NEWSLETTER

INTERVIEW AND PHOTOS BY TOMOKAZU KOSUGA


Do you find it difficult to come up with new material?

Yeah. If it’s a serial then you have momentum and can just go with the flow, but I tend to draw conclusive short stories each time. It’s tough. It was easier before, but these days I can hardly think of anything. I’ve even reused old ideas that I rejected in the past. But it’s also true that there are fewer magazines that allow me to draw whatever I want. It’s even harder to come up with material when I’m drawing for one of the major magazines with all their restrictions. I’m really bummed that this erotic manga magazine called Cotton Comic was scrapped because they let me run wild with my ideas. But I guess this type of magazine is probably nearing extinction. Like that quirky erotic magazine Flamingo—that kind of soft-porn manga magazine probably won’t come out much anymore. It’s going to get even tougher for manga artists like me.

So what would you do if someone asked you to draw “whatever you want”?

Actually that might be even harder. You definitely have a sense of where your work is going if you have to abide by the rules and themes set by a magazine. If you’re 100 percent free then I feel that it hinders creative expression in a weird way. Your expressive range becomes richer when you have certain boundaries and restrictions. The sex scenes take up a lot of space too, so they’re handy when you’re running low on ideas. I often insert meaningless sex scenes in the middle of a story when I have to fill up a few pages and can’t think of anything else.

What were you like as an elementary school kid?

That’s the next question? Wow, I didn’t see that coming [laughs]. Well, my parents died when I was one, and the first time I stole I was five years old. I lost my virginity at six and was briefly into bestiality but got over it when I was around seven. Horses were the toughest, man. They’re so damn big.

Right. And your favorite playtime activities?

Messing with a butterfly knife. I smashed windows, stole radishes… I did it all, yeah. Not many people know about my dark past, though.













SHINTARO KAGO | 1 | 2 |

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Comments

Anonymous, on Sep 16, 2009 wrote: Fuck you Anon, No one cares about your anime. Get a life by Going outside your mom’s basement.

Anonymous, on Sep 7, 2009 wrote: hey tl;dr. you’re so fucking wrong.

Anonymous, on Jan 23, 2009 wrote: is there a way to buy this one issue? i need it. email me at r0ck3r91@yahoo.com if you do know. thanks

Anonymous, on Dec 30, 2008 wrote: People need to stop judging something just from reading one source and getting brainwashed by it.

Anonymous, on Dec 30, 2008 wrote: Wow. Some idiots are so gullible in accepting this dickbag narrator’s biased and prejudiced view on manga & anime. And the person who said Anime culture is lame is the one who is a real JOKE. Anime does not go under a stereotypical little label. It’s a drawing style. Or another Art form. You can make anything out of it like a Literary masterpiece for Christ’s sake using that style of drawing which just happens to originate from Japan/Like Walt Disney animation. Go take a fucking looking at the masterpieces made by Hayao Miyazki such as Castle in the Sky, Nausicaa, My Neigbhor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Books made by the legendary Mangaka’s Osamy Tezuka such as the Phoenix, Uni the Unicorn, Dororo, and horror masters such as Kazuo Umezu & Junji Ito. Also Studio Bones makes amazing anime series such as Wolf’s Rain, Full Metal Alchemist, Cowboy Bebop, Darker Than Black, and stuff made of genius like Death Note, Jigoku Shouko(Hell Girl), Elfen Lied, MONSTER, Kurau Phantom Memory,etc. I can rant on and on about all these amazing artists & titles that some of you Anime haters are beyond ignorant about(starting from pronouncing.) Before you go on polluting a huge expanse of something you have no clue on, why don’t you go do some research and watch& read every single title of Animation and comics from Japan before you go on claiming it is all lame. The access to which America gets certain titles is small and the companies here get to choose which they will produce, translate and dub for the masses over here. And out of the millions of what may be brilliant titles, these companies can choose to get all the lame ones like Yu-gi-oh or picking what started out as great masterpieces and turn them into trash like the shitjob of American voiceovers for OnePiece. I’m never getting tired of anime because there will always be a wide range of different material, styles and categories in the content material and subject of anime. Maybe this narrator is sick of porn manga and the little kiddy shoujo & shