The life and work of Yoshihiro Tatsumi comes to life via the work of Eric Khoo

by Chris MaGee

One of the highlights of my 2009 was meeting manga artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. His visit to the city came on the heels of the English release of his mammoth autobiographical manga "A Drifting Life" and Tatsumi patiently and graciously not only signed copies of books for people like me at the festival, but also drew lovely drawings in each copy, all of them different from the last. It was shortly thereafter that I became a fan of this remarkable artist's work.

It was back at the end of 2009 that we reported on how "A Drifting Life" was going to be adapted, like so many other manga, into a film. It turns out, though, that this won;t be a libe-action film, but an animated adaptation, and one that will be entirely faithful to the visual aesthetic of Tatsumi's original manga... or in this case Tasumi's entire body of manga work.

Singaporean film-maker Eric Khoo (Symphony 92.4, Home VDO) is going to great lengths to maintain the integrity of "Tastumi- sensei" as he calls him in the YouTube video below. This means that Khoo's "Tatsumi" will be picking up where Yoshihiro Tatsumi's sometimes painfully personal comics left off. Of all the behind-the-scenes peeks that we've shared with you over the years this is one of the most enlightening. No word on a firm release date for "tatsumi" yet, but take this video as a great way to tide you over. Thanks to Wildgrounds for pointing this out to us.