After my last article, I got another issue of "Shonen King," so let's start with that.

"Weekly Shonen King" (Shonengahosha)
Issue 28, 1969: "SF Super Production Film Published! Gwangi the Dinosaur"
This was released in the same week as "The Valley of Gwangi" in Shonen Sunday, issue 27, 1969, which I introduced last time (Sunday on June 29, King on July 3). While Sunday used a lot of snapshots, this one mainly features dynamic illustrations by the master Takayuki Minamura, making it quite impressive. However, the film's release date was July 19. Both magazines kindly introduced the story, even the ending, before the film was released! Was it a more forgiving era? I'm sure I saw Gwangi in the theater, but I don't recall any excitement. "One Million Years B.C." two years earlier left a strong impression, but looking back, that might have been due to Raquel Welch... I was an adolescent, after all. (①)

In relation to films, there's also this.

"Weekly Bokura Magazine" (Kodansha)
Issue 13, 1971: "Dinosaur Special Effects - Secrets of the Movie 'When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth'"
I don't remember the name of this magazine, but seeing the serialized works, I recognize many of them, so I must have read it. The feature is a niche one, introducing methods for model animation filming for "When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth," which was released in Japan in March 1971. (②)
*The video for this film is not sold domestically, but the English Blu-ray version can be purchased on Amazon. Since the content is in primitive language, it's not a problem.

"Weekly Shonen Champion" (Akita Shoten)
Issue 46, 1971: "Great Dinosaurs"
This features a 7-page color opening spread (illustrations by Takayuki Minamura and others), followed by the serialized manga "Ryu the Cave Boy" (Shotaro Ishinomori). (③)
*I also touched on "Ryu the Cave Boy" in New Secret Museum Vol. 32.

And then there's "Weekly Shonen Magazine" (Kodansha).

Issue 42, 1965: "Great Dinosaur Picture Book"
This is a 14-page color gravure feature at the beginning, with illustrations by Takayuki Minamura. Besides the pages introduced, there's a section titled "Monster Dinosaurs All Around" that introduces ornithopods. However, it contains many perplexing descriptions, such as stating that Ankylosaurus is an ancestor of the armadillo, and calling Parasaurolophus a "horned dragon" and Triceratops a "two-horned dragon," which really shows the era it came from. For some reason, this magazine continued to stick to the term "恐龍 (kyōryū)" for dinosaurs after this. (④)

Issue 13, 1966: "100 Wonders of Dinosaurs"
At the beginning, there's an illustration (by Takayuki Minamura) and a four-fold illustration of a "Stegosaurus" (by Shogo Endo, with a comparison of all dinosaur sizes on the back). Then, in the latter half, there's a 16-page feature titled "100 Wonders of Dinosaurs," presenting 100 pieces of trivia. This was quite a lot of information for the time. (⑤)

Issue 16, 1967: "50 Amazing Dinosaur Explorations"
This time, a 15-page color feature at the beginning presents 50 pieces of trivia. While some topics overlap with the previous issue, the reduced number allows for more detailed explanations. (⑥)

Issue 34, 1967: "Dinosaur Wonderland"
This was the second "Dinosaur Wonder" feature of the year. This time, the project was designed for learning about dinosaurs through games like mazes, spot-the-difference, and quizzes. (⑦)

Issue 16, 1968: "Great Dinosaur Illustrated Encyclopedia of 100 Species"
Using 23 pages, both color and monochrome, this presented 100 dinosaur species in an encyclopedic format. Many skeletal diagrams were included. The illustrations were by the regulars, Takayuki Minamura and Shogo Endo. (⑧)

Combined Issues 3/4, 1972: "Panoramic Scroll! Great Dinosaurs - From Birth to Extinction"
Dinosaurs were finally written as 恐竜 (kyōryū)! This was a magnificent 15-page full-color art book, befitting a New Year's issue. The illustrations were by Masutsugu Ida. The dinosaurs, drawn as if bursting from the page, had an extraordinary impact. (⑨)

