Captain Tsubasaalso know as olive and tom in France, he has inspired generations of soccer players, but the author of this manga now wants to put down his pencils to dedicate himself to his -real- soccer team.
The manga was first published in 1981 in the Japanese weekly. shōnen jump and its animated adaptation have been a worldwide success, also inspiring video games and even statues in the Tokyo neighborhood where its author, Yoichi Takahashi, is from.
Its hero, the young soccer prodigy Tsubasa Ozora, counted among his followers children who would become sports legends like Zinédine Zidane, Kylian Mbappé or Lionel Messi. But the mangaka is about to close the series to dedicate himself to another project: trying to elevate his soccer team to the J-League, the Japanese professional championship.
“I can do something new with this,” he told AFP in his Tokyo studio, decorated with shirts signed by prestigious readers such as Andrés Iniesta and Fernando Torres.
Therefore, the next arc of the manga will be the last one he draws, even if his characters will continue to live on in other mediums. Takahashi says that he is happy to say goodbye to the pressure of having to deliver new boards every week. “That doesn’t mean I’m giving up creative work entirely. I’d like to start something new while I still have energy.”
Nankatsu SC, come win
He himself became addicted to soccer while watching the 1978 World Cup on television, hosted and won by Argentina. By creating Captain Tsubasa, he wanted to popularize the sport in Japan, where the J-League was only established in 1993, not knowing that the manga volumes would sell more than 80 million copies.
He now dreams of his club, Nankatsu SC, of which he became president in 2013 and owner in 2019, climb the ladder of the Japanese soccer pyramid, while currently playing in the fifth division.
“In Europe, it’s quite natural to support your local club, but in Japan we didn’t have this culture,” the mangaka notes, adding, “I didn’t have a local club, so I wanted to create one myself.”
The club’s name is a tribute to the place where manga heroes Tsubasa Ozora and Genzo Wakabayashi (Olivier Atton and Thomas Price in the French version of the cartoon) evolved.
At the top of the Japanese soccer hierarchy are the three divisions of the J-League. Launched in 1993 with just 10 clubs, the national professional league will kick off its 30th season this month and now boasts 60 teams.
Nankatsu SC have recruited big-name players to help their promotion efforts, signing former Japan internationals Junichi Inamoto and Yasuyuki Konno.
“Captain Tsubasa Stadium”
And last month, the Tokyo district where the club trains announced it would buy land to build a new stadium – a condition of J-League promotion – that could be called “Captain Tsubasa Stadium,” the mangaka slides. It is planned to include a museum dedicated to the characters of his work, in order to attract tourists from all over the world.
Owning a club is “sometimes fun, but most of the time it’s hard,” Takahashi admits. “With a manga you can lock yourself away and draw whatever you want, but when you’re an owner you have to meet a lot of people and strategize.”
The mangaka believes that soccer can develop further in Japan, which he believes is capable of winning the World Cup in his lifetime, and says that he sees similarities between the young striker Takefusa Kubo and his character Tsubasa Ozora.
Delighted to have been able to attend the World Cup final in Qatar in December and see Messi lift the trophy he has coveted for so long, the entertainer believes Captain Tsubasa has the ability to inspire “beyond superstars”. . “Manga is basically for kids,” he says. “If a manga can have a positive impact on them at this point in their lives, that makes me very happy.”
Source: BFM TV
