Arashi Ishino, the main character of Sugaya Mitsuru's series ‘Game Center Arashi’ symbolizes this exhibition, which is the crossover between manga, anime and games.
‘Game Center Arashi’ is a shonen manga which was serialized in CoroCoro Comic from 1979 to 1983, in which Arashi competes in video games against a successive number of rivals.
Due to its popularity, it was adapted into a TV anime series by Shin-Ei Animation in 1982. Many viewers of the time will remember Arashi's dynamic movements in the anime version of his flashy techniques ‘fire spinning top’ and ‘electric thunder’.
The theme of video games was groundbreaking for a manga before Nintendo's FamiCom console was released in 1983, and on the contrary, several video games adaptations of ‘Arashi’ were created.
Incidentally, it is worth noting that in 1983, when ‘Game Center Arashi’ was awarded the Shogakukan Manga Award in the Children's category, ‘Mai con denji-ran’ began serialization as a follow-up to ‘Arashi’ both of which ran in Bessatsu CoroCoro Comic. ‘Arashi’ portrays the joy of playing an already existing game whereas ‘Ran’ depicts the fun of programming and creating your own game. Another notable work by Sugaya is ‘Konnichiwa maikon’ an educational manga that teaches programming. It was also awarded the Shogakukan Manga Award along with ‘Arashi’ and it has played an important role in the gaming world by “guiding entertainment consumers to become entertainment creators.”

Born in Shizuoka Prefecture in 1950. After graduating high school, Sugaya moved to Tokyo and worked in roles such as manga editing production before joining Ishinomori Productions. In 1971, he debuted as a manga artist with ‘Kamen Rider’ in TV Magazine (Kodansha). After that, he worked on the manga versions of ‘Kamen Rider V3’ and ‘Kamen Rider X’. He has many notable works, including ‘Game Center Arashi’ and ‘Konnichiwa maikon’, which won the 28th Sogakukan Manga Award in 1983. He has often tackled new themes that are ahead of their time including computers and computer communications. He completed his master’s degree at Waseda University in 2011 and later worked as a professor in the Manga Department of Kyoto Seika University. He has also authored many works aside from his own manga, and his recent publications include ‘Showa CoroCoro manga bakus? densetsu’ (Bijinesusha) and ‘Manga-ka to manabu chosakken jitsumu nyūmon’ (Jusonbo, edited by Masashi Sawada)