Leon Brando🇨🇭

One of the biggest "What ifs..." I often think about when it comes to Egawa is what might have happened if Magical Taruruto-kun had been given the green light to continue after the shift in tone during its final chapters, with that arc focusing on high schools and juvenile delinquents. The artwork in this final stretch of the manga was incredible, already coming remarkably close to what we would later see in GOLDEN BOY and Tokyo Daigaku Monogatari. In fact, I'd even go as far as to say that these last chapters of Taruruto-kun give the impression that Egawa already had some of the ideas he would later explore in those series in mind, especially the latter. It's hard to deny that this last-ditch attempt to keep the series going seems heavily influenced by the enormous popularity of Rokudenashi Blues at the time. And considering that Egawa was also a huge fan of Sukeban Deka (and Yoko Minamino in particular), we can get a pretty good idea of the kind of story that might have come out of this new direction. In the end, we'll never know what might have happened if the series had continued down that path, or whether we would have ever seen Taruruto and the rest of the inhabitants of the Magical World again. And while that's a shame, at least we still have these final chapters, which, in their own way, serve as a fitting conclusion to the series.

I've always been fascinated by the promotional illustrations for Famicom Jump II that appeared in various JUMP magazines and the game's guidebook. I absolutely love the SD art style, especially the way Taruruuto is depicted. I'd really love to find out who illustrated these.