Extra Hideaki Fujii Works

Source: Hideaki Fujii

Last updated: 2024-09-08
Author: Interipelli

Let me tell you a story...

In 1998, a 19 year old upstart mangaka under the pseudonym of "Hideaki Fujii" had his first work published as an honorable mention for the Newcomer Award competition in the pages of Comic BomBom. A one-shot known as BOMBER GIRL.

BOMBER GIRL nails what would be Fujii's better known characteristics in the coming years; hot blooded action with shonen-coded protagonists, cute girls, grotesque villains, brutal kills, romance elements, and pushing the boundaries of conventionally recognized "good taste".

That's not what he's best known for, of course. What he's really known for is being the mangaka of Comic BomBom's Devil Children manga, running from August 2000 to October 2002.

• The Tenth Anniversary of the Devil Children Manga
• The Re:BOMBOM Project
• Grown-Up Fans at Wonder Festival
• The Twentieth Anniversary of the Devil Children Manga
• Vine Center Devil Children Trading Card Game Complement Collection
• Summer 2023 Wonder Festival
• Afterword

The Tenth Anniversary of the Devil Children Manga

During the mysterious Index Corporation "merger" of Atlus, one of several acquisitions before the sale to Sega Enterprises, Yogiri and Hideaki Fujii had a chance to reunite on Twitter to briefly reminisce about Comic BomBom's downfall.

Fujii recognizes Yogiri as "H-san", a play on Yogiri's last name.

Coincidentally, this was on the tenth anniversary of the Devil Children manga.

Hideaki Fujii shared a user-made poll result that describes his preferred style of creation as the "Atlus style".

This was another instance where Fujii thanks Yogiri's setting for making the Devil Children manga a success.

Let's move on to October 10, 2010. Atlus announces that the PlayStation Network will have the PlayStation version of Black and Red Book available as a downloadable PS1 Classic.

With a knowing chuckle, Hideaki Fujii wonders if the Devil Children manga will get a reprint.

The Re:BOMBOM Project

In September 2012, Comic BomBom's publisher, Kodansha, starts the process of reissuing old Comic BomBom stories beginning with "Revival! Cyborg Kuro-chan Gatling Selection"

Devil Children comes not long after, with the first volume reissued on May 23, 2013.

New renditions of Elegy and Mirai threaten the reader to pick up copies soon.

Takajou Zett also shows up in a new sketch.

The first volume was a modest success, selling through its first run in print.

Now this isn't a reproduction of the original collected volumes of the Devil Children manga. The Re:BOMBOM collections come with new omake chapters to address a considerably more adult audience. It adds some incentive for old readers to pick up new copies and cleverly gets around potential copyright issues in attempting to reprint the fan art from young fans and trading card game extras that were featured in the original work.

Volume 2 is promoted with a sketch of Doppelgänger.

This volume has a new chapter done by Hideaki Fujii's past assistant Eisuke Kinoshita, featuring a teenaged "Mirai" in her GREE-Chil outfit tormenting Fujii and the target audience of Re:BOMBOM.

Volume 2 lands not long after on June 20, 2013.

Volume 3 includes a new chapter acting as a sort of "mid-quel" during the timeframe when Setsuna is left alone and angry without Mirai.

This is when Fujii's new adult fan base starts engaging with him more directly, sharing fan art and commemorative goods.

Here, a professional animator shares a sketch of Elegy while complementing her and Takajou as the standout characters of the manga.

It's about when things start going off the rails.

Rather than choose fan favorite Takajou Zett as the subject of the cover for the final volume, like in the original release of the Devil Children manga, Azel became the featured character for the Re:BOMBOM release. The one who must be defeated!

It arrives on time on July 22, 2013, followed by a reprint of all three.

Hideaki Fujii is later credited for having started the entire re:BOMBOM project with "two fearless people" some time ago over food and drinks. A commemorative manga captured the occasion in 2017 with new art of Setsuna, leaving open the question of whether re:BOMBOM can continue.

Grown-Up Fans at Wonder Festival

This is where the story of DANDAN begins.

On February 16, 2014, Hideaki Fujii gave a rave review from seeing his own characters shown off in Wonder Festival.

Now the pendant shown off here is an antagonist from UMA WARS, an independent project driven by Hideaki Fujii that didn't last as long as hoped. He remarks about having seen a figure that he was particularly excited by.

