{{ i n t r o d u c t i o n }}

I have always been interested in the occult.. As a child, some of my favourite movies were Ghostbusters and The Chinese Ghost Story.. I also watched the "fright night" programme once a week.. So! its not really any surprise that i like things such the bloody, ghostly, and supernatural. Yes, i do like X-Files too.

I first heard of Kujaku-ou.. probably from borrowing the Hong Kong movie. I really liked the movie. My brother's friend "Salty Fish" (My nickname for him) mentioned that it was based on a popular comic when he was in Hong Kong. Indeed, Kujaku-ou is a comic from the 1980's that had great influence in occult comics.
So when my brother went to Hong Kong and on the way, also to Japan, I put on my want list Kujaku-ou! We eventually obtained Kujaku-ou volumes 1-17 (if i remember correctly), which should be complete, and the second series of Kujaku-ou volumes 1-11(?). Kujaku-ou then has became one of my favourite comics. Its fortunate that we obtained the whole series of the first series of Kujaku-ou, because its best to judge a comic series after reading at the ending. The ending was very nicely done, as were the characterization of characters. The art is much different from other comics because of its lack of screentones, more realistic style, and lots of shading , but i've grown to like it as well. (i'm studying Ogino-sensei's art! :D )

After having translated 3 pages of the first volume of Kujaku-ou, I told my older brother that it seems to be an impossible project. He then replied something like "why don't you do it on Wish then?" Wish is a comic by the popular comic team CLAMP. I found it to be quite a good story.. However, i wouldn't want to work on a page on Wish. Most of CLAMP's works are so popular. Look in the Anime Turnpike and see. There are quite a few pages on Wish already.. .. and probably hundreds on CLAMP's Card Captor Sakura, Magical Knight Rayearth, or X. One thing i do not get are the many pages on "Weiss Kreuz". Most of them are just a small image gallery, some mass copied profiles of characters, and "X-chan is sooo cute! :)" kind of thing. It really disappoints me. There are so much more "Weiss Kreuz" pages compared to great "classics" such as Tsukasa Hojo's City Hunter, or Tezuka Osamu's Black Jack. Sadly enough, there isn't even a section for Kujaku-ou!! poor Ogino-sensei.. poor kujaku-san.
There is a section for "peacock king", but the two links in there are basically the animation review.. which i think should be very different with the comic. But how can one judge the series without looking at the comic? Actually, Kujaku-ou is a rather famous piece of work.. Although Kujaku-ou is much older than more modern manga such as Card Captor Sakura, (Kujaku-ou is one of the 1980's comics), there is practically no information on it. There is even many animations and a couple of video games (Sega Master System and Megadrive/Genesis).. These 2 games has been released in the U.S. , however, in altered form! :D Kujaku no longer wears a monk's robe.. :D

Comparison of Kujaku-ou series I and series II:

To tell you the truth, the first Kujaku-ou series i looked at was from the second series. When we finally obtained the first series, i was kind of disappointed by the art. The art in the first and second series are very different. (although they are both by Ogino Makoto) However, after looking at the whole first series, i find that i like the first series much better. I've come to like the art in the first series better too. The art is more realistic, and the lines are a bit rough. In the second series, the art became very ..thick and bulky looking.. more in the style of cyberpunk..The characters' expressions has also changed. Especially for Kujaku, he looks very kind in the first series, but he kind of looks "mean" or aggressive in the second series.
The stories in the first series are also better too. The first volumes of the first series are short stories. Eventually the stories became longer, such that it became a epic! :D The first 2 volumes also does not have too much fighting. The first volume (which i am trying to translate right now) is quite true to the volume's title: return of the deceased. Most of the stories seem to be about [KARMA]. Evil deeds will come back to haunt the doer. In this volume, Kujaku seems very cold, since he is hired to help from some ghost or demon, but usually the employer has some bad reason why he is haunted by these demons. In the end, Kujaku does his job to get rid of the demon, but the employer will still never be free from KARMA. It kind of reminds me of "Vampire Princess Miyu" :) .. well, bad comparison? they are both very different..
The second series start out with short stories, but also get dragged into huge arcs. However, many of these stories has a note from Ogino saying something like "this work, gods and demons are fiction". So I guess that Ogino ran out of ideas or something! :D In the first series, after each volume, there is a list of references that Ogino used.. Yes, Ogino did much research to create Kujaku-ou. Footnotes used for explaination is used throughout the comic.
The greatest surprise is at the end of the first series of Kujaku-ou.. there are about 4 pages of his references!!! These are books that he read just to research for the comic.. I am quite impressed with the hard work that Ogino put to create this work. And so making a homepage on Kujaku-ou is nothing really compared what he did!! Its sad that no one seems to recognise his masterpiece..

One thing why Kujaku-ou could be overlooked is by its unique culture and background. I understand that Kujaku-ou is mainly about Buddhism, but it does not try to *promote* buddhism. In fact, there are Christians, Taoists, Shinto people, etc.. that also help Kujaku (believe it or not). Buddhism is not just meditation and recarnation.. So maybe it will open your eyes to a previously unknown area. Kujaku-ou is an epic of light and darkness.