Super 【Interview】 tatsuki Fujimoto chainsaw man

chainsawman tatsuki fujimoto joins the jury of the Shinsekai Manga Award for the first time. In this issue, we learned the secrets of the art from Mr. Tatsuki Fujimoto, who has created numerous masterpiece short manga for four consecutive issues.

reference　ジャンプ漫画賞ポータルサイト

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tatsuki hujimoto　Teaching the art of creating demonic short mangas.　

Tatsuki Fujimoto’s school days

You have published a large number of short manga, but how do you view each of them?

When I was a college student, I did not have a part-time job. So I drew short comic strips to pay for rent and living expenses. After graduating from college, I had to repay my scholarship, and if I didn’t draw short stories, I would have no money and would have to work part-time, which I hated, so I drew short stories. From the viewpoint of stepping up to become a manga artist, the more manga I drew, the higher the prize money went, so I was glad that my life became more colorful.

What was the inspiration behind many of the impactful pieces, such as “Sister’s of Sister”?

I believe 「sister of sister」 was influenced by a movie I saw and liked at the time. I tried to force the infuriating and dirty parts of 「It Follows」 and 「Foxcatcher」 to be shown in a clean way. I wanted to paint a film that contained a malicious venom that would go unnoticed.

Tatsuki Fujimoto’s tips for drawing interesting manga

What are some of the key points in creating the beginning of a manga that strongly draws the reader in?

I don’t think I have the ability to talk a lot about manga creation. However, I think the right answer is probably to watch as many well-made works over and over again as possible. I recommend watching movie trailers for free. I found them very helpful because they have to be captivating in a few dozen seconds. If you have the money, you can watch Black Mirror on Netflix. You might also want to watch short stories by your favorite manga artist. Anyway, I think you should watch creative works.

I think familiar dialogue is a characteristic of Fujimoto-sensei. Is there anything you pay attention to regarding dialogue?

I try to make the conversations in the manga as reality as possible. By reality, I don’t mean the content of the dialogue, but the nuances of the frame layout and speech. Unlike people in movies, people in real life stumble in their conversations and repeat the same words over and over again. I would like to bring that out as much as possible without losing the tempo of the conversation.

Tatsuki Fujimoto Daily Interview Chainsawman

Tatsuki Fujimoto moved to Weekly Jump

Did you have any particular awareness when you started working on the Shonen Jump series?

When I first moved to JUMP, I was told by the great people in the editorial department that you could draw anything in manga (JUMP).
From that point on, he told me I could draw anything, right?I have the feeling that So I did not change anything in drawing manga after the transfer.
I have been allowed to draw freely.

Why Tatsuki Fujimoto decided to draw the manga 「Chainsaw Man」

Please tell us how your work was born.

Fire Punch was set up so that the main character was on fire and anyone whose fire caught on fire would burn to death. However, this would have limited the scope of the story. With a hero like that, even if he has a girlfriend, he can’t even hold hands with her. So for the next manga, I wanted to create a story and a protagonist who could move freely. With this flow in mind, I wanted the main character, Denji, to remain a cheerful character no matter how the story unfolded.

How was the work created?　

While meeting with Mr Hayashi, we tried out various forms of the ‘Chainsaw Man’. Basically, the character comes out and fights enemies, but the first thing we settled on was the image of the ‘Chainsaw Man’ character. The central part of the character is that he transforms by pulling wires and making chainsaw sounds.

Hollywood movie that Tatsuki Fujimoto used as a reference for his manga Chainsaw Man.　

Is the Chainsaw Man modelled on Sam Raimi’s The Guts of the Dead?

That’s part of it, but the most important is the Devil’s Sacrifice. Even now, it’s so bizarre, it sets itself apart from other horror films.

How did the manga-like character design for chainsaw man come about?

I reflected the designs I like, I ‘represent’ the world of films and manga I’ve seen in the past in my own manga.

Finally, what would you like to say to our readers?

There are some amazing developments coming up.

Childhood memories and what I learnt from my hometown.

citation　秋田市文化創造館

Celebrity interviews with people from Tatsuki Fujimoto’s home prefecture of Akita.

Those who chose to leave their native Akita to work and express themselves
We asked them to write about their memories of their childhood.
How did the climate of Akita nurture their sensibilities?
What kind of place is Akita again?
We also asked them about their expectations of the Akita Culture Creation Centre.

What I learnt from my hometown
Tatsuki Fujimoto, manga artist

I grew up in a place called ‘Nikaho City’ in Akita Prefecture.
It is a very rural area where rice paddies extend far into the horizon and ants walk on the tatami mats of houses as a matter of course.
When you watch the Ghibli animations, you can feel the greatness and horror of nature.
But that nature was a part of my everyday life in my childhood, so I lived with a blurred boundary between nature and non-nature.
Sometimes beetles and stag beetles would be attached to the vending machines at night, so my friends and I would go and collect them.
At that time, I perceived vending machines as the same as trees growing in the mountains.

As an adult, looking at books and listening to someone’s story changes the way you look at nature. I realised that almost all of the trees I had seen in Nikaho since I was a small child were probably planted artificially by people. The small river that runs beside the rice paddies was also created by the city, and the mountain where I went to collect beetles is maintained by a manager two or three times a month. All the things I recognised as nature were unnatural and man-made. I think the ambiguity between nature and non-nature at that time was actually a correct feeling.

NIKAHO CITY, Akita Prefecture, is a picturesque town with the Sea of Japan to the west, embraced by mountains and the sea.

I found some depictions of a similar feeling in the manga 「Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou」 by Hitoshi Ashinano.
In the manga, there are stone statues (jizo) that have assimilated with plants and trees over a long period of time. Perhaps the stone statues are like robots made by people in the past, but when people look at them nowadays, the boundary between natural and unnatural is no longer so thinly discernible. The character Kokone, the protagonist’s best friend, also comes into contact with the people of the local area in the manga and fits in with the town, becoming more like a human being.

I think if you are not conscious of a lot of things, you recognise that what you were exposed to and familiarised with as a child is natural, and after that it is unnatural.
I think the reason I can’t get into new genres of music as an adult is because I subconsciously recognise that it is unnatural. What I learnt in Nikaho City, Akita Prefecture, is that it’s okay for the boundaries to be vague. I think that by doing so, you can always be interested in new things. I don’t think I wrote it well, so please forgive me.

What does Fujimoto expect from the Akita Cultural Creation Centre?

hujimoto　I would like it to have a lot of manga.

Thank you for watching.

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

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