Japanese authorities have confirmed that the body of manga-ka Yoshito Usui was found at the base of a cliff on Mount Arafune.  The creator of the Crayon Shin-Chan manga had told his family on September 11th that he was going hiking in the mountainous Gunma Prefecture.  His body was found on Saturday on a rocky ledge some 360 feet below Tomoiwa Cliff.  No determination has been made on whether his death was an accident, suicide or foul play.  There is no railing on the cliff from which Usui fell, but the hiking trail is well back from the cliff’s edge.  The final photograph taken by Usui appears to have been taken from the edge of the cliff, which could indicate that he slipped accidentally while taking snapshots.

Usui began drawing the Crayon Shin-Chan manga in 1990 and has produced 49 volumes featuring the five-year-old hellion Shinnosuke “Shin” Nohara, who has been described as “Bart Simpson on steroids.”  Shin-Chan made the transition to anime in 1992, and like The Simpsons, The Crayon Shin-Chan anime has been a long-running hit with some 685 episodes produced over the past 18 years.  Usui had completed two more episodes of the Shin Chan manga, and they will appear in the next two issues of Futabasha’s Manga Town magazine.  The fate of the Shin Chan anime, which was to return to Japanese TV on Oct. 16th, has not yet been determined.

The Crayon Shin-Chan manga was first published in the U.S. by ComicsOne, then by DrMaster, and since 2007 by DC’s CMX Manga.  Since much of the humor of Shin-Chan is based on quirks of the Japanese language and the norms of Japanese culture, it is a testimony to the cleverness of those creating the various linguistic adaptations that the property has become something of an international hit. Funimation has released the most popular English adaptations, which ran on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim and featured plenty of raunchy gags and American pop culture references, some of which were added by Evan Dorkin (Milk & Cheese) and Sarah Dyer, who punched up the scripts for some of the early episodes.