Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Do Manga Artists Prefer To Stay Anonymous?
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grooven
Posts: 1424 Location: Canada |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11387 |
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Hmm, given this sort of reclusiveness (with which I can thoroughly sympathize), Naoki Urasawa must've had his work cut out for him in getting mangaka to appear in his NHK series.
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6869 Location: Kazune City |
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I wasn't surprised when a DVD extra showing School Rumble manga author Jin Kobayashi chatting with voice actress Kaori Shimizu was shot from angles that never showed Kobayashi's face. Though it did take me 5-10 minutes into the 40-minute conversation to realize this
Last edited by Zalis116 on Wed May 04, 2016 10:53 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Juno016
 Posts: 2393 |
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Kantoku (artist for HenNeko) approached me in a very otaku store in Nagoya once when he was setting up an art exhibition he was going to star in. No one there seemed to know who he was, and he approached me mostly in secret, boasting about how he was the artist of the book I was looking at when no one else was around. He wasn't that shy at all, which surprised me, because he looked like your average heavy, older otaku. And he did try some English on me, though he gave up once I started conversing naturally in Japanese. It's quite neat to think that I'm one of the few people who know what he looks like.
I also got to sit in while an amateur mangaka worked on a published work. I never really read her actual work, but it was neat to sit in the studio room with her assistants. She was very shy, but very helpful in teaching me a bit on how the process works. Her assistants, however, kept their distance to me and eventually asked her to get me to leave. I don't think it's that they were unfriendly or anything, or that I was being obnoxious or anything, but that they probably felt anxious with someone else in the room. They all gave me the impression of people who preferred to work in quiet, on their own. And they also probably didn't feel comfortable being themselves around a foreigner. They barely spoke to each other, even. |
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Cutiebunny
 Posts: 1748 |
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Bolded the key word there. I've seen some conventions treat guests like garbage. Just this past year, I saw a convention treat its Japanese guests to a six inch sub sandwich and a drink from Subway, and yet demanded that they eat and work through it. The artist mentioned, once she was home, that she had no time to pick up anything for herself because she had to work through her entire trip. I could tell other stories, some are well known (such as Halko Momoi's treatment at Anime Expo years ago). And as an aside, I really miss the "Inside the Industry"(was that what it was called...?) columns on ANN. So much more interesting than the "Would you like to take a survey?!" garbage columns now. Obviously, I know what pays the bills. |
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JLightstar
Posts: 140 Location: Venice, Florida |
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I remembered that Maki Murakami (Creator of Gravitation) came to Maryland for a con and the rule was that no photos were to be taken of her.
I want to say Yamane Ayano (Creator of Viewfinder) posed with a couple of American Cosplayers doing her characters from Crimson Spell but I have no idea if it was ever put online. I think everyone respected her privacy. |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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You just gained some serious cool points in my book. Kantoku is probably my favorite character designer. Based on interviews he seems like a really cool guy, but I always imagined him as small and skinny. And definitely not older either. haha |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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Ah, I just remembered another rather rare example: XIA Da. While she is not camera shy (Google her name and you know why), she has requested mainstream media to focus on her artwork, not her.
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doomydoomdoom
 Posts: 278 Location: Michigan, USA |
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Yep, it's a coin toss; some are out there and some stay private but still grant interviews and such, some are complete recluses as far as PR. A lot of the old guard gets seen a lot or occasionally. One notable case is Akira Toriyama. He was photographed all the damn time from Dr. Slump to the middle of Dragon Ball. He even appeared on a talk show. His wife was photographed with him sometimes, and even their son. Then, suddenly, in the early 90s, he stopped letting people take his picture. Since then he's been strict about it, and when he was interviewed on TV recently only his lap was revealed. Could be he's insecure about getting old and losing his hair, or that he got so big that everybody knew him, and so needed to ensure his privacy somehow. Likely the latter, as Eiichiro Oda and others are essentially the same since they got huge. There is one unethically-taken photo of Toriyama 12 years ago at a con in Germany floating around. He specifically asked for no photos and someone took one anyway.
As for Rumiko Takahashi, she's actually been very public and has her picture taken all the time, but she definitely doesn't like doing a lot of video interviews and cons and such. Wasn't the last time she showed up over here in 1994? Might have been the early 2000s but pretty sure it was the 90s. |
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AnimeLordLuis
 Posts: 1626 Location: The Borderlands of Pandora |
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Well it's their right to have there own privacy I know that I wouldn't want super fans following me around everywhere and asking a ton of questions or making outrageous demands if I were a Manga artist.
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NateSelwyn25
 Posts: 141 Location: Seattle |
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I forget most manga creators aren't rich enough to have their own media representatives/whipping boys like Naoko Takeuchi(Creator of Sailor Moon and wife of the creator of YuYu Hakusho and hunterxhunter, I just forget his name).
More people see Elvis every year than they see Naoko Takeuchi. Most people don't recognize her when they do. (People also forget how rather young she is. I don't think she was even 20 when she started Codename Sailor V all those years ago) |
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reanimator
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It's easier to fault culture and personality trait for extreme privacy of manga artists or writers, but in reality it's the environment. If you live in densely populated area like Tokyo and neighboring suburbs, there is a chance that you might live pretty close to a manga artist's residence without knowing. Most of them don't live in some gated community. With obsessive/borderline crazy fans just around the corner and artists themselves busy with their work, the last thing they want is gossips and loiters disrupting their daily routine and peace. Even worse, if you're a relatively popular manga artist using real name and with widely recognized face, you bet some crazy fan sending a death threat directly to your residence simply because you changed the story that crazy fan does not like. Imagine the unwanted stress to you and your family. This is why privacy and anonymity matter especially in Japan.
As for extroverted, not-so-popular artists in American comic artist community, I think face/name recognition is more like small PR for them so that it might boost sales. If such is true, then they sure waste time only on themselves rather than raising quality of their work for better recognition. |
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animalia555
Posts: 467 |
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Because everyone, in Japan anyways, was expecting Buso Renkin to be another Rurouni Kenshin and was disappointed when it couldn't live up to the same impossible standards that Kenshin set. If Watsuki had used a different name it might have been judged on its own merits and therefore lasted longer then 9-10 volumes.* *The tenth volume by the way was published AFTER Buso Renkin was cancelled in Shonen Jump as a way for Watsuki to tie up lose threads, so in terms of SERIALIZED material there was really only nine volumes worth of stuff published. |
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13566 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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Hayao Miyazaki, though more of a director, certainly isn't shy to show his face and offer his criticisms of Japan and the industry.
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KilluaX3
 Posts: 135 |
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Murata? |
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