Don't let the cute look of this animal fool you. The creator of Astro Boy, Osamu Tezuka, created Unico, which was a hit in Japan. Sattin is working with the artist team Gurihiru and with the blessing of Tezuka Production, has launched a Kickstarter to bring Unico to a new generation. It's rare for Japanese companies to allow Western creators access to their work like this, so we had to talk to Sattin to find out how Unico: Awakening came about.
He's one of Tezuka's more obscure characters, so right off the bat: Why Unico?
It all comes back to my genuine love of Osamu Tezuka. Over the last decade, I've gone out of my way to read everything I can get my hands on, and I just ended up falling in love with the tone of Unico. It goes into the nature of beauty and love as a double-edged sword.
Even when trying to create something incredibly adorable in collaboration with Hello Kitty makers, Tezuka's moodiness and desire to be complex and meaningful, and his ability to create incredible art came through. He is an important character that modern readers can benefit from reading.
At first glance, Unico looks like a My Little Pony. I didn't know his back story was so sad until I saw your page.
The goddess of love and beauty, who has Unico's mind wiped and banishes him through time and space, draws the wrath of this character that has the unique ability to spread love and kindness throughout the world. It's a very sad story, right?
What is the story of Unico: Awakening? Is it a new adventure?
Unico: Awakening is a re-enactment. Unico had to go through a different time period before he could get picked up by the West Wind and have his memory erased, because the original Manga was broken up into chapters.
The Cat on the Broomstick is a chapter that a couple of the Unico films also drew on. She wants to be human, so Unico starts to grant her the ability to do so for small amounts of time every single day, though he is worried that being a human is more of a burden than it is worth. She ends up attracting the eye of a hunter who is killing off animals in the forest and that is the base of the story.
We are giving some of the characters larger roles in Unico: Awakening. The West Wind has a bigger role as she tries to find a cure for Unico's curse.
How did this project come about? Japanese production companies rarely allow Western adaptation of their material.
My friend Deb Aoki introduced me to a former president of Crunchyroll Japan. He told me that they were looking to do something with Unico and that they were always looking for new ideas. I would love to pitch them an idea for a new version of that. He told me to go ahead and do it. They accepted it to my surprise.
Was the collaboration difficult?
It's almost unbelievable when I say this, but it's been wonderful, and I think it draws back to a few things. I was not interested in trying to force a fully Westernized vision on one of the characters. One of the things that I love about Tezuka is that he was so supportive of collaboration, and he looked at comics as a form of international language. I wanted to take one of Tezuka's works and try to homage it and work with Japan and the team on it to make sure that we create something that is genuinely collaborative.
They have been really supportive. The main thing to keep in mind is that we want to make sure we're doing the right thing. They agreed to do the project because they weren't going to do it at first.
Is the book going to be published in Japan?
Sattin: Yeah. We are doing both English and Japanese campaigns. This is something that we want to appeal to both Japanese and Western audiences and that's one of the reasons why we're publishing both translated versions.
That's very cool. How quickly did you reach your goal? I am aware that you have doubled it at this point.
Sattin thinks it was reached in the first 24 hours. I hid in a hole. Being sick. I was terrified of the whole thing because I didn't know how it was going to end up, so I didn't even look at it the first day. I think it got funded in the morning.
All of the money that we get for the project goes towards paying the people who worked on it, including the artists, the translators, and the people who were involved in trying to make this come together. I understand that, but still, every bit helps everybody who worked on this.
Unico: Awakening will be accepting pledges until June 2, and you can learn more about it here. The interview has been edited to make it clearer.
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