Tekken mourns Chiba Tetsuya, the author who brought him back to manga

The comedian Tekken mourned Chiba Tetsuya with a message on Instagram published on October 27. The author of Ashita no Joe died at 87, and Tekken, 54, remembered him as "someone like a benefactor."

The text opens with a direct "Chiba Tetsuya-sensei," as if speaking to him. Tekken recounts that in high school he submitted a work to the Chiba Tetsuya Award from Young Magazine and the author himself gave him a prize. "For me, who dreamed of becoming a mangaka, it was the big push to enter the path of manga," he writes.

That award did not make him a mangaka. Tekken admits that he failed many times after that and took a huge detour. The return to drawing came through another door: parapara manga, those animations made with pages flipped quickly that became his trademark as a comedian.

An award that closed the circle

In 2013, the Japan Cartoonists Association, with Chiba as chairman of the board, gave him the Special Award. Tekken felt it as a welcome: "I felt they were welcoming me with an award, me, who had returned to a path I had strayed from."

At the ceremony, Chiba approached him and said "I remembered you." Tekken doesn't know if it was a joke, but it made him happy. The anecdote sums up the tone of the message: gratitude without drama, with the awareness that his relationship with manga was long, clumsy, and full of back and forth.

The closing of the post is a farewell and a promise: "I will keep doing my best in my own way." Before that, he thanks him for giving him the chance to enter the world of manga and for reaching out when he came back. "Rest in peace," he ends.

Along with the text, Tekken published a photo of the two taken in life, an illustration he made of both, and a drawing of Yabuki Joe, the protagonist of Ashita no Joe.