Best Manga By Hirohiko Araki
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Highlights
- Mangaka often continue to create new series even after their most famous works, as seen with Yoshihiro Togashi, Akira Toriyama, and Hiromu Arakawa.
- Hirohiko Araki’s manga career began before Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure with one-shots and miniseries, including Poker Under Arms and Gorgeous Irene.
- Araki’s most iconic work is Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, which allowed him to experiment with storytelling and gain international recognition through its anime adaptation.
Mangaka can end up drawing all kinds of series, even after they make their most famous works. Yoshihiro Togashi made his name with Yu Yu Hakusho before doing Hunter X Hunter. Akira Toriyama was already famous in East Asia for Dr. Slump before creating Dragon Ball. Then, after completing Fullmetal Alchemist, Hiromu Arakawa drew Silver Spoon, a manga about farming.
Likewise, Hirohiko Araki’s manga career officially began in 1980, roughly seven years before he started work on Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Before then, he was making all sorts of one-shots and miniseries, and he’s done plenty more in between illustrating the Joestar family’s adventures. But how do they compare to each other?
9 Poker Under Arms
Araki technically started in 1978 when, at 17 years old, he submitted a story for the Tezuka Award called The Bottle. It didn’t win, and it wasn’t published in full, but it did get praise from Tenchi wo Kurau creator Hiroshi Motomiya. Later, he spent a whole night drawing his next work, Poker Under Arms and took it straight to Shueisha for direct feedback. They criticized it but agreed to clean it up and publish it, making it his official debut.
It was a Western that saw two notorious gunmen challenge each other to a game of poker, only to be outsmarted by an old drunkard. As short as it was, the story got the readers’ attention. It won the Runner-Up prize at the 1981 Tezuka Award, earning commendations from Osamu Tezuka himself (“It’s thrilling and has an excellent composition that makes you think you’re watching a film”).
8 Gorgeous Irene
Araki created other one-shots following Poker Under Arms, like another western short called Outlaw Man, and B.T. The Wicked Boy. They were all later gathered together in a volume named after its most intriguing story: Gorgeous Irene. It was about an assassin who could use makeup to disguise herself, change her personality, and take out her hits.
The strip was a prototype to Jojo in a way, complete with the music-inspired character names (“Lauper”) and Antonio Lopez-inspired fashion poses. Irene’s makeup skills are similar to Hamon and Spin from Phantom Blood and Steel Ball Run too. However, it ended after two parts due to Araki feeling he couldn’t draw women well enough for a full-length story. Instead, he switched to a male hero for his next project: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.
7 Cool Shock B.T
Before Irene, Araki toyed with the idea of a Holmes & Watson-esque story with a twist: what if the Holmes equivalent was more like Moriarty? Its pilot one-shot, B.T. The Wicked Boy, did well enough to earn Araki his first weekly serialization. Cool Shock B.T. would continue the adventures of B.T. and his unfortunate friend Koichi. Art-wise, it almost looks Toriyama-ish in its childlike charm.
But B.T. is no Goku. He goes to near-criminal lengths to achieve his goals, even if they’re as simple as impressing a crush or countering even worse kids. Yet this sly trickster aspect made him stand out from the more happy-go-lucky protagonists at the time. The strip would later get a one-shot sequel, Cool Shock Old B.T., by Nisio Isin and Posuka Demizu in 2021.
6 Baoh
Baoh is arguably Araki’s next most popular work after Jojo. It was his first battle shonen story, following its lead Ikuro Hashizawa after the criminal organization Doress turned him into a superweapon by planting the Baoh parasite into him. He escapes with the help of a psychic girl called Sumire but, fearing the parasite could spread, Doress sends assassins and monsters to finish him off.
Inspired by Fist of the North Star, Baoh used various violent and gory techniques to defend himself, each named with big text splashes. He could melt people’s faces, lop their heads off, and electrocute everything around him. Plot-wise, it wasn’t particularly unique, but Baoh still gets referenced from time to time. He even got to fight the Jojo cast in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle.
