Outside of one-shots, Mizukami's style is best described as "unassuming" - his art is rarely spectacular, and his plots often start out with generic scenarios more akin to shounen than seinen. Rather what his works are most praised for for is their composition. This extends from the small scale with effective framing and use of panels, up to the large scale with narratives that feel increasingly guided by the characters rather than the other way around (while still working in plentiful Foreshadowing and Foils to tie everything back to the story's Central Theme). While even his most successful works have struggled to break into the mainstream,note he has a strong reputation within the industry with many larger creators citing him as an influence.
Mizukami's typical depiction of himself is a crudely-drawn humanoid frog with stick limbs, which makes cameo appearances in some of his works.
Notable Works
Anime
- Planet With (including manga retelling)
Manga
- Angel Onayami Soudanjo
- Climax Necromance (with Seto Ichiri as artist)
- The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer
- Mizukami Satoshi No Manga Sadou (an autobiography)
- Mizukami Satoshi Tanpenshuu (collections of all of his oneshots and short stories)
- My Isekai Essay By Bucket (art only)
- Nihonmatsu Kyoudai To Mokuzou Keikoku No Bouken
- Psycho Staff
- Sengoku Youko
- Spirit Circle
- World End Solte
Tropes common to Mizukami's works:
- Brains Evil, Brawn Good: Many intelligent characters in his works are shown to create their own problems - spending all their mental energy worrying about things that might happen, using their smarts to talk themselves into insane actions, and being unable to admit their mistakes. Conversely Blood Knights and Fitness Nuts tend to be some of the nicest and most well-adjusted members of the cast even when they're villains. On a lesser level characters grappling with complicated issues are often shown to achieve moments of clarity through physical exertion.
- Breaking the Fellowship: Whatever way the cast is initially broken up it will rarely be the same by the end, with heroes parting ways or villains showing unexpected sympathy for their cause.
- Coming of Age Story: Many of his stories, often the delayed version or having multiple characters help each other through their own journeys.
- Magnum Opus: The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer, Sengoku Youko and Spirit Circle compete for this spot, being collectively known as Mizukami's "Big Three". Out of these, his most polished work is generally considered to be Spirit Circle, due to its format (a boy flashing back to his past lives and seeing how each one impacted the next) combining Mizukami's one-shot and long-form storytelling modes in a way that compensates for his stories' occasional pacing issues.
- Mental Health Recovery Arc: Many of his protagonists have some pre-series trauma or emotional baggage which they need to overcome. Yuuhi of Biscuit Hammer is probably the least subtle example in Mizukami's entire corpus, with his abuse at the hands of his grandfather causing him to regularly hallucinate about being bound by chains.
- Not So Above It All: If a Mizukami villain is being consistently ominous and threatening, expect them to either have a scene where something unexpected happens and they gawp like an idiot... or one where a friend or family member shows up and their whole manner softens around them.
- Rousseau Was Right: Mizukami's antagonists are almost never 100% evil, having been set on their path through mistreatment or a twisted desire to help others, and even the most depraved show at least a possibility of redemption. More than once he's introduced a hero and a villain who are actually the same person at different points in life (in both directions).
- Show Within a Show: Some of his older works reappear in newer ones as fiction. This includes Sensei from Planet With owning figures of Samidare and Anima from The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer, and Biscuit Hammer itself depicting a version of Magical Mary (from the one-shot The Great Natsugorou) as an anime watched by the characters.
- Stealth Sequel: Downplayed. Some of his manga have hints that they take place in the same world as others, but so far apart that it has little actual impact on the story. E.g. Shinsuke from the Historical Fantasy Sengoku Youko is implied to be the ancestor of some characters from the Urban Fantasy Daily Life in Monster Town shorts and eventually founds a Fantastic Nature Reserve which is implied to become Monster Town, while the Medieval European Fantasy World End Solte has sneaky references to a number of Mizukami's one-shots which took place in similar settings. His works are explicitly not a single Verse however, as they have also showed up within each other in the form of in-universe fiction.
