Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Do Manga Artists Prefer To Stay Anonymous?
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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That sounds absolutely brilliant, and I'm surprised I hadn't heard of such a schtick prior. |
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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I definitely understand and respect the desire for privacy, but that can make it hard to follow the work of somebody that I like.
I really enjoyed Maniac Road and Pretty Maniacs by Shinsuke Kurihashi. I would like to read more of his work but I cannot find any indication that he has done anything in the last 12 years. I do not know if he quit manga or changed names. He is one of those who drew himself as a silly cartoon character in the manga notes, of which there were many. He really liked to talk about his work and his hobbies, including the fact that he was also writing doujinshi, but it seemed like he was being careful to not reveal anything that would identify him. Even when he talked about getting married he kept it very general. I wonder now if maybe he thought that he had given away too much and decided to use a different name so that anything more that he said would not be connected to the previous information. I may never know. |
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animalia555
Posts: 467 |
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lys
 Posts: 1016 Location: mitten-state |
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I just googled his name and got a list of series he's published, at what I consider a pretty well-known or comprehensive site in English for cataloguing manga titles/creators/magazines/publishers/etc. (It doesn't host scanlations but links to them so I'm not naming it here to be safe). The most recent one on his author page (begun in 2008) is listed as ongoing. So that much can be learned without needing to know any Japanese. From there I looked up that recent title on Amazon JP: it has 3 volumes released so far, last was in 2013. Each book is 10 chapters (according to Amazon JP preview's table of contents); the series runs in a magazine that publishes 4 times a year so it would take 2+ years to have enough for a book. The website for the magazine lists the latest issue as the 40th, so if the series has been running since the beginning, there may be another volume of the series to be collected soon. Hope that is helpful (his latest stuff isn't published in English, so it might not do you much good to know anyway, but still). |
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Touma
Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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Thank you lys.
I did Google "Shinsuke Kurihashi" but I ignored that first result because I thought that it was a scanlation site. It is good to know that he is still creating, even if I do not get to read it. There is still a slight chance that somebody might license his newer work here. I can hope. |
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Oh, I had a thought: I know the Japanese media does not hound celebrities the way they do in the United States (I wonder what they think of organizations like TMZ and The National Enquirer, the former of which goes to great lengths to dig up information and the latter of which outright makes things up), but is there some way people can do their own investigation and discover such information about these artists? Like following a paper trail or something?
I know that's considered the height of disrespectfulness, but there must have been at least a few Streisand-type incidents before, especially considering fans can get quite loony and social media can cause some people to lose their inhibitions. |
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mbanu
 Posts: 160 |
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I think you're on to something. Maybe it's related to why ugly voice actors aren't very common? For some reason it seems like Japanese fans assume that if a beautiful voice comes out of a beautiful character, it should also come out of a beautiful person. For American voice actors at least, it's not an issue -- it's not like the popularity of Leela from Futurama dived when fans realized she's voiced by old Peggy Bundy. There isn't the expectation in the States that voice actors be pretty; this is one of the reason a lot of older film and TV actors gravitate to voice acting after their "on camera" time seems to be fading. (I wonder if it's because early famous voice actors in the States were ugly old guys like Mel Blanc or Clarence Nash?) So maybe in Japan it's the case where fans also assume that manga-ka should be as pretty as the characters they draw? |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11577 |
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Possibly. But I've noticed that cartoonists more often than not actually do have a resemblance to their works, in the way that people sometimes look like their pets. 
Check out early Peter Parker and compare him to young Steve Ditko, or Bruce Wayne and young Bob Kane (those cheekbones!). Or Naoki Urasawa's guys. Tell me he doesn't bear a resemblance to Tenma or the adult Kenji in 20th C. Boys. Certainly more than Inio Asano looks like them. He looks more like his own characters (the ones without bird heads at least). I'm not saying they're drawing themselves, at least not consciously, but that their own face is the one they're most familiar with when they're developing their skills and style. But warts-and-all, they're usually not quite as appealing as their idealized art (well, Urasawa is... >.>). |
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Re:SOUL
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That's not exactly it. Many Japanese people don't see being a mangaka as being a real job and may often look down on people who aspire to be one rather than holding a "proper" job like being a salaryman. This is the reason explained here. In the west one might say to their parents that they want to draw comics and get encouragement whereas in Japan one may likely get a responce like "don't be ridiculous". It's not about wanting privacy but more about shame or embarrassment. Most times being a mangaka is worthy of praise is when you're incredibly successful but this is rare. This is my understanding of things. Ironically I learned a lot from Bakuman. |
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Fenrin
 Posts: 703 Location: SoCal |
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But we're talking about people who have already been part of the profession for awhile and received some sort of acclaim from fans. It isn't necessary to hide yourself for the sake of shame, as the only people who are likely to recognize you are your fans, and as others have said before, they don't step out of their workstation often anyways to be recognized. Although I can understand if their work is something private that they'd rather separate from their image. |
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LightYapper
 Posts: 131 Location: Somewhere on Earth |
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It's understandable why lots of mangakas prefer to stay anonymous, as pointed out by the article. Manga fans can, indeed, get really extreme sometimes and will bug them non-stop for whatever reasons should their personal info get exposed. But we are also heading to the era of idols, so I guess more and more mangakas will walk the path towards stardom. I mean, check out the Prince of Tennis author's(I don't know the Roman spelling) activities throughout the years.
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False Prophet
Posts: 7 |
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Talking about Masamune Shirow, here is a very old interview of him: http://www.jai2.com/MSivu.htm
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Chrno2
 Posts: 6172 Location: USA |
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Got this printed out and will read. 
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