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Oscar and Andre meet as they grow from childhood to becoming a young woman and a young man.
This illustration was published in the 62nd chapter of The Rose of Versailles. An image of Andre holding his sword was inserted in the center of the complete version published in 2006, but Shueisha Manga-Art Heritage has restored the image to its original state.
The big starry eyes, the curly blonde hair, the big ribbons, the roses blooming in the background, and the shining stars are just a few of the common girls' manga motifs incorporated in this spread. In spite of the monochrome style, or rather, owing to the monochrome style, a beautiful and sentimental world unfolds.
This work, which was drawn in 1973, was printed on a letterpress flatbed printing press dating from the 1960s. The unique texture is created when the artwork is printed on cotton paper with strong pressure. From the photo taken quite close up with a macro lens, you can see that the printing surface is engraved. Printed with a flatbed press, the stars in their eyes really begin to shine.
*Signature on prints (handwritten)
In 1967, Ikeda made her debut with Bara Yashiki no Shôjo while she was a student at Tokyo University of Education (now Tsukuba University). In 1972, her Margaret series The Rose of Versailles became a bestseller. In 1980, she won the Japan Cartoonists Association Award of Excellence for The Window of Orpheus. While in her forties, she decided to pursue a career in music, and in 1995, she enrolled in the Vocal Department of the Tokyo College of Music. Since graduating, she has been performing as a soprano singer and has appeared in numerous opera productions. She received France's Legion of Honour in 2009.
A historical romance story set in the Palace of Versailles in Paris during the French Revolution. The imperial princess Marie Antoinette marries into the Bourbon family of France from the Habsburgs of the Austrian Empire at the age of 14. She is escorted by Oscar François de Jarjayes, who is the youngest daughter of the Commander of the Royal Guards, but was raised as a man. The series has attracted a wide audience since it was first published. It was adapted for a play performed at Takarazuka in 1974. In 1979, the title was made into an animated television series.
活版平台印刷
Since its inception, the black and white storytelling medium known as manga has been produced by the letterpress, the most primitive method of printing. Even today, Shonen Jump and other manga magazines are created using the letterpress rotary printing method commonly known as katsurin.
Letterpress printing is an old-style printing method in which ink adhered to a printing resin plate is transferred by directly pressing the plate onto the paper. The way manga is drawn has evolved to accommodate this method of printing.
One good example is the text. The standard typeface used in manga is called "Anti-Gothi." It is a combination of a sans-serif typeface (often called "Gothic" in Japan) for kanji characters and a serif typeface (Ming) for hiragana and katakana. It is said that this typeface was chosen in the early days of manga production, when they were printed by letterpress, so as not to compromise readability (see Idea, Issue 336, 2009, Seibundo-Shinkosha.) Screen tones also developed with the use of design materials to imitate the gray and other form patterns using letterpresses, which are not capable of printing in gray.
While rotary letterpress printing can only be used with huge rolls of recycled paper for mass production, a flatbed letterpress is capable of printing on a variety of types of paper. Flatbed letterpress machines were employed all over Japan, including in Tokyo, but they have been replaced by offset printing presses, there are only a few large flatbed letterpress machines to be found.
Is it possible to take manga, which has always been a medium optimized for letterpress, and turn it into artworks using the highest possible quality of letterpress? This was the question we wanted to answer.
Using a letterpress machine, the artwork is created using extremely strong pressure on a paper. This creates a unique surface with a physical impact that is impossible to achieve using offset, lithographic, or silkscreen printing. When you touch it, you can see that the printed surface is concave.
The aim of us is to pass on not only compelling manga artwork, but also the printing technology used by rare printing presses to future generations.
Tsutatomo Printing Co., Ltd. (Nagano) Tokyo Letterpress (Kagurazaka) Nikkodo (Asakusa)