【Interview】Tatsuki Fujimoto Hiroaki Samura Fire Punch Blade of the Immortal

The shocking dark fantasy Fire Punch and the supreme neo-period drama Blade of the Immortal. The two immortals, heroes of both works, will miraculously face off to commemorate the release of Fire Punch volume 5! This dialogue was made possible by Mr. Tatsuki Fujimoto’s ardent love for Mr. Hiroaki Samura, whom he has adored since his student days. The two heroes are shown together in a large volume, along with collaborative illustrations drawn by exchanging their heroes!　Please read on!

Citation.　

スポンサーリンク

Interview with Tatsuki Fujimoto Hiroaki Samura

Fujimoto: This is the first time for me to have a dialogue with an author. Samura-sensei, you had a previous interview with Kishimoto-sensei of Naruto fame. I wondered if it was okay for me to be here. Today I came as usual. I didn’t even shave my beard.

Samura: Your schedule is definitely supposed to be busier than mine, so don’t worry about it. In this interview, I heard that Mr. Fujimoto’s purpose was to ask me to give him some advice since he is still young as a manga artist. To be honest, my experience, or rather my entire manga life, has been limited to monthly magazines. I am sure that your life as a manga artist will be harder than mine, so I don’t have much to say (laugh).

Fujimoto: No, no, no! I have many compromises in my drawings, but Blade of the Immortal has none of that… I have many questions for you.Mr. Samura is a legend for me, so when I heard that we were going to have this interview, Mr. Samura appeared in my dreams twice. Mr. Samura’s big house appeared in my dream!

Samura: (laugh). My house is not that big, though (laugh).

Encounter of “Fire Punch” and “Blade of the Immortal

–This dialogue started from the fact that Mr. Fujimoto admires Mr. Samura, but in fact, Mr. Samura had already bought a copy of “Fire Punch” himself, and he had also read an interview Mr. Fujimoto had done in the past, so he knew how Mr. Fujimoto felt about him, which led to the realization of this dialogue.

Samura: Ah, yes. Yes, yes,

Fujimoto: Ew! Really? That’s not true. I’m, um…okay.

Samura: The first episode of “Fire Punch” was quite rumored on the Internet. My assistant and I saw it and thought, This is interesting. At first, I bought the first volume of Fire Punch and let my assistant read it, but then I started reading it myself and have been collecting them ever since.

Fujimoto: Samura-sensei… You can say whatever you want to say to me.

Samura: I like comics in which I don’t know how the story will turn out. In the case of Fire Punch, I think the story that develops after Togata comes out is an “impossible story” in the shonen manga pattern (laugh). But I like that kind of thing a lot. You make me wonder what the concept of this manga is. There are people who say they like that kind of manga, and there are people who say it’s off-axis, but in the end it’s all the same thing. It’s a nuanced difference between those who enjoy the thrill of not knowing what will happen and those who want more solid pillars. People who say that are picky, but I like it. And Fire Punch has become a proper axis by volume 4 or so, with those parts also matching up.

Fujimoto: Well, I am very happy! I have always wanted to draw a manga like a Korean movie. There is a movie called The Chaser, in which the hero chases the villain. About 30 minutes into the movie, the villain is caught by the hero. The story’s supposed end develops immediately, and keep repeating, What’s going to happen now, what’s going to happen now? Korean films are often said to be so confusing that you don’t know what the director is thinking, but if you watch the film all the way to the end, you will know that this is it. That is the kind of film I want to make. Well…I am happy to hear the word Fire Punch from Mr. Samura (laugh). As someone who has been reading Mr. Samura’s manga since I was a student…it makes me feel strange. I’m a bit surprised.

Samura: I think there are usually many professional Manga Artists who read Fire Punch.

Interview staff: The manga artists who commented on the obi of the manga (*Sui Ishida, Yusuke Murata, and ONE) also read the manga.

Fujimoto: Thank you all!…。

Samura: It was great that Fire Punch was spread all over the Internet. If you read that one out of the blue, you would think, A great manga has started.

Fujimoto: Hmmm…really, the spread of manga on the Internet is very typical of the current era. By the way, did “Mr. Samura sensei” see the live-action movie Blade of the Immortal?

Samura: I saw it at a preview screening. Blade of the Immortal had been discussed to be made into a movie many times in the past, but it was always cancelled in the end, and I thought it was destined to be like that. Then, out of the blue, I was told, “We are making a movie starring Takuya Kimura, so please check the script. He told me that he would send me the script by motorcycle because he would not be able to send it in time if I mailed it to him. At that time, I was surprised that he was in such a hurry, even though it was the first time I had heard about it today (laugh).I heard that the film adaptation was decided in a hurry.

Fujimoto: I didn’t know such stories really existed. That’s amazing. How did you feel when you saw it?

Samura: The action scenes were about 1.5 times longer than I had imagined. Mr. Takuya Kimura did a great job. The part of my work, especially the part that was made into this movie, was drawn when I was young, so the dialogue is something I thought up 20 years ago. It’s not so much how the film turned out, but more that I thought to myself, “I wouldn’t have made him say this if it were now. My embarrassment over that part of the story took precedence over the excitement of the film adaptation, and before I complain to Director Miike or anything like that, I am amazed that he made this movie. If you saw the movie without knowing the original, and if you felt that the movie was not good enough, please read the original. I would like to say that everything is exactly as it was in the original work.

PV of the movie Infinite Dweller　If you’re interested, here you go.

Two people’s idea of manga expression

Fujimoto: I have so many more questions for Mr. Samura… If possible, I don’t want the this time interview article to be published.

All:　Ehh…

Assistant: He wanted to monopolize this conversation with you. (laugh).

Fujimoto: If this dialogue is made public, the method for improving manga pictures will be known……。

All: (laughs).

Fujimoto: I want to draw pictures like Mr. Samura. So, I thought I would use the cartoonists that Mr. Samura likes as references. Who should I aim for first in order to become a manga artist like Mr. Samura?

Samura: (laugh). There are many authors I like, but until I was in junior high school, it was Osamu Tezuka, Rumiko Takahashi, and Fujiko Fujio. When I was in high school, I read Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira and thought, There is a great person here. Also, Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. Both of them are very good at drawing. Yasuhiko-sensei’s drawing hands were beautiful, so I started practicing to draw beautiful human hands around that time. I used to draw my own hands all over my notebook during recess. I must have been a creepy high school student (laugh).

Fujimoto: I will be copying you from now on.

osamu tezuka

rumiko takahashi

hujiko hujio

otomo katsuhiro akira

yoshikazu yasuhiko

Samura: (laugh). When I entered university, I read a collection of works on the theme of space titled 2001: A Tale of Two Thousand and One Nights” by Professor Yukinobu Hoshino. He was very good and drew very detailed pictures. It would have been absolutely impossible to serialize such a work in a weekly magazine (laugh) I also belonged to a manga research group at art college, and for better or worse, there were a lot of highly conscious people in the manga research group at art college. They read Garo instead of the weekly manga magazines. There, I saw the works of minor artists and learned that there were many interesting people. After graduation, when Blade of the Immortal started serialization, I bought a book by Kei Ichinoseki. I bought it at a random bookstore, not from someone who told me about it or introduced me to it. I was shocked to learn that there was a female artist who drew manga in such a realistic manner. If I had read it before the series, I would have been too embarrassed to storyboard Blade of the Immortal.

2001 Nights Stories　yukinobu hoshino

garo

kei ichinose

Fujimoto: I wish I had read it before the manga was serialized. In my case, In my case, I was reading Mr Samura’s Wave, Listen to Me! to take a break while I was working on a story for Fire Punch.

Wave, Listen to Me! samura hiroaki

Samura: There are many artists who are better at drawing than I am. When I look at the brush strokes and peculiarities of a good manga artist work, or when I look at the drawings of someone I like and draw them, I somehow end up with the same kind of pictures.

Fujimoto: No…I don’t think so… I would like to know if you have any secrets for me to become good at drawing.

Samura: My idea of good drawing is, for example, Fumiko Takano. She is the best manga artist in Japan in my opinion. Her spatial expression is amazing. When drawing pictures, I think male artists tend to draw in precise perspective, But when I look at Ms. Takano’s manga, if you try to get the concentrated points in the background exactly right, they are definitely off. But in her drawings, there is a sense of space. In other words, getting the perspective right is not the same as expressing space, and there is a way to shift the perspective in a pleasing way. When I draw the horizon line, for example, if I were to draw the ocean and there is a pier there, according to the rules of painting, the horizon line would be at the end of the perspective of the pier, but I intentionally draw the horizon line higher than that position. The ocean looks wider if you draw it that way. I don’t know what it is, but I think that Takano-sensei’s paintings are able to subconsciously create such a way of drawing. Also, she works have the smell of human life. It’s like, “Oh! I can’t help but think, “Oh, yes, people do pose like that. When he comes home and says, “I’m home,” he looks at a flyer while picking up mandarin oranges on the kotatsu, or when he looks at a book he likes on the floor. she is very good at depicting such unconscious human behavior. Also, her drawings have very few lines. There is a skill that cannot be described in terms of drawing or technique. She makes me think that women who are keen observers are also keen in other senses.

Fujimoto：It is true that women are more observant than men.

humiko takano

Samura: Maybe women have a strong memory for everyday scenes. Men’s idea of good drawing is to pursue technical skill based on knowledge, such as drawing ability or action composition. That’s another different kind of difficulty, though. Well, whether or not I am good at it myself is another story just because I think about such things (laugh).

Fujimoto: No, I think that Mr. Samura is practicing the drawing method you just described very well. That reminds me of a movie called “In This Corner Of The World” that has recently become popular. I thought the girls depicted by Ms. Fumiyo Konno were very erotic. In particular, I found her legs erotic. I wondered why, and I found out that it was because she was acting with her feet. They are short and look like hobbits, but they are very realistic and realistic. It was because I was acting. I thought about this when I was watching the comedian Bananaman’s skits, and there were times when I thought those characters were really alive in the short time they were in the skits. That is, depending on the character, some characters would touch their noses or stomp their feet. The depth of the characters was created by their gestures. I think that people who can draw such gestures are good drawers, and they are observant.

in a corner of this world

Bananaman

Samura: When there are several characters and you want to give each of them a distinct personality and separate them from the others, you sometimes add characteristics to their tone of voice or endings, don’t you? That is a good thing in itself, but human characteristics are not originally like that. It could be a gesture, or a tendency to respond to a question. I think those things are important. I think I need to portray my characters in that way, but I am not sure if I am doing it. While this is my ideal, the reality is that I am always thinking, If I had the time, I would love to do this, but I am always busy, and then I finally finish my work (laugh).

Fujimoto: I am exactly the same way. I really want to make the mob act, but they just stand there. I don’t have time to draw them.

Samura: I think the only way to do that is to have an assistant assist you somehow. For example, if I want to draw a mob or a crowd, I ask the assistant to draw a rough sketch of the crowd in a natural pose with various poses, and then I put pencil into the rough sketch that the assistant drew in pencil. It takes a long time to do all the preliminary drawings by myself, and it takes courage to draw freehand, so I ask the assistant to do it for me, even if it is just the first bite. So I ask them to do just the initial bite, and then I can rework it into my own drawing and put the pen to it, which is surprisingly well done. If you want to give each person a different look in a crowd scene, I think that’s a good way to do it.

Fujimoto: If you do the pen work yourself, even in one place, the whole manga will be more cohesive. I heard a very good point. Also, I couldn’t really tell if the backgrounds in the manga drawn by Mr. Samura were traced or not. Is there any way to draw it in such a way that it doesn’t look like tracing? Is it just a matter of composition?

Samura: There is the matter of how to put in the solid color, but I can tell when I can tell that the background is a tracing by looking at the lines alone. Even in my own mind, there is a difference in persuasiveness between a picture drawn from my imagination and a picture drawn while looking at a photograph (laugh). I think it’s important to know how to put in solid colors and how to use tones, not to say, “I’ll put a tone here because there is a color here,” but to boldly put one tone somewhere, and if the picture comes together well with that, there is no need to put another tone anywhere else. This is a different approach from that of a photograph. For example, you might think, “It would be cool to have black here, so I’m going to make it black. I don’t know if that is good or bad, but if there is a light source in one place and people are talking, the shadows should be fixed in one direction, but even if there are inconsistencies in the shadows created by the light source in some panels of the comic, if I think it is definitely cool to have black on the screen If I think it would be cool to have black on the screen, I would paint it black.

Fujimoto: After all, you think like that. Certainly, readers don’t care about details.

Samura: There are some who do care, but if they do, that’s fine. I lie to make the screen look cool. It’s a comic book, so as long as it looks cool on the screen, that’s all that matters. But I know there are people who don’t have that principle, so I’m not saying that this is the way to go (laugh).

Fujimoto: I will do the same in the future.

aguni vs manji

Mr. Fujimoto and Mr. Samura discussed and decided on the composition of the picture, and Mr. Samura drew this rough sketch of the illustration for this collaboration. Incidentally, Mr. Fujimoto drew the rough sketch for the heroine version.

They were the same age when they made their serialization debut! Beginning and end of serialization

–I heard that both of you were exactly 23 years old when you made your debut in serialization.

Fujimoto: Is that so? Until the serialization started, I was drawing storyboards for the serialization and thinking about what direction I wanted to take the story, so I didn’t have time to improve my drawings, which was not good at all. What was Samura-sensei doing when the first episode of Blade of the Immortal started?

Samura: In my fourth year of college, I called the editor of “Afternoon,” who would later my editor, and asked if I could go and bring in my manga. At the time, I was skipping a lot of university classes, so I had a lot of credits I had to take in my senior year. Between college and contributing to manga, I had no time at all to just draw (laugh). While studying at school, I would think about storyboards at home, and it was around March…maybe April of 1993. I was drawing a manga while I was still in school, and I still hadn’t finished it after graduation. I drew one more story from there, submitted it, and spent two or three months as a NEET until the manga was published in Afternoon in the summer and I received 800,000 yen for it.

Fujimoto: I was also unemployed after graduating from school, living in a place that cost 20,000 yen for rent. It was very difficult because the rooms were not equipped with air conditioning.

Samura: Rent is cheap. Did you move during the series?

Fujimoto: Yes, that’s right. I moved to Tokyo right away when the serialization was decided, but I didn’t know anything about Tokyo, so I left it to the person in charge.

Samura: (laugh). So the serialization started right after you came to Tokyo.

Fujimoto: Yes. At the beginning of the serialization, I was very worried because I felt that no one was reading JUMP+ at the time. I was told that I could only publish up to volume 2.

Editor　His manga project was rejected by JUMP SQ. But I wasn’t ready to give up, so I brought it to JUMP+ and they said I could serialize it.

Fujimoto: At the time, I secretly heard from the editor in charge that we might be able to publish up to volume 4. I wondered what he meant by that (laugh).

Editor: We did talk about the possibility of doing a book up to the fourth volume (laugh).

Fujimoto: We assumed that the end of one story would come in the third volume, so we thought it would be okay if we could make it to volume 3. In the end, I am glad that we were able to continue.

Samura: Even though we’ve seen up to volume 4, we’ve only seen a glimpse of the secret of this world or something like that. I think the story will continue for quite a while.

Fujimoto: I would like to ask you, Mr. Samura, how much do you care about how the world perceives your work? I myself don’t care that much, but I feel that my manga is not well received by the public because I am conscious of the fact that my manga is not well received by the public, and I feel as if I am being received by the public in the opposite way.

Samura: I have no idea what kind of audience my manga should appeal to, or what kind of readers like the heroines I draw. I think that maybe the people who like my manga and the people who are moeing for the characters are the odd ones out.

Fujimoto: I feel that my manga are read by people who are bored after reading various one way manga.

Samura: (laugh). I think that might be true. It’s people who are tired of the royal manga, isn’t it?

Fujimoto: I think it’s the same for Mr. Samura, too, but he doesn’t hold back when drawing manga. I wonder if people who read Mr. Samura’s Wave, Listen to Me! and read manga for the first time can understand this manga. My manga is the same way. If a person who reads manga for the first time reads Fire Punch, he or she would really not understand the meaning.

Samura: The royal development is predictable to some extent, but the fun of Fire Punch is that the predictions are betrayed. Even after looking at the fourth volume, it is hard to tell who is the main character, Agni or Togata. It’s like a mixture of two completely different things, as if they are W leading characters. It feels like Fire Punch reached the end of those two in volume 4.

Fujimoto: It may be a little different, but from my point of view, Blade of the Immortal is also an image with multiple protagonists.

Samura: The serialization was too long. I had too many characters, and it became a situation that I had to draw the activities of various characters (laugh). If you put out a lot of fighting people when you put out characters, you have to draw their battles. In Fire Punch, there are various abilities but there are not so many friends who actually have high fighting power. In Volume 4, there are more allies, but I think Togata is the only one who can be called strong among them. Even if the number of characters increases, it is probably okay as long as they are not in a position to take away the main character’s turn. Even if the main character’s role is reduced, if the sub-characters are attractive, the fun can be maintained. In Blade of the Immortal, more than half of the enemies were swordsmen, so the main character’s role was cut and that part was a failure (laugh)

Fujimoto: No, no, not at all! I like Blade of the Immortal the best. I especially like the way the last episode ends. You give an ending to all the characters who come out at the end. Normally, you can’t do that. I think that’s a difficult thing to do. In Fire Punch, I only think about the endings of a few characters, but in Blade of the Immortal, I think there are many characters who can play the leading roles, so I was thinking as I was reading that it would be hard to think of endings for all of them.

Samura: When the story of the main story is over, if there are 10 important characters who have survived, unless you want to devote a page to each character and explain them at length I can properly describe all seven or eight of them in one story. For the final episode of Blade of the Immortal, I was absolutely certain that I wanted to make a scene where only the main character is in the future, which is possible because of the immortality of the main character in the story. So I had already decided what to do with the final episode.

Fujimoto: The main character wanted to die, didn’t he? The way it ended was really…. When did you have the idea for the last part?

Samura: Originally, I was going to make it a story in which the main character changes partners as he goes along, but as the volumes went on, I realized that it was impossible (laugh). I decided to end the serialization when Butei’s revenge was over. So I had an image of the final story in mind from the time when more than 10 books had been published. Incidentally, the detailed direction of the story was decided much later. Even in works such as parasyte, which seems to end so neatly and neatly, you write in the afterword that the theme changed in the middle of the story. I think that’s how it is. There are also the trends of the time and the current situation.

PARASITE　(kiseiju)

Fujimoto: What we think about changes, too. I also have a concept at this point, but I wonder if it will change in the future…. Should I change?

Samura: If you think it’s a good shape, that’s fine.

Mr. Fujimoto does all of his work digitally, from the rough sketch. He scans the rough sketch created by Mr. Samura, imports it into his computer, and draws Manji on his desktop.

Where do idiosyncratic ideas come from?　Input & Output

Fujimoto: In the last scene of Blade of the Immortal, there is a scene where Rin says, “Oh! It’s Manji-san. I felt that in that “scene,” the author was regretting the end of the work. I felt that Rin was expressing her feelings on behalf of the author. I could see from her at that moment that she felt she should not follow Manji…. That scene made me think that Samura-sensei reflects the relationships around him in his manga. I really like the short story “Sizzle Kinema” in “Sister Generator,” and I thought it was a story about a writer and an editor. I saw That one and wondered if “Mr. Samura” would make a manga about someone close to him or about himself.

Samura: I don’t do that kind of thing in my manga unexpectedly. I am rather shy about drawing myself or my surroundings as models. That scene was the flow of that kind of feeling in that short story…. For Sizzle Kinema, when the writer brought his work to a certain editorial office at the time, he was told, We won’t use it unless you do it this way, or You have to do it this way because this kind of work is selling now, so he had no choice but to script something similar to another work. It is said that the authorship was neglected considerably and they were forced to go in the direction of ordinary common works. It is not that young people these days are always doing this kind of work, but that the editors are making all of them like that. I heard something like that

Sizzle Kinema

Fujimoto: I didn’t realize that! I thought it was just a normal story about Mr. Samura himself. I see.

Samura: I was allowed to do Blade of the Immortal and pretty much whatever I wanted (laugh)

Fujimoto: I was wondering if Mr. Samura was just doing whatever he wanted without worrying about being told that way by the person in charge (laugh). I see, that’s interesting. When I draw read-outs, I usually draw them out of anger…. For example, there are many angry people on the Internet now, aren’t there? I don’t understand people who write about their anger on Twitter, etc., so instead, I pour my anger out in my manga.

Samura: Anger and resentment are important. Perhaps it is because I was allowed to do as I pleased by my editor, but after I became a writer, the influence of my editor made me more tolerant and I am no longer angry at anything (laugh). I am the type of person whose anger at society does not last for that long, and even when I think things like it has to be this way or this is the way it should be, after one night I start to think that maybe I myself was wrong (laugh).

Fujimoto: After one night, I too get into a mood of I’m not good enough to learn, but before the night is over, I draw a storyboard with feelings of anger.I dare to draw it right away and send it to the person in charge of the manga to have him or her look over it, without daring to reread it myself.

Editor in Charge: Mr. Fujimoto used to send me storyboards every day for a while (laugh).

Fujimoto: I send storyboards before my anger has cooled down, so the day after I send them, I sometimes wonder if that is okay as a work of art after all…. I don’t have the knowledge, but I was slapping what I was angry and thinking into the work as a theme!

Samura: Young people’s anger is important.

Fujimoto: Mr. Samura, where do you get your manga ideas from? I heard that part of the idea came from a magazine you picked up from the trash… I was wondering if I should pick it up, too… I think I need to have that much spirit.

Shamura: (laugh). My life still doesn’t have a digital environment. I am always a few years behind the world. I didn’t even have a cell phone when the Internet was in its heyday. Naturally, I didn’t know what the world was thinking at the time. There was a time when I went to Kodansha every month to stay overnight to make storyboards, and at that time” I found Gendai Weekly (a gossip magazine) in the trash, which I picked up every month. There was a time when Gendai Weekly was the link between me and the world (laugh).When I made my debut as a manga artist in 1993, it was the International Year of Indigenous Peoples. The article was called Let’s be mindful of indigenous peoples. The indigenous peoples were the Ainu in Japan. At the time, there were many books published on the subject, and it was often mentioned in articles. I had been interested in the Ainu since I was in college, so I clipped out those articles and gained knowledge about them. When I read them back, I would find completely unrelated articles behind the articles. There I found the “spinach pig,” a combination of spinach and pig genes, which I later drew in a comic strip. At that time I was curious as to why they tried that! I was interested in it (laugh). I wondered if there was any material for a piece I was going to draw for Ota Publishing featuring high school girls, and I used this spinach pig.

Fujimoto: I like it. I would like to experience that kind of environment too. In normal life, you only look up what you want to look up on the Internet. I like horror, so I tend to look up things related to horror, but it’s totally unnecessary for me now. I think that if I don’t go off to the side, my insight won’t expand.

Samura: If you look at what is now called summary sites, you will find many headlines of various articles. I think it is not impossible even in Mr. Fujimoto’s current environment, because you can find headlines other than the ones you spontaneously go looking for.

Fujimoto: I dare to play the radio to listen to stories that don’t interest me. I try to keep my antennae up, thinking, “People are using this word a lot these days,” but when I’m working on my manga, I can’t hear anything. But after listening to your story, I realized that I should be the same way.

Samura: If it’s not really related to the manga I’m drawing on, I tend to ignore it. Even so, it is better to obtain various kinds of information if you can…. I think that I might draw in the future, and I listen carefully to what I think I might draw in the future, even when I am at work. Even if the information seems to be passing through my mind, when I remember it, I remember it well.

What do people who want to become good at drawing need to do to improve their skills?

Fujimoto: Good drawing leads to persuasiveness, doesn’t it? I feel that if my drawing is only so-so, I can’t put my feelings into my manga, so I have to get better…. I also think that if I can draw better, I can draw faster, so I want to be as good as Mr. Samura.

Samura: It is technically true that the better you get at painting, the faster you draw, but as you get older, your body becomes unable to endure the fatigue (laugh). My eyes are getting tired these days. If I were in my 20s or 30s, I would have been able to draw more beautifully “Wave, Listen to Me! I’m 47 this year, but I’m wondering why my eyes are so tired these days. It is my experience that after 35 years of age, the body deteriorates every five years, to the point that it is interesting. Mr. Fujimoto, I’m sure you can’t help yourself after listening to this story (laugh), but anyway, you should draw the manga you want to draw when you are young.

Fujimoto: How can you draw manga as well as Samura-sensei does? I really think about it from the bottom of my heart. If there is something that Mr. Samura has inherited from generation to generation, I intend to be the heir. That is how I feel when I come here today.

Samura: (laugh). It is true that when you put it that way, the age difference is such that you could have been my son. Lore or… I am sorry, but I have nothing to pass on to you (laugh).

Fujimoto: When I see someone who is good at drawing, I can’t help but think that they are cheating somehow. From my point of view, there are some people who seem to be at a place where they cannot be reached unless they start their life all over again from the beginning, such as Mr. Samura. Mr. Samura is the first, and the others are Mr. Kim Jung Gi. I think these people must be giving up something in their lives to spend more time painting.

Jung Kim.

Samura: That guy is crazy (laugh). He would suddenly start drawing a perspective point away from where he was drawing. It is a skill that cannot be explained by saying that he is just a good painter.

Fujimoto: In my opinion, Mr. Samura is also in that category.

Samura: No, no, I am not like that at all (laugh).

Fujimoto: I have been drawing a lot since I was a child, but have you always been good at drawing since you were a child, Mr. Samura?

Samura: I don’t know if I was good at drawing or not, but there were some things like being assigned to do posters in elementary school, or being assigned to do the cover art for a poetry book.

Fujimoto: Was there a time when you practiced painting etc. or something? Was it during prep school?

Samura: My drawing ability improved the most when I went to an art prep school. There are often people who want to become manga artists who want to go to art school because they want to become better at drawing, but art school doesn’t teach you how to draw, so I want to tell them to go to an art prep school (laugh).

Fujimoto：That’s right. I also studied oil painting at university, but I entered through the AO exam, so I had never done any sketching. Even now, I have only done a few sketches. Oil painting, in particular, is left to the senses, so it’s impossible to get good at it.

Samura: Yes, that’s right. It is true that drawing may be more important than oil painting. In art school, when you are given an assignment, you are asked to draw a picture in a period of one or two weeks, right? However, in art prep schools, you are required to draw one picture in two days or one picture a day, and the number of pictures you are required to draw is quite difficult (laugh). When I was in prep school, I had to fight against time. Also, raising your own level depends on how many people around you are good at painting. At an art prep school, your level could be determined by the number of talented students you happen to be with at the time. Instructors are also important, of course.

Fujimoto: That’s really it. I would frustrated if someone else was better at drawing than me.

Samura: It is frustrating when there is someone who is better than you, but you can just look at that person as a reference and draw.

Fujimoto: There were no prep schools around my house, so I went to a painting class where Gentle men and Gentle Lady went, and I was allowed to paint oil paintings in the corner of the class. I was not good at painting at all at that time. It was when I was a college student that I started to get good at painting.There were several people around me who were good at painting, and I was determined that if my paintings did not become better than theirs in four years, I would prepared to kill them. I painted while thinking that I would never leave them in this world in the state of being able to paint well. After that, my drawing and technique did not improve even though I was painting in oil, so I stayed in the library and painted in a croquis-like style for a long time… but I should have done sketches. I didn’t do any sketching at all at the time, and that really frustrated me.　I will do some sketching after the series is over.

Samura: Unless Mr. Fujimoto drastically changes his style of painting in the future, I don’t think he will particularly need time just for regular painting.

Fujimoto: Really? I’m also thinking of becoming an animator after I finish my current series. Many people I think are good at drawing are animators, so I was thinking that I should become an animator anyway. But people around me make fun of me when I say that….There is the Japan Animator’s Trade Fair, where you can see many works, and when I see great drawings, I wonder how they are moved. I felt that with that kind of drawing ability, I could draw anything. That is why I wanted to become an animator, but everyone told me that was the wrong direction.

Samura: I have a feeling that what is required of an animator is different from what is required of a manga artist. I saw a short story collection by Mr. Takao Yaguchi, who drew Tsurikichi Sanpei, and he was really good at drawing the background of the Japanese countryside. Of course, it is not a photographic skill. His drawings are so beautiful that you are smitten with the scenery. He makes me think, This is how to move the pen and This is how to express the background” in order to express a picture with a pen. When I see how good his drawings are like that, I’m enchanted and admire them. I think would like to do it at the same level for myself. On the other hand, it is something that is done with a lot of effort and enormous self-sacrifice, but when I see Mr. Kentaro Miura’s Berserk, a truly vomit-inducing, detailed drawn picture like that, I think, wow. I thought that manga drawings certainly have this kind of amazingnes

Tsurikichi Sanpei　by Takao Yaguchi

berserk　ｂｙ　Kentaro Miura

Fujimoto: I have Mr. Samura’s manga works around my work desk, and I usually draw while looking at them, but when the manuscript is about to be due, I don’t have time to look at them, so I can’t refer to them at all. I don’t have the time to take the time and effort to compose the figures. If the composition is elaborate, it is very powerful when you turn the page, and it becomes a picture by itself. I draw my manga with the regret that I can’t do it because I spend too much time starting from a rough sketch…. I really want to draw snow more properly, but I just don’t have the time. I would like to make the breath people breathe when they talk white, but one day before the deadline, I was drawing while almost dying, and I thought, “I don’t even need my own breath to be white anymore. It’s no good. I’m so sorry that I compromise so much in drawing manga.

Samura: If you keep remembering the feeling of I wanted to do this and I’m sorry I couldn’t do that, you will be able to do it someday. When you finish the current series and start the next one, your drawings will surely have shed one layer of skin and become better. It is much better to think I’m sorry I couldn’t do what I wanted to do” than to become insensitive without thinking.

Fujimoto: I’ll keep thinking about it. …Also, I’m curious about my hand habits too.

Samura: Many manga artists of my generation are influenced by “AKIRA,” and when I went from that state to becoming a professional, I think about how to escape the spell of Katsuhiro Otomo. My works from my doujinshi days and the works I drew with a pen are really like a pastiche of Otomo’s work. I thought I had to get out of that habit, so for the first episode of Blade of the Immortal, I intentionally used a brush pen or pencil to draw in a style that was not used in AKIRA. If you imitate them like I did, as you can see, there will always come a time when you will have to break the habit. So I don’t think I already have the resemblance to someone’s drawing style. Mr. Fujimoto’s paintings are influenced by Tsutomu Nihei, right Like the way he doesn’t exaggerate his facial expressions too much and gives a dry and scary impression.

akira by Katsuhiro Otomo

It is a famous story that Osamu Tezuka, the father of Japanese manga, was jealous of otomo’s drawings and said, I can draw your drawings, the only thing I cannot draw is Moroboshi Daijiro’s.

akira by Katsuhiro otomo

tsutomu niheia doll’s kingdom

Fujimoto: Yes, I draw with that in mind. I liked the ABARA period the best in terms of the way he drew in. （Tsutomu Nihei)

Samura: Mr. Fujimoto’s pictures contain those various things that you like, and they have a unique air about them, so I think it’s already fine as it is now. And as I said at the beginning, there is nothing that a monthly magazine Manga Artist can advise a weekly Manga Artist. The things I mentioned today, such as the particulars about drawing, are things you can only think about if you have the time. If I had to make a manga in a week, I wouldn’t be able to think about many things (laugh).

Fujimoto: Well, I really learned a lot already this time. Thank you very much. I should pay for it.

Mr. Fujimoto combined Manji’s drawing and Agni’s drawing by Mr. Samura. After compositing, Mr. Fujimoto added the sword on Manji’s left hand so that it would penetrate into Agni’s abdomen.

Thank you for visiting. The number of views of my blog motivates me, please support me.

chainsaw man.　(World’s largest number of translations)

animePage

English Page