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Suzuka's Kouji Seo Designs 'High School Girl Kimchi'
posted on by Egan Loo
Not-So-Daily Links of the Day II: Suzuka manga and anime creator Kouji Seo has designed the High School Girl Kimchi (Joshi Kōsei Kimuchi) line for a food company in his hometown of Takano, in the southwestern Japanese prefecture of Hiroshima. While Hokubi Construction's kimchi brand is made from local water as well as Takano's locally grown apples and daikon (white radish), its main selling point is its use of "100% Korean red pepper." Hokubi claims that the red pepper's capsaicin and collagen will offer "vibrant skin like a high school girl." Hokubi's advertising also asserts, without a note of subtlety, that other companies' kimchi use red pepper from China — unlike Hokubi's "safe, safe" red pepper from South Korea.
Seo currently draws A Town Where You Live (Kimi no Iru Machi) manga in Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine. He also penned the Cross Over and Suzuka manga; the latter was made into a 26-episode television anime series in 2005. Del Rey will release the 12th volume of the Suzuka manga in North America in August, and Funimation finished releasing the Suzuka anime last year.
In other news, an anonymous man claims that he was a former schoolmate of Kim Jong-un — the youngest son and future successor of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il — and that the younger Kim "was a fan of the Japanese manga characters." The German weekly newspaper Welt am Sonntag published the report on Sunday. Jong-un reportedly studied at the International School of Berne in Switzerland in the mid-1990s under the pseudonym Pak Chol. Jong-un's oldest brother, Kim Jong-nam, confirmed that Jong-un has been designated as the next leader of the isolated Communist nation in an interview that Japan's TV Asahi aired on Tuesday.
Source: Jiji Press、The Times, JoongAngIlbo
