My Name Is Shingo

My Name Is Shingo (Japanese: わたしは真悟, Hepburn: Watashi wa Shingo) is a Japanese science fiction manga by Kazuo Umezu. It was serialized in Big Comic Spirits between 1982 and 1986, with its chapters collected in 10 tankōbon volumes. While best known for his horror manga, Umezu desired to minimize the horror and dedicate Shingo to exploring concepts of god, consciousness, and the metaphysical.

My Name Is Shingo
First tankōbon volume cover
わたしは真悟 (Watashi wa Shingo)
Genre	Science fiction
Manga
Written by	Kazuo Umezu
Published by	Shogakukan
English publisher	NA: Viz Media
Magazine	Big Comic Spirits
Demographic	Seinen
Original run	1982 – 1986
Volumes	10

The manga is licensed in English by Viz Media.

Summary

Satoru Kondō (近藤悟) is the 12-year-old son of a factory worker. Marin Yamamoto (山本真鈴) is the 12-year-old daughter of a diplomat. The two meet by chance during a field trip to the factory to see the new industrial robots, and they fall in love. They later sneak in to the factory to input various information into one of the robots, "Monroe".

However, Satoru's father loses his job and his family falls apart, while Marin's father is sent to the UK for work, ripping the two apart from each other. Fearing an end to their childhood and rejecting adulthood, the two decide to get married and have children. They ask the robot Monroe how to create children and are told to jump from the top of 333 (to whatever is there). They interpret this to be the 333-meter-tall Tokyo Tower. They leap and a miracle happens: a spark of consciousness is born within the robot Monroe. Satoru and Marin are separated after this without knowing about their child. Unable to forget Marin, Satoru inputs his feelings for her in Monroe before moving. As its conscious grows, in a search for its origins, the robot searches for Marin to convey Satoru's message.

The robot Monroe chooses a name for himself: Shingo (真悟)—a masculine name—taking one character each from his father and mother's names. Shingo continues to evolve and travels to Europe to find his mother, Marin. She and his father, a diplomat of Japan, went to UK. The father of Marin finds international society getting together in a British toy company wants to eliminate Japan from the world, and got buried. Robin ,a son of British Diplomat shows flesh desire on Marin and deceive her to get into underground cage. He wants to marry her in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Shingo enhances his mind in the network of the global cables & artificial satellites to be born a god in form of a baby. He tries to save his mother from rape by dropping a part of artificial satellite on Robin but he puts Marin between the two. So Shingo drops himself in front of her. The debris hits Shingo and reflectively gets rid of Robin forever. But Shingo lost his humane form and Marin's childhood is gone so she cannot recognize a broken parts of machine is the robot as her child. He made up his mind to bring her message to his father as his next mission anyway.

Shingo gets back to Japan and seeks his father—now living in Niigata. He seems falling in a Russian espionage operation. Shingo in form of one robot arm meets some people and a dog on the way, gives them his miracle life energy to get normal body, get younger and even get up from death. But machines and insects hate and attack him, he undertakes much damage; consuming much miracle power he slowly falls apart and lose his memory. With his final energy, he at last finds his father but can only scratch the road to write two characters from a lovely message left in his memory, namely "A" and "I", which should mean "love" of his mother Marin towards his father Satoru but could be read as "I" to manifest himself or mere two beginning characters of Japanese alphabet "A I U E O". The time of childhood of Satoru is, however, gone as well and he isn't able to recognize the meaning of the message nor the part is the very his child, Shingo, either. The inventors of "Monroe" pick up every part of Shingo to put together "Monroe" again but without finding any soul (any more) nor any black box with secret program to produce secret weapon. You can see "Monroe" in a museum simply as the first example of industrial robots .

Radio adaptation

The series was adapted for broadcast by NHK FM Broadcast in 15 parts between October 14, 1991, and November 1, 1991. It was later rebroadcast on October 5, 1992, through October 23, 1992, and October 11, 1993, through October 29, 1993.

Musical adaptation

A musical adaptation was produced by Kanagawa Arts Theatre (KAAT) and performed at the New National Theatre Tokyo between December 2016 and January 2017. The lead roles were played by Mitsuki Takahata and Mugi Kadowaki.

Art exhibit

An art exhibit titled "Kazuo Umezz The Great Art Exhibition" opened at Tokyo City View in Roppongi Hills. Running from January 28 through March 25, 2022, it features a semi-continuation of the Shingo series. Titled Zoku-Shingo: Chiisa na Robotto Shingo Bijutsukan (Zoku-Shingo: 小さなロボット真悟美術館, "Shingo Sequel: Small Robot Shingo Gallery"), it consists of 101 paintings, each with a short description that forms another story. This is Umezu's first new work in 27 years since the completion of Fourteen, and 36 years since the completion of Shingo.

Reception

In January 2018, Shingo won the Heritage Selection (LA SELECTION patrimoin) award at the 45th Angoulême International Comics Festival in Angoulême, France.

External links

• Kazuo Umezz The Great Art Exhibition (in Japanese)
• Tokyo City View: Kazuo Umezz The Great Art Exhibition (in Japanese)
• My Name Is Shingo (manga) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia