Tetsuo Hara

Japanese Name

原哲夫

Romanized Name

Hara Tetsuo

Profile

Age

63

Birthday

September 2, 1961 (Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan)

Zodiac Sign

Virgo

Gender

Blood Type

A^[1]

Nationality

Japanese

Occupation

Manga artist

Other Information

Relationships
Ryo Fukawa (cousin)

Affiliation

Coamix

Media

Manga Debut

Super Challenger

Website

@haratetsuo_jp
Official Website

Tetsuo Hara (原哲夫, Hara Tetsuo) is a Japanese manga artist. He is best known for being the illustrator of the manga Fist of the North Star alongside writer Buronson, its prequel Fist of the Blue Sky, and Keiji.

Hara is known for influencing JoJo's Bizarre Adventure in multiple ways, most notably with the hypermasculine art style featured within the first three parts. He and Hirohiko Araki consider each other close friends.^[2]^[3]

Biography

Tetsuo Hara was born on September 2, 1961 in Tokyo, Japan but his family eventually moved to Sōka, Saitama.

At a young age Hara began drawing characters from manga such as Astro Boy, Jungle Emperor Leo, and Tiger Mask. He became obsessed with Shotaro Ishinomori's manga Kamen Rider and the work of Fujio Akatsuka, which showed him how far the medium of manga could go. Hara decided that he wanted to be a manga artist when he grew up, so he did things such as study yonkoma and entered his high school's design program where he submitted his own manga to be in competitions run by magazines. He also visited the workplace of Osamu Akimoto who was an alumnus of his high school. After graduating, Hara worked as the assistant of Yoshihiro Takahashi.

In 1983, Hara found massive success alongside Buronson with their series Fist of the North Star, which ran until 1988 and spawned a massive franchise and went on to become one of the best-selling manga of all time. From 2001 to 2010 Hara would continue to work on Fist of the North Star in the form of a prequel called Fist of the Blue Sky that Buronson supervised and gave support on. From this point onward, Hara toned in on his artstyle of portraying male characters as particularly muscular. He studied and based his characters upon real-life wrestlers in order to portray more realistic muscles and notably cites the Mad Max film series, Bruce Lee, and Yūsaku Matsuda as influencing him.^[4]

His next long-running serial was The Flowery Keiji, a feudal Japanese tale loosely based on a novel by Japanese writer Keiichiro Ryu, which was published in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1990 to 1993. Since 2008 It continued to get sequels and an eventual anime adaptation in 2013.^[5]

Hara has continued to do work and illustrations, such as doing box art for the Japanese version of the Capcom arcade game Saturday Night Slam Masters and doing the album art for the band Junretsu.^[6] Though not a writer or illustrator, Hara is supervising a sequel to Fist of the Blue Sky called Fist of the Blue Sky Re:Genesis, which is being written by Hiroyuki Yatsu and illustrated by Hideki Tsuji. Re:Genesis has been on a hiatus since 2020,^[7] but will resume serialization with only the final two chapters remaining currently undrafted.^[8]

Works

Manga

Super Challenger (スーパーチャレンジャー) (1982)
Mad Fighter (マッドファイター) (1982)
Clash Hero (クラッシュヒーロー) (1982)
The Iron Don Quixote (マッドファイター) (1982)
Mad Fighter (マッドファイター) (1982-1983)
Fist of the North Star (one-shot) (北斗の拳 (読み切り)) (1983)
Fist of the North Star (北斗の拳) (1983-1988)
Cyber Blue (サイバーブルー) (1988-1989)
Keiji (サイバーブルー) (1990-1993)
The Hitman (職業兇手(ジーイェションショウ)) (1993)
Doppelganger Tokugawa Ieyasu (影武者徳川家康) (1994-1995)
The Blazing Palm (火焔の掌) (1995)
The Mighty Ryusei (猛き龍星) (1995)
When The Pyroxene Burns (輝石燃ゆる時) (1996)
Chase (チェイス ―追跡―) (1996)
Sakon -Sengoku Fuunroku- (SAKON -戦国風雲録-) (1997-2000)
Hydra (九頭龍(ヒュドラ)) (1997-1998)
Misappropriation Investigator Rintaro Nakabo (公権力横領捜査官中坊林太郎) (1998-2000)
Aterui II (阿弖流為Ⅱ世) (2000)
Fist of the Blue Sky (蒼天の拳) (2001-2010)
Child of War: The Legend of Oda Nobunaga (いくさの子織田三郎信長伝) (2010-)
Fist of the North Star: Last Piece (北斗の拳−LAST PIECE−) (2013)

Other

Saturday Night Slam Masters (マッスルボマーザ·ボディー·エクスプロージョン) (1993)
Muscle Bomber Duo (2003)
Koryu no Mimi (黄龍の耳) (1993-1994)
Ring of Destruction: Slam Masters II (1994)
Fist of the North Star: The Cursed City (北斗の拳呪縛の街) (1996)
Mori no Senshi Bonolon (森の戦士ボノロン) (2005)
Itadaki Muscle! (いただきマッスル!) (2006)
K-1 World Grand Prix 2007 Final phamplet cover (2007)
Thank You for the Music! Album by Ryo Fukawa Back Cover Illustartation (2010)
Miyamoto Musashi (宮本武蔵) (2013)
Junretsu CD Album Artwork Cover (2022)