Dissecting Manga - Isshuku Ippan by Monkey Punch

Isshuku Ippan Monkey Punch Art Manga Lupin The Third

Here I am back with another article about Monkey Punch's work, but this time we're not going to talk about Lupin The Third. If you thought that our beloved thief was the only work Monkey Punch did in his career, you're wrong. On the contrary, until the end of the 90s he had been incredibly prolific, realizing dozens and dozens of manga of all kind. Unfortunately, most of them never gained the success needed to arrive in the west as far as I know. The most famous one is probably Cinderella Boy, a one-shot manga created by Punch in 1980 which became a 13 episodes anime in 2003. The anime was also licensed in Northern America by Discotek and in Italy by Shin Vision, but the manga was never published outside Japan. The only Monkey Punch's work with no Lupin The Third involved that arrived in the West I could find was Isshuku Ippan, a comic strip about a Samurai.

Isshuku Ippan (一宿一飯) was published on Weekly Sankei ( 週刊サンケイ), a japanese weekly magazine by Fusosha Publishing. It's a comic strip started in 1974 and ran for about 14 years, coming out every week and reaching nearly 700 episodes. It's a half-page strip about an errant samurai which makes fun of the samurai genre with Monkey Punch's classic erotic and nonsense humour. The art style is similar to the one used for Shin Lupin The Third, with more sketchy and fast lines and less details.

Isshuku Ippan Monkey Punch Art Manga Strip Lupin The Third

Many strips of Isshuku Ippan were published in Italy in the 90s inside Kappa Magazine, a magazine about anime and manga by Kappa Edizioni which ceased to exist about 20 years ago. Thanks to a friend of mine who has many of Kappa Magazine's issues, I am able to bring to you the scanlations of many of these strips, with an english translation by me where it's needed. I hope you'll find interesting to see some of Monkey Punch's work without Lupin the Third involved.

Before leaving you with this incredible amount of scans, I invite you to follow my blog or my Facebook Page and to share this article on your social media page if you've enjoyed it and leave a comment to let me know what are your thoughts on this comic! Within this week and the next I'm going to publish a special article about Lupin III Alis Plaudo, the last Lupin The Third story by Monkey Punch only published in Italy in 1994, don't miss it!

Here you can check out all my other articles about Lupin The Third and/or Monkey Punch.