A special project combining space technology and manga has officially been announced under the name Mission: SPACE COMIC. Created in collaboration with Chuya Koyama’s manga Uchuu Kyoudai, the mission aims to draw a special episode, episode 425.5, set between chapters 425 and 426 of the main story.
Drawing Manga With a Robotic Arm in Space
The core of the mission is a robotic arm installed inside Japan’s Kibo laboratory on the International Space Station. Developed by JAXA, the arm will reproduce Koyama’s hand movements in real zero gravity. The team will record motion data from Koyama drawing on Earth and send that data to the robotic arm in space, where it will redraw the manga on paper.
The control software for the arm is named Verrocchio, after the remote-control robot “Da Vinci” that appears in volume 34 of Uchuu Kyoudai. The name highlights the connection between the manga’s imagination and technology becoming reality.
Comment From the Creator
Koyama said that when he first heard about the project, he immediately thought of the Da Vinci robot in the manga. A technology he once drew as a near-future dream has become real, and it will now hold a pen and draw manga in space. He called the mission a fitting culmination for Uchuu Kyoudai and said he wants to share the moment when fiction becomes reality with everyone.
Comments From Project Members
Takayuki Goto of Space Entry Co., Ltd. explained that the robotic arm is new equipment launched by JAXA in 2025 to gather demonstration data for automated and remote space experiments. This project is the first commercial mission using the arm and challenges it with the delicate task of drawing manga under constraints such as time, payload weight, strength, fireproofing, heat, and ink evaporation in an environment without convection.
Masato Nemoto, managing director of Menoh Co., Ltd., said manga drawing involves extremely subtle and complex motion, including straight lines, curves, and varied pen pressure. The team repeatedly simulated and adjusted the motion so it could be reproduced accurately in zero gravity.
Naoya Oda of Celsys Co., Ltd. said the company supports the technical process of sending line data recorded from CLIP STUDIO PAINT, the manga drawing app Koyama uses in his regular work, to the robotic arm in space.
Fiction Becoming Reality
Mission: SPACE COMIC is not only a special manga project. It also demonstrates how remote space operation technology can be applied to Japan’s future space industry. The data and lessons from the mission will be used to develop automation and remote-control systems further.
Source: natalie
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