About

"What's in a Name...?"

Cito Wheelington with mangaGreetings.
My name is Wade “Cito” Lammar Wheelington III.
Thank you for visiting ShugoPro. In Japanese, “Shugo” means “guardian” and “pro” is short for “productions.” Thus “ShugoPro” is the codename which means “Guardian Productions.” It is a small ongoing project that seeks to showcase both my original art and fanworks.


History and Education

nagano summer festival

I have been creating artwork ever since I was a young boy in elementary school. I was always so fascinated with superheroes and comic books. I also had a very keen interest in the Japanese language and culture, so my family and I would always go to the annual St. Louis Japanese Festival. There, I had the opportunity to meet numerous staff and performers from Japan and experience Japanese food and culture. It wasn’t long before I became enamored with anime and manga, including such titles as “Sailor Moon” and “Yu Yu Hakusho." Following this, I soon began studying the Japanese language in my junior year in high school, hoping that I would one day be able to move to Japan and produce my own manga. 


Japanese TCA degree
English TCA degree
Finally, I was blessed with the opportunity to move to Japan in the autumn of 2012. I furthered my language study at the Nagano Kokusai Bunka Gakuin and upon graduation in 2014, I was accepted into the Tokyo Communication Arts Specialty School, where I majored in Creative Design with a focus of honing my skills as a manga artist. During my time there, I won first place in the school’s annual Manga Grand Prix. Additionally, numerous Japanese TV shows scouted me and featured my work on their programs which continued to fuel my passion. Finally, after much hard work and memorable experiences, I graduated in the spring of 2017 with a degree in Creative Design and Manga Composition.

Projects

Thanks to much effort and support, I published my first short manga series, Blue Crisis Love in 2016 and in addition to working full-time, I have continued juggling multiple new ideas along with working on my shoujo manga passion project Love or Duty.  In addition to continuing work on my manga, I have also started working on The Isaiah Bradley Project, a merch and comic endeavor, which you can check out here.

Love or Duty manga written by Cito Wheelington

Season 1 of the "Love or Duty" 10-chapter manuscript was fully completed in 2022 and was published in 2023 following a successful Kickstarter campaign! After a short print run, focus has been shifted to the digital edition which in available on Kindle. There is still work to be done for the outreach of Love or Duty as season 2 is in the works, halfway completed!

It has been a long road, filled with hardships as well as many fun memories. I hope that my story inspires all to go after their dreams too!