The Autobiography of Sheeh!: Osomatsu-kun and Me is an autobiography book about Fujio Akatsuka, ghostwritten by Kunio Nagatani and published through Hana Shobo in 1966.
Overview[]
At the time of the book's release, the Osomatsu-kun boom was at an all-time high with the 1966 anime adaptation having recently come out. Akatsuka was also in high demand and a strong star of Weekly Shonen Sunday, as well as having many other notable manga come out by the time.
Akatsuka would relay his early career up to the creation and success of -kun, with such memoirs being transcribed down by Nagatani, in about 90 pages of text. The decision was made to fill the rest of the book with samples of Fujio Pro manga to give a sample of his gag range.
The book was highly popular and sold out fast, going through at least 5 reprintings before Hana Shobo went bankrupt due to the careless behavior of its president. Fujio Pro opted to buy out all the remaining copies of the novel in stock, and sold them via a special mail-order incentive in its Osomatsu-kun Book newsletters for 260 yen.
In 1969, with the release of Akebono's Osomatsu-kun Complete Works and the Fujio Akatsuka Complete Works imprints, a completely new edition of the book was put out with Hana Shobo's credit and the original "Osomatsu-kun and Me" subtitle scrubbed out, and a brand new cover in place of the old. Though Akebono Publishing was not outright named for the new release on the cover, Fujio Pro would identify them as being involved for this minimally revised version of the book. Their presence is also indicated with advertisements in the inner cover for the Complete Works volumes that were available at the time, including the first 20 books of the Osomatsu-kun collection.
Works Represented[]
Osomatsu-kun has at least 4 chapters reprinted, as it is was the focal work of this book and most popular. Other Fujio Pro works that are reprinted in the book, albeit most only with a single chapter each, include these titles:
- Otasuke-kun
- Leave it to Chota
- Kantaro (Shonen Book version)
- Nonsensical NO.1
- The Mean Professor
- Jajako-chan - 4 stories are included due to the short, 2-page length of each
As many of these reprints came from kashihon releases or other older collections prior to the "Complete Works" sets or others which made certain edits the standard, the manga may contain content like margin commentaries and little features. Any titles are also hand-written, rather than being typed serifs (with the exception of a Chota chapter that already had a typed title from its kashihon). However, any cases of colored chapters or frontispieces were not carried over, as was standard for reprinting at the time.