Interest

Eiichiro Oda Reveals Which Manga He's Most Jealous Of

The Fuji TV program Ichiryū ga Shitto Shita Sugoi Hito ("Great People Whom the Elite are Jealous Of"), which aired on December 29, queried a number of people identified as "the elite" in their fields as to whom they might be jealous of. Among these high-profile talents was Eiichiro Oda, the creator of One Piece, who admitted that the manga he is most jealous of is Naoshi Arakawa's Your Lie in April.

"Before a deadline [I got it] as a change of pace, but I ended up reading the whole thing and forgot about my manuscripts. I got the whole studio buying it on the way home," Oda related.

Oda was particularly complimentary of Arakawa's ability to convey music through manga. He called music "the most difficult genre in all of manga" and said Arakawa's expression of it was "excellent." He singles out the panel above: "It's a frame with atmosphere. Japanese people sometimes convey a unique sense of distance in their films and illustrations. It's so good, you want to see what the next panel is."

The editors of Monthly Shonen Magazine, which serialized Your Lie in April, reacted to the compliments on Twitter. "We were surprised," they said. Your Lie in April also had a good year on the music charts, as the anime's soundtrack topped the Classical Music Billboard Chart in Japan for 2015.

[Via Otaku.com]