It's Hideaki Fujii's Elegy, a publisher's sample. One that's given out to receive copyright approval for exclusive distribution in the Wonder Festival event.

The Comic BomBom inspired box and the detail on Elegy's shoulders receive rave reviews from the creator. We'll come back to this soon enough.

In 2013, a college student who goes by the pseudonym DANDAN started teaching himself how to create figures.

DANDAN was inspired by the omake comics from the original release of the Devil Children manga to give his childhood hero figures worth displaying on his shelf.

His first work was a figurine of Mirai and Veil, a rough start that came close to missing the initial deadline.

This figure is based on Mirai's pose in the trading card game art and Veil's first appearance in the manga. He remarks that everything he learned came from books he borrowed and trial and error through the process.

For the Summer 2014 Wonder Festival, DANDAN took the opportunity to create an oversized, Comic BomBom inspired box with instructions to help out fans with the assembly of the kit.

Later that year is the Elegy figure. Elegy's bouncy hair and flowing clothes are challenging to render.

DANDAN relays that his inspiration for doing an Elegy figure was a Hideaki Fujii "adult" rendition of Mirai with Elegy from around the time of the GREE mobile game.

It is likely this is referring to the duo as they were rendered on Twitter to promote the first volume of the Re:BOMBOM Devil Children manga, as seen earlier in this article.

The packaging borrows the same form as the Mirai Comic BomBom packaging, while the figure involves more individual pieces to make the kit easier to paint. DANDAN remarks that this made the figure more challenging to build, a matter of tradeoffs.

The third work, released in the Summer 2019 Wonder Festival, was Doppelgänger Mirai from the manga. This was DANDAN's first work made with Zbrush. A tooling choice that helped with modeling, though the ease of which came with new challenges in trying to commit those works to print.

Up until this effort, DANDAN's works were done as vinyl models via traditional sculpts and molds.

DANDAN attempted to reduce the need to paint the figures by coloring the resin, which turned out to be very difficult to get right in the final product. This introduced new challenges in keeping air bubbles out of the printed material.

Nonetheless, the final result was possible to mass produce in a 3D printer with less manual effort, which gave DANDAN the confidence to build future works at scale.

Hideaki Fujii took notice of DANDAN's effort and gave the figure a plug on his Twitter account. He remarks that he doesn't receive as many copyright applications for Wonder Festival nowadays, which is a little surprising given how well represented his work still is at the event.

DANDAN showed off a few works from friends reportedly from the Summer 2019 Wonder Festival. Apparently he had inspired some other folks to give their own takes on Fujii's work.

The final boss man Manga Azel glowers over all challengers from Hybrid Enemy.

Manga Fenrir shows up with rippling muscles and the embers of war thanks to Model2-.

Manga Takajou Zett shows up as his smarmy, sassy self from 13 Tousei.

A Livedoor blog has some additional photos of these two. Curiously, this blog indicates that the photos were taken from the Winter 2019 Wonder Festival, rather than the Summer Festival. It's possible that all three returned for an encore.

The Twentieth Anniversary of the Devil Children Manga

Hideaki Fujii, with the assistance of his mentor Tamori is Taru and Kenshiro Sakamoto, started making appearances at Japan Comic Art Expo events such as the Brave and Bold live drawing event to sign works and raffle off sketches. This leads to a solo exhibition of his career at the Momomogura Gallery in Osaka.

This gallery was held starting from November 6, 2020 through the 29th. The gallery shows off several pages from the Devil Children manga and other works like UMA WARS prior to lettering and print.

A number of goods are for sale, including t-shirts, pins, mugs, and prints.

The last photo of the event setting shared by Fujii is a bouquet of flowers showing off SD art of a few of his heroines, including Mirai. This gift was organized by fans.

Now, this was far from the only celebration of the occasion. Several fans organized their own online events to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Devil Children, the manga, and its extended works.

One that Hideaki Fujii himself ended up contributing directly to was the Devil Children "Trading Card Game Complement", particularly in past years.

Vine Center Devil Children Trading Card Game Complement Collection

The presence of the unofficial Devil Children Trading Card Game tournament was kept as a secret for most of its lifetime. The only hint at its existence came from the webmaster of the now-defunct Devil Children fan site "Kamikari", who himself goes under the pseudonym of Kakari.

Kakari shows off a Hideaki Fujii illustrated Mephisto card from 2017, slyly remarking about the presence of the unofficial tournament.

It wasn't until 2019 that one of the event's managers decided to come forward about the tournament's presence on Twitter.

DAC announced the beginning of a competition around the Devil Children trading card game in Osaka, showing a set of new fan made promotional cards designed by KON.

Several of these early cards lean on literal crossover works, like Yukiko from Persona 4, Nana from Elfen Lied, and Sanrio works. These crossover cards do not persist in the events showcased from now on.

The date of the first publicly-announced event is April 30, 2019.

Perhaps fittingly, the grand prize is a new Elegy card with art from Hideaki Fujii. Kakari wins this one. The pose is very similar to a detail that Fujii noticed in DANDAN's Elegy figure from years back.

For the following event done in December of 2019, the final three promotional cards were illustrated by KON, and featured Takajou, Berserk Elegy, and Reincarnated Goddess Lena. This starts a trend in subsequent events, where the promotional cards remain exclusively within the "canon" of Devil Children from the early Game Boy Color games to the later Game Boy Advance games and their derivative works.

From here on, official tournament announcements are made on the Vine Center Osaka Twitter account, a spinoff of the old Vine Center Osaka home page that KON and DAC ran through the 2000s.

For Hideaki Fujii's gallery and signing event, DAC showed off the three cards that Fujii had made for the event as gifts to the creator. Two of these were highlighted by the Vine Center Osaka Twitter.

The Nacht Kobold card highlights one of the underrated heroes in the manga, always staying by Mirai's side.

Mephisto's card highlights his unstoppable presence. He was better known in the Light and Dark manga than in the games or anime.

Further contributions from fans were encouraged for the 20th anniversary event.

Unfortunately, the 20th anniversary tournament was cancelled on account of COVID-19, with the promise that the fan-made cards cards will be distributed in the next tournament.

This tournament was rescheduled for September 2022. It is assumed that further events were coordinated on a Discord channel.

DANDAN's biggest contribution to the trading card game comes in the form of an extremely thorough index of all of the Devil Children trading card game cards, bundled with a small 20th anniversary omake sketch of the three main heroes. A work that ultimately finds him losing money, despite the high quality of the book itself.

Despite his loss, DANDAN soon considers giving figure making another try, with an extremely ambitious project.

Summer 2023 Wonder Festival

DANDAN's fourth Wonder Festival kit is a collection of four magnetically assembled mini figures of the Devil Children manga protagonists. Some of these come pre-painted for convenience.

Careful attention was paid to exhibiting the figures in proper lighting. DANDAN is very proud of this stage.

Each figure is surrounded by even lighting from above and below on all sides, with the box and instructions for the kit presented directly in front. Honestly it's an impressive sales tactic.

Hideaki Fujii gives a very public endorsement of the kit through a new Setsuna sketch, in the same pose as his figure.

Fujii further shows off his shelf of "three dimensional" works based on his manga. DANDAN's 2014 Elegy is prominently displayed towering over most of them, next to a cartoonish Maximum the Hormone doing crossed devil horns.

Meanwhile, DANDAN is still going! For the Winter 2024 Wonder Festival, he plans to introduce two figures. Both are based on Devil Children Jack Frost variants from the works of Waka Maeda, in tribute to the 2023 gachapon Jack Frost toys made for Shin Megami Tensei's 31st anniversary.

Afterword

I want to make this very clear, as an observer of Hideaki Fujii's efforts to support his fans, and the interactions we see in public. Hideaki Fujii loves his fans.

In an industry where creators tend to maintain distance from the folks who love their work, or just outright maintain a passive relationship where they don't make many public appearances at all, it's really quite remarkable to see an artist and a creator who appreciates the care that folks put in to enjoying his work.

Now, I'll admit that I don't enjoy most of Hideaki Fujii's back catalog, besides the Devil Children manga. That's a matter of personal taste and boundaries. I don't know that I count as a Hideaki Fujii fan myself.

What compelled me to commit all these interactions to writing was seeing someone that cared about his small but devoted fan base in a way that more successful creators outright do not.

Thank you, Hideaki Fujii, for elevating the works and lives of others when the opportunity presents itself. I wish there were more people like you.