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Chicago College to Host Thermae Romae's Mari Yamazaki
posted on by Egan Loo
Harper College will host the next "Rieko Saibara's Manga Showdown" ("Saibara Rieko no Jinsei Garyoku Taiketsu") with award-winning Thermae Romae manga creator Mari Yamazaki (pictured far right) in the Chicago suburb of Palatine, Illinois on June 26 at 2:30 p.m. This will be the first overseas event in the "Manga Showdown" series, in which Saibara (Kaasan - Mom's Life/Mainichi Kaa-san, pictured right) holds live drawing "competitions" with other manga creators. Although Yamazaki was born in Tokyo, she now lives in Chicago.
Yamazaki's Thermae Romae is a comedy about Lucius — an architect of public bath houses (thermae) in ancient Rome — who time-travels to various modern-day baths in Japan. Through manga and essay passages, Yamazaki explores the two cultures in the world "that have loved baths the most: the Japanese and the Romans!" The work won the Manga Taisho (Cartoon Grand Prize) award last year, followed by the Short Work Prize in the 14th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prizes. A live-action film version with Hiroshi Abe and Aya Ueto will open in Japan in 2012. Crunchyroll began streaming Saibara's Kaasan - Mom's Life anime worldwide in 2009.
Tickets for the Harper College event, which will be in Japanese, cost US$10. The Japanese publisher Shogakukan is sponsoring the event in collaboration with the Japanese Chamber of Commerce & Industry of Chicago.
Previous "Manga Showdown" guests have included Naoki Urasawa (20th Century Boys, Monster) Kiminori Wakasugi (Detroit Metal City), Takashi Murakami (Namakemono ga Miteta), Nobuyuki Fukumoto (Kaiji), Hisashi Eguchi (Stop! Hibari-kun), Tetsuya Chiba (Ashita no Joe), and Fujiko Fujio A (Doraemon).
Source: Comic Natalie
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