Sandstorm (砂嵐, Sunaarashi) is an unreleased Japanese shonen manga one-shot written and illustrated by Hirohiko Araki.
Araki mentioned it in his interview with Ryosuke Kabashima in JOJOVELLER. Later it was brought up in his book, Hirohiko Araki's Manga Techniques, when discussing his past failures as an author.
Summary
Sandstorm was an abandoned story written by Araki about a year before his professional debut with Poker Under Arms. It's a lost work, as it was never published, and the original art is now gone. Araki recalls the story was about someone getting lost in a sandstorm[2] or was about a boy going to save his sister from a strange sandstorm in the desert.[1]
Making-of
Araki stated that the storm being the antagonist lacked punch, as no matter how unusual the phenomenon may be, a sandstorm didn't have enough going on to fill the role of the antagonist. This resulted in a story with more mood than story, and he couldn't make it fit the battle manga structure.[1]
He explains Sandstorm failed because he focused too heavily on mood, but had he been a better artist at the time, his work might have found more acceptance. This is a defining characteristic of mood-based manga for him. He points out that the manga won't come together if you're not a skilled artist on the level of Akira Toriyama or Katsuhiro Otomo.[1]
When Araki first brought its manuscript to Shueisha, Ryosuke Kabashima criticized several things such as stray lines in the art not being erased and wondering how the story turned out like how it did.[2]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Hirohiko Araki's Manga Techniques, Chapter 6: What is Setting to Manga
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Hirohiko Araki x Ryosuke Kabashima (September 2013)