What I Drew Instead of Paying Attention

Back when Dragon Ball, Digimon, and Wedding Peach had completely overwritten my brain, and my face was doing the full pubescent catastrophe, all my free time—and most of what should have been school time—went to either the Super Nintendo or drawing naked manga girls in the margins of every notebook I owned. Teen magazines provided anatomical reference. Pseudo-hentai, free of charge, volume after volume.

My hero at the time was Satoshi Urushihara—master of the breast, architect of Plastic Little and Ragnarock City, a man who demonstrated that genuine draftsmanship and maximum perversion are not mutually exclusive, that neither element needs to apologize for the other. I studied his linework with a dedication I couldn’t bring to anything on the official curriculum. I wasn’t half bad, honestly.

But then there’s Ryuko Azuma, a guy from Tokyo who makes my adolescent scribbles look like warm-up exercises. He draws the filthiest fantasies with real craft behind them, makes unsettling self-portraits that loop back into something almost philosophical, and came up with what might be the greatest T-shirt concept I’ve ever encountered. His Tumblr is one of the most deranged feeds in existence, in the best possible way.

What I find genuinely refreshing about both—Urushihara then, Azuma now—is the confidence. The line is committed. The subject is filth. Both things are true at once and neither undermines the other. No apology, no ironic distance, no hedging about what the work actually is. Pencil in hand, mind in the gutter, and the drawing is better for it.