Special September 1972 Issue of Bessatsu Shonen Magazine: "Illustrated Encyclopedia of Amazing Great Dinosaurs"
In the same year, a dinosaur special was compiled in a separate volume, but unfortunately, the cover and the first 15 pages of full color were reused from "Panoramic Scroll! Great Dinosaurs." The subsequent 47-page special also felt like a compilation, with many articles and illustrations from past dinosaur features. However, the five stories in the readable article titled "Unexpected History of Dinosaur Discovery" - "Dinosaurs Reborn!", "The Phantom Chirotherium", "Searching for the Oldest Reptile", "Frozen Mammoths", and "Paleontologists Duped by Fake Fossils" - are quite engaging. (⑩)

Issues 30/31, 1976: "Copyright Exclusive! Great Dinosaurs from the British Museum" (For some reason, it's back to "龍" again...)
Over two weeks, Neave Parker's dinosaur illustrations were featured in the opening color pages. While not entirely full color, it was groundbreaking for realistic works by a leading illustrator of the time to adorn the gravure pages of a boy's manga magazine. Furthermore, the commentary was by Dr. Ikuo Obata. 1976 was the year of "The Great Dinosaur Age" (New Secret Museum Vol. 11), in a sense, the dawn of the dinosaur renaissance in Japan, and perhaps a sign of change in how boy's magazines treated dinosaurs... I feel a certain sadness, as if an era was coming to an end. (⑪)

Monthly Shonen Magazine, January 1977 Issue: "Great Nessie Mystery Special Feature"
This was a large special feature of nearly 80 pages, combining two manga stories, "I Was Attacked by Nessie" (Sachio Umemoto) and "Operation Nessie Capture" (Shuji Sakamoto), along with "Nessie Encyclopedia of Everything." (⑫)

Issue 25, 1978: "Time Travel 200 Million Years: Dinosaur Zoo"
This was a dinosaur encyclopedia using dinosaur models made by Arthur Hayward. Around this time, several dinosaur encyclopedias using these models were published. These are nostalgic dinosaurs for me. (⑬)

*In my personal collection, the next time Magazine featured dinosaurs was not until the 90s. Issue 31, 1993, featured a "Jurassic Park" special. Then, in the November 1995 issue of Monthly Shonen Magazine, Sho Tarumi's first dinosaur work, "Beyond the Mist," was published. It was a surprisingly somber documentary manga about Mantell's discovery of the Iguanodon.

1978 was the year of the "Great Dinosaur Exhibition" by the Soviet Academy of Sciences. There was also this dinosaur feature:

Monthly Shonen World, October 1978
"The Mystery of Lost Creatures: Dinosaurs!!"
This was a 7-page color feature at the beginning, including a report on the "Great Dinosaur Exhibition," but the opening article, "Did Dinosaurs Come from Space!?", introduced the strange theory of NASA's Dr. Clark (suspicious!)... It's a mystery. (⑭)

This concludes all the dinosaur features in Showa-era manga magazines in my collection. There are no 80s issues. I wonder what dinosaurs looked like in manga magazines in the 80s? I'm curious.

By the way, "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" will finally be released in July. I regrettably missed out on the advance tickets with figures and, upon hearing they were sold out, hurriedly got them on Yahoo Auctions. They're small, about 10cm, but if you ignore the wide stance of their feet for self-standing, they have good proportions. Plus, the jaw (T-Rex), hips (Velociraptor), and neck (Pachycephalosaurus) are posable. (⑮)


These are from the mini-series (all 12 types?) released by Mattel. Mattel has already released quite a few figures that are readily available on Sekaimon. I steeled myself and bought as many as I could. They'll arrive around mid-April, and I'll show them off next time. Furthermore, there are expensive figures not yet on sale, such as a surprisingly huge Mosasaurus and a Pteranodon that flaps its wings while flying attached to a drone, so this summer promises to be terrifying.