‘Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26’ Is a Joyously Unhinged Look Into the Younger Thoughts of Manga’s Wildest Auteur

With uncommon exceptions like Star Wars: Visions and Love Death + Robots, anthologies have grow to be a dying breed in anime. Gone are the times when studios—seemingly already on the top of their powers—banded collectively to make once-in-a-generation pastiches like Robot Carnival and Memories, showcasing their aptitude, artistry, and the magic of anime’s distinctive visible language.

These tasks launched administrators like Mamoru Oshii (Ghost within the Shell), Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira), and Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Depraved Metropolis, Ninja Scroll, and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust) as visionaries whose affect nonetheless shapes animation at present. These relics supply viewers a kaleidoscopic portal into wildly various tales, every with distinct tones, kinds, and moods, affirming animation not as a blueprint for live-action however as a standalone artwork kind price marveling at.

And now that misplaced kind is seeing a revival, spotlighting the standard beginnings and abstractive vary of considered one of manga’s most unpredictable auteurs, Tatsuki Fujimoto.

In 2025, few creators are extra visibly beloved within the anime business than Fujiimoto. Over simply two years, the Chainsaw Man legend (and unabashed cinephile) has seen his one-shot manga, Look Back, tailored right into a stirring Studio Durian function rivaling the work of Studio Ghibli, and Chainsaw Man – The Film: Reze Arc explode right into a box-office hit through Mappa. Each movies showcase his aptitude for sentimentality, whimsy, romance, and bombast. Hell, even Chainsaw Man’s first season had the unprecedented distinction of unique outros in every episode, and its openings referenced Hollywood films earlier than the title turned one itself. The dude has movement.

As if winding again the arms of a grandfather clock, Prime Video capped Fujimoto’s banner year with Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26, a vivid anthology of his pre-fame works.

Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 sees the unified effort of studios P.A. Works, Zexcs, Lapin Monitor, Studio Kafka, 100studio, and Studio Graph77 adapting eight brief tales Fujimoto wrote from ages 17-26, earlier than he turned a family title along with his first printed collection, Fire Punch.

Regardless of the vanity of the anime anthology being brief tales from the identical writer, none of them really feel just like the type of fast-food smattering of the identical components dressed up as a unique meal. All of them really feel like a medley of Fujimoto’s wild, inventive tempest. Clearly a mangaka scholar of the sport, Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 embodies a wild creativeness that seeks—nearly unconsciously—to interrupt the material of tropes, turning them into exaggerated parodies or subversively inverting them.

Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 is a painter’s palette laid naked, with every story serving as a tough, radiant smear of coloration, revealing the early chaos, tenderness, and wild ambition of a thoughts destined to set the manga and anime world ablaze. Every story exhibits early flashes of the emotional vary and genre-defying bravado that might make Fujimoto a family title. From the post-apocalyptic bond in A Couple Clucking Chickens Have been Nonetheless Kickin’ within the Schoolyard to the adolescent anguish of Sasaki Stopped a Bullet, Fujimoto’s storytelling already exhibits indicators of being unrestrainedly far-reaching, a fuse that might erupt into Chainsaw Man and Look Again.

Likewise, Love Is Blind spins romantic comedy into cosmic absurdity, whereas Shikaku dives into the twisted psyche of a lovesick murderer. Mermaid Rhapsody provides a young underwater romance; Woke-Up-as-a-Woman-Syndrome explores id past gender; Nayuta of the Prophecy traces siblings caught in a merciless destiny; and Sisters captures the friction and development between inventive siblings and rivals. Some tales, like Sisters and Nayuta of the Prophecy, learn like first drafts of what would evolve into Look Again—Fujimoto’s viscerally tender ode to artwork—and the self-referential groundwork for Chainsaw Man Part 2.

Collectively, they kind a kaleidoscope of various artwork kinds and moods which can be thought-provoking, deeply hormonal, and filled with uncooked creativeness. And all are a testomony to Fujimoto’s uninhibited genius, unpredictability, and uncanny approach of creating probably the most obscene premise land as earnestly transferring (be they to tears or laughter) even in his earliest strokes.  And that’s saying one thing, given these brief tales are from the identical man whose fame got here with tales through which he requested, “What if a man with a godlike therapeutic issue was on fireplace on a regular basis?” and “What if an adolescent had chainsaws for arms and a head?”

The true great thing about Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 isn’t simply in spotlighting the creator’s wild adolescent musings and alchemic potential to make the absurd by some means touching. It’s in how the anthology elevates the studios behind it—digital unknowns even to probably the most seasoned anime devoted—into names price watching.

Every studio, some beneath the course of acclaimed administrators like Woke-Up-as-a-Woman Syndrome‘s Kazuaki Terasawa (The Historical Magus’ Bride), Mermaid Rhapsody’s Tetsuaki Watanabe (Blue Lock), and Love Is Blind‘s Noboyuki Takeuchi (Fireworks), pours its full inventive self into each body. Whether or not animated 2D with a contact of 3D or laced with dwell motion, all of them coalesce right into a unified tapestry of crisp, lovingly crafted work. The visuals communicate for themselves: sunsets really feel like lush velvet. Depictions of agony tackle a tough, sandpaper texture. Motion glints like firecrackers glimpsed by squinted eyes. My favourite of the bunch is the ultimate story, Sisters, directed by Osamu Honma, for the way rawly and tenderly it explores girlhood and sisterhood—woven collectively because the backdrop to inventive rivalry.

Whereas some viewers have questioned whether or not Fujimoto’s up to date works are as profound as on-line discourse suggests, Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 invitations viewers to set these ideas apart and easily have interaction with the tales. Fujimoto urges us to play—to experience absurdities like a scholar’s love for his trainer, defying all logic so intensely he can cease a bullet. Or how the basic coming-of-age dilemma of confessing unrequited like to a classmate might be pushed to its absolute extremes, undeterred by romcom tropes or acts of god, as if the boy would possibly combust if he doesn’t spit it out. Some tales are brief walks. Others lengthy. However all really feel like scenic routes viewers unsuspectedly get enraptured in as they waltz down reminiscence lane of considered one of manga’s boldest creators.

Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 isn’t an armchair anime connoisseur’s fodder for assume items—it’s a “let’s go outdoors and play” type of enjoyable. The type of anime that hardly ever feels allowed to be endeavored anymore with out a self-serious thesis to justify it. It’s pure, animated pleasure.

Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 is streaming on Prime Video.

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