5 The Lives of Eccentrics
Baoh and Cool Shock B.T. were popular but only lasted a few months each. Meanwhile, Araki would keep revisiting The Lives of Eccentrics from its 1989 debut to its (as of this writing) last chapter in 2003. It essentially consisted of illustrated biographies of quirky famous figures, with some artistic license taken here and there for dramatic effect (e.g. the real Sarah Winchester wasn’t trapped in her Mystery House during the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake).
All six of its stories were written by Araki, but he’d only illustrate the last two, covering the Winchester Mystery House and “Typhoid” Mary Mallon. The first four were about Nikola Tesla, Ty Cobb, the Collyer Brothers, and TV producer Yoshio Kō, and were drawn by his then-assistant Hirohisa Onikubo, who now does key art for the Jojo anime. Though they’re not 1:1 accurate accounts, they’re intriguing, dramatic stories on their own merits.
4 Under Execution, Under Jailbreak
Like the Gorgeous Irene volume, Under Execution, Under Jailbreak collected Araki’s short stories. By 1999, Araki’s name was well established. The title story saw a prisoner sentenced to death discover his jail cell was also his death chamber via its deadly traps. In the second story, Dolce, and His Master, saw a cat trying to avoid being eaten by his master while they were lost at sea. Both would later be combined into a stage play adaptation in 2015.
The next story, Dead Man’s Questions, was actually a spin-off from Jojo’s 4th part Diamond is Unbreakable. It saw its villain Yoshikage Kira reduced to a ghost who was forced to carry out hits from beyond the grave for a monk. He doesn’t remember his past crimes, but he soon learns there’s no peace for him in the afterlife either. It’s an engaging read, but the volume’s 4th story would start off Araki’s most famous series of spin-offs.
3 Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan
Appearing in Under Execution, Under Jailbreak, Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan was originally Araki’s submission for Shonen Jump’s Readers’ Cup ’97. It didn’t allow established characters, but Diamond is Unbreakable’s snarky manga artist got a pass because he wasn’t an active player in its debut story, At a Confessional. He just narrated the events, hence its Japanese title “Rohan Kishibe wa Ugokanai” (“Kishibe Rohan Does Not Move”).
Araki would bring it back as a series in 2007, where Rohan would either relate his stories like a Japanese Rod Serling or be its key lead. Not every story is a winner, with Kishibe Rohan Meets Gucci essentially being a commercial for the fashion label. But its best tales, like Millionaire Village and Deoxyribonucleic Acid, would thrill and chill enough to be both animated and adapted into a live-action series.
2 Rohan Au Louvre
Despite being re-released as part of Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan, Rohan Au Louvre was originally a separate release, made to tie in with the famous French gallery’s “The Louvre Invites the Comics” exhibition. It saw Rohan tell the reader how, when he was 17, he was shown a painting made with the darkest shade of black. Intrigued, he makes some work with the paint, but his friend Nanase destroys them, apologizes, then disappears from his life.
A decade later, he returns to the Louvre to see the painting again, only to find Nanase once more, and learn that some mysteries are best left alone. It’s essentially a double-length edition of TSKR, with more time to build up to its horror and delve a little into Rohan’s past, making it a more effective read. Little wonder then that the TSKR live-action series based its feature-length special on the story, releasing it in May 2023.
1 Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
Ultimately, it was obvious what Araki’s best manga would be. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is what took him from a rising star to being one of the biggest names in the business. Its different parts allowed him to experiment with his storytelling and artwork, mixing comedy with horror, action with drama, and even returning to Gorgeous Irene’s fighting woman premise with its 6th part Stone Ocean.
Still, its fame was initially limited to Japan, with just a limited Viz Media release, Capcom’s fighting game, and the 1990s OVA series giving it cult status elsewhere. But with time, that cult fame grew until David Production’s anime brought it into the limelight. Thanks to its popularity, the manga received a fresh translation and a much more widespread release, making it easier to catch Araki’s premier series in print worldwide.
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