Children's books typically feature anything from frogs or cats or pigs to dinosaurs and sometimes even people. Those authored by Tatsuya Miyanishi have all those -- but he's also written several books featuring Ultraman.
"Ultraman is a character known to both the young and old, and so he works wonderfully as a communication medium," said Miyanishi, 49, author of 1996's award-winning "Otosan wa Urutoraman (Daddy is Ultraman)," which has sold more than 200,000 copies to date. Its sequels -- including one featuring an Ultra brothers character named Ultra Seven -- have also won awards, and they, too, remain popular with readers.
Just like many Ultraman fans of his generation, Miyanishi says he loved everything about the superhero alien from an exploded planet in Nebula M78, who came to Earth to help humans fight monsters. In fact, he clearly remembers how, in 1966, it was one of the first shows televised in color -- and how astonishingly vivid the images of the red-and-silver-clad, 40-meter-tall hero seemed to him. The monsters were equally amazing, he said, and so were the episodes depicting them.