 1969 and is celebrating it's 55th anniversary this year(2024). It has consistently run every week since it's airdate except for two times, the first during the the oil crisis in the mid 1970's and in 2020 during coronavirus. This show holds the Guiness World Record for being the longest animated television show ever, with a whopping 2,700 24-minute episodes and counting. The voice actress for the titular Sazae-san, Katō Midori has been voicing the character since the first episode and as of March 2023, she was the only voice actor to have been in the show since it's first episode. She's still voicing the 24 year-old Sazae at the age of 84.

This is a piece i did, redrawing a frame from the first opening of the anime Chibi Maruko-chan. I made this as a tribute to the voice actor for the main character, TARAKO who passed away suddenly on the 4th of March 2024 at age 63.

The background is done in watercolour and the character, Maruko, is done on a piece of acetate, similar to a piece of celluloid which was how they made cartoons before doing them digitally. First, I did a sketch on paper then I traced over the drawing with ink on the acetate. I then waited for the ink to dry then I flipped it over and painted it on the back.

Below are images of it out of the frame.

other anime stuff ive drawn

I found some cool images, I used an oil pastel transfer technique, where I put oil pastels on the back and used pencil markings on top of the image to transfer it to another piece of paper.