Shanty is a oneshot original comic about a boy reaching for his dreams without giving up.
Shanty
【Comic】
Language: Japanese
Genre: Fantasy
Original upload: 1 April 2018
Chapters: 1 (Complete)
Summary:
Cyril is a young boy born in Shanty, a slum city where everyone who has given up on life ends up in. Despite his environment, Cyril has big dreams of becoming a successful knight in the capital city. He works hard to collect enough funds to be able to pursue his dreams.
Artist’s Notes
I failed to fulfill my life’s dream of becoming a mangaka after I graduated college and it broke me. Failing after giving it everything I’ve got, I was so traumatized that I lost all my confidence and was afraid of drawing any comic for 2 years. Luckily, I was able to recover thanks to making Lost Heaven. I then made Shanty as the final step to get me out of that abyss and back into the battlefield! Shanty’s world and themes of never giving up are greatly based on that struggle.
Shanty Character Sheets
Cyril
A young boy born and raised in Shanty. Cyril’s father was a great knight who was executed after an unforgivable mistake. His mother was exiled and sent to Shanty, losing her life to illness when Cyril was young. Cyril dreams of one day becoming a knight himself and doing great things to clear his father’s name. Shanty known to be the slums where losers gather, everyone thinks that the odds are against him, but Cyril fights on.
Vincent
Vincent is a young swordsmith who ran away to Shanty in shame after losing his job due to a mess up with his clients. He used to be a swordsmith with a promising future, but feeling humiliated and traumatized by his failure, he swears never to make a sword ever again. It annoys him whenever the optimistic Cyril asks him to make a sword for him, but he puts up with it because Cyril’s his friend.
Watari
An old man who runs the Cockerel, a curry shop in Shanty. He took Cyril in and looked after him like his own grandson when his mother passed away. He’s very supportive of Cyril’s dreams and cheers him on.
Bandit Boss
The boss of a cruel band of bandits that regularly comes to terrorize Shanty and rob its defenseless citizens. Thwarted by Cyril when he tried to rob Vincent, the bandit boss is greatly angered and plots his revenge.
Flashback Scene
Young Cyril, Cyril’s mother, Cyril’s father and swordsmith Vincent.
Background Design
Shanty
Shanty is a poor, slum city where its buildings and its people are equally broken. It’s a quiet place that had mushroomed in a deserted area away from civilization. The citizens are people who had washed up here from various places, usually because of a devastating failure in their life where they had lost everything and had nowhere else to go. People coming here usually just want to find a quiet place to spend the rest of their lives in. As a result, the slums earned the monicker ‘the graveyard of dreams’.
Shanty’s people
Although people who has just arrived tend to be in great shock and look like zombies, they mellow out after awhile. Everyone having had similar devastating experiences, Shanty’s citizens tend to be laid back, gentle and help each other out. They’re a tight knit community spending their days peacefully. However, as no one has the ability to set up rules and protect the people, they’re defenseless against the bandits and raiders that often come to rob them of what little they have.
Trivia
- I made a set of LINE Stickers of Watari’s pet cockerel.
