New Ballpoint Pen Drawings with a Punch from Shohei Otomo

There’s a reason Hi-Fructose keeps tabs on Tokyo artist Shohei (aka Hakuchi) Otomo (featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 20). The only son of great manga artist Katsuhiro Otomo, the acclaimed writer and director of the anime cult classic Akira, Hakuchi carries on his father’s legacy with his own graphic illustrations that combine Japanese iconography with a dark, retro-punk edge and a healthy dose of sardonic humor.

Working with an ordinary black ballpoint pen, and the occasional shock of red (a medium that originated out of financial necessity but has since become his signature), Hakuchi’s newest drawings continue to employ a mish-mash of cultural references and in-your-face humor to explore and expose the vulgarity and violent potential pulsing beneath the cheap gloss of Western commercialism.