Tragically, a large proportion of manga artists die early. The lifestyle of spending 12 hours a day bent over a desk, frantically drawing, stressing about deadlines, all contributes to a variety of causes of early death.
Treasure your mangaka while they're alive, as theirs is an industry fuelled by passion - often far too much. (And greedy/demanding publishers, but we'll leave that discussion for another time.)
I was internally hoping he would enjoy Japan longer lifespan.. not expecting this in the slightest.
Such confusion ...
As kids many did travel quite far just to get a glimpse of coming DBZ coming volumes.
We'd learn to program VCRs to be sure to tape episodes when we couldn't be there.
That series in itself was a deep deep source of wonder. And it was a pillar and gateway into Japanese culture, from drawing style to language...
Kinda dumbfounded right now.
Tiny personal mental black bar..