Furoku - 付録 Part 4: Henshin Ninja Arashi Furoku - A Close-Up Look

Most of the furoku I've talked about in past posts have been about manga or the games and prizes given away with magazines. Recently I came across a really interesting hybrid furoku featuring one of the most bizarre and compelling tokusatsu heroes of the 1970s: Henshin Ninja Arashi.

This furuoku came with the October 1972 issue of Boken O (Adventure King). At roughly 18 cm x 26 cm (7.1" x 10.2") long, it's larger than the manga usually given out with magazines. The book is 58 pages long and is part four-color (which makes it interesting in its own right for a vintage furoku), part single-color.

The front inside cover has a cool guide to Arashi villains.

There are also two cross-section "X-Ray" illustrations of Arashi villains, so you can know what their internal organs and skeletal structures look like!

 More after the jump:

Here's where the manga begins, starting with a one-page full-color illustration - something you sometimes saw in magazines as well. The rest of the manga is one color.

Arashi was created by manga legend Shotaro Ishinomori, but this furoku manga was done by another artist, Ken Ishikawa. I've been told that in furoku and magazines, it was common for the artist to be someone other than the work's original manga ka.

I find Ishikawa's style to have more of an anime bent than Ishinomori's. The inking is also less detailed, but the style is certainly dynamic.

There are also some classic Arashi action movements.

I thought it might be interesting to compare the above manga furoku to the original manga by Ishinomori, which was originally published in 1972, the same year the TV show came out.

This mini-sized collection of the work came in three volumes.

Right away Ishinomori's mastery leaps out. Every panel, no matter how mundane, is crisp and detailed. The inking is superb. To be fair, the furoku is printed on pretty low-quality paper in a single purple color on an off-white background. I'm not sure if this influenced how much work the artists put into each piece, but in any case the printing process certainly didn't do the drawings full justice.

The Shockers in Ishinomori's tale do not go "Eek" or disappear in a puff of smoke. Arashi makes sure they do not go quietly into that good night!

If you want to read more about Arashi, click here to read a post I wrote about a tokusatsu rivalry between some studio heavyweights!