The Inductees for the 2025 Eisner Hall of Fame were announced on Tuesday and the late manga creator, Shigeru Mizuki has been confirmed to be part of this year’s inductees of this year’s 2025 Will Eisner Hall of Fame.
Mizuki would join other Japanese inductees including Osamu Tezuka (2002), Kazuo Koike (2004), Goseki Kojima (2004), Katsuhiro Ōtomo (2012), Rumiko Takahashi (2018), Moto Hagio (2022), and Keiji Nakazawa (2024). According to Anime News Network, Akira Toriyama and Naoki Urasawa were nominated in 2019, but were not among the four selected.
Shigeru Mizuki was born in Osaka in 1922, and he grew up in Tottori Prefecture. He was drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II, where he was injured and later lost his left arm. He would create multiple manga that would portray the experiences he had during the War, titles that include Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths and Watashi no Hibi. Another thing Mizuki is known for is his Yokai research and manga about these supernatural creatures, one of the reasons that Yokai stories have become popular today. He would also become the first Japanese creator to win a major award at France’s Angoulême International Comics Festival when he won the Fauve d’Or: Prix du Meilleur Album in 2007 for NonNonBâ. He was also honored as a Person of Cultural Merit by the Japanese government in 2010. North American Publisher, Drawn & Quarterly licensed and published his past work including NonNonBâ, Kitaro, Hitler, Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, and Showa: A History of Showa Japan (Comic Showa-Shi), two of which were nominated for a Harvey Award in 2012 and 2014. Before he passed away, his work Showa 1939-1944: A History of Japan and Showa 1944-1953: A History of Japan manga won the 2015 Will Eisner Comic Industry Award for Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia. Months later, Mizuki passed away in 2015 at the age of 93, leaving behind a legacy of humanizing supernatural creatures and dissecting the grotesque nature of humanity.
You can catch GeGeGe no Kitaro on Crunchyroll, and a special documentary episode of Manben: Behind the Scenes of Manga with Urasawa Naoki, which goes behind the scenes of Mizuki’s work, featuring his former assistants, Ikegami Ryoichi (Spider-Man: The Manga, Crying Freeman, Trillion Game), and Morino Tatsuya (Yokai Attack!: The Japanese Monster Survival Guide, Manga Kōsetsu Hyakumonogatari) to discuss the yokai master’s techniques with original manuscripts. (The documentary is available for a limited time.)
Source: ICv2
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