Professor Tadashi Ishikawa has been a faculty member at Geiko College since the establishment of the Department of Literary Arts in 2011. He is also the head of the department and mainly teaches courses on creative writing and literary criticism. We interviewed Mr. Ishikawa about the Geiko College, manga, manga club activities, criticism, and Tatsuki Fujimoto in the laboratory where manga artist Tatsuki Fujimoto, who is also an alumnus of the Western-style painting course, visited to show his storyboards when he was a student.
Skip to the part of the interview where the story of Mr. Tatsuki Fujimoto appears.
Quote 東北芸術工科大学漫画研究同好会
Tatsuki Fujimoto is not a weirdo, and he listens to people.
Ishikawa: The year the Literature Department was established and I came to Geiko College, Tatsuki Fujimoto suddenly came to our manga club. He said, I want to draw manga, so please look at my storyboards. I have no idea what he was doing before I came to the college as a teacher, but I guessed from his behavior that there was no manga club at the college before that. If there was, he would have gone to the manga club there, right? That’s what I think. I am not sure of my memory at that time, but maybe he had already made his professional debut at that time. Fujimoto brought me that storyboard, a comic strip called Sasaki kun ga bullet stop. He neatly printed out the storyboard and handed it to me, saying something like, I drew this, take a look at it. It was already completed as a work of art. I’m not sure if I had already decided to debut in Jump Square or not, or if I submitted that manga work after that or not, but my memory of that time is not so clear.
Ishikawa: When I talk about it with, say, a Western art teacher, they say, He’s a very strange guy, isn’t he? I always say something like, “Yes, that’s right,” in a random way to suit the conversation, but the truth is, I don’t really have the impression that he’s a weirdo. At the time, there was a student in the literature department who was very open to other departments. When I said to him, I just started a manga club with a guy named Tatsuki Fujimoto and some others from my department, he looked at me like, Oh！, that Fujimoto? He looked at me like
The student also said that Tatsuki Fujimoto was a weirdo. But I have no idea what his evaluation of Fujimoto as a weirdo was. Tatsuki Fujimoto was polite, you know.
taki: Heh I see.
Ishikawa: Moreover, what impressed me about him was that at that time, when it was decided to have a critique session for his new works, Fujimoto, as I mentioned earlier, was either on the verge of making his professional debut or had already made his professional debut, and someone who had drawn that many works was somehow neatly listening to others (laugh). He never shows any attitude of, I can already draw this many mangas! (laugh). I remember being very impressed by that.
Wada: So you were under the impression that students who excel at something, such as writing interesting novels, do not listen to others, and you felt a gap between those students and Tatsuki Fujimoto’s attitude?
Ishikawa: First of all, even if you think your novel is interesting yourself, or even if it is actually interesting, that is only an evaluation within the university, right? There is a big difference between that and actually debuting in a commercial magazine. The normal attitude when you have that kind of achievement is, well, it’s a bit of a jerk (laugh). I used to teach at a culture center, and if you have a foot in the door with a publishing company, the attitude of the students changes quite a bit among themselves (laugh).
Wada: What is the actual situation? You publish your manga in commercial magazines, right?
Taki: Eh, I don’t know. I have deep conversations like this with people at the university only after my debut. I don’t have any experience that my attitude has changed.
Mr. Takitaro’s works
Wada：Well, I met Takitaro just before I won the JUMP Shinsekai Manga Award, and we’ve known each other longer since I won the award, but he’s been like this from the beginning (laugh). I don’t think Takitaro’s attitude changed because he won the Newcomer Award, or anything like that. And as far as I know, there is no one around me who is overbearing after I become the editor in charge. On the other hand, there may be a part of a person who is good at mangaing and improves because he or she is humble like that.
Ishikawa: Maybe it is a generational issue. I was born in the 1960s, and the older generation is the same, but they are all crazy. Their personalities are a little crazy (laugh). Nowadays, people are talking about self-promotion and self-expression by asking for likes on social networking sites, aren’t they? I don’t think it has changed since the old days (laugh). I think the fact that we are human beings and want approval from those around us has not changed. In the past, there were more people (including myself) who felt good about little things (laugh). I feel like everyone is getting better as a human being every year about that part .
Having talent and being able to make a professional debut are two different things.
Taki: What kind of gathering was it that you had with Tatsuki Fujimoto for the critique session?
Ishikawa: Fujimoto brought a copy of Sasaki-kun ga Bullet Stopper to our laboratory, so we thought, Well, since we’re going to go through all this trouble, let’s have an unofficial manga club where everyone can participate in critique sessions and the like. So I called out to the department, and a few guys who liked manga came. There was a student from the 2nd year of Bungei who made his debut in Gessan’s MONTHLY SHONEN SUNDAY, another who is currently an assistant for Blue Period, or maybe he has already quit…anyway, there were several others who were also in the 2nd year.
Ishikawa: This manga club, as I recall, spontaneously disappeared, and I don’t remember it continuing for a year. But the fact that there are second-term students means that we have been going on for probably more than a year. I have Fujimoto’s manuscript and the manuscripts of the second term students on my old computer at the time, and I remember that we had a critique session together. I remember that I was there, Fujimoto was next to me, and the second term students were there.
Taki: Somehow, I think that around 2011, when Tatsuki Fujimoto was in school, there were a lot of students who could draw manga at Geiko College.
Ishikawa: What? What makes you think that?
Taki: I have been following Tatsuki Fujimoto’s movements obsessively for a long time, and when I go back and look at his comments, I see that he has not done so recently, but he tweets comments like “A friend of mine at the university drew a work called XX, and it was published, and I recommend it. That was interesting to me. I have a guess that there were a lot of students of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s generation at the College of Art and Design who were drawing manga, regardless of their department, and I would like to hear about it.
Ishikawa: At least in the Literature Department, there were not many students who were drawing manga. There were some students who were good at it, but I think there are more students who draw manga and are good at it now than there were then. I don’t know about other departments. I don’t know how much they were drawing and how good they were.
Taki: I see. So when you talk about students who brought storyboards from other departments, would you say that Tatsuki Fujimoto is the only student who did so?
Ishikawa: Yes, that’s right. After Tatsuki Fujimoto, the next person who brought a storyboard was Takitaro Sato, who came through the introduction of Wada and Adachi.
Taki: What? I’m next?
Wada: Next break is a done deal.
Ishikawa: Your style is similar to his, isn’t it?
Taki: Of course, I was influenced by him.
Thank you for watching. See you soon.
chainsaw man. (World’s largest number of translations)
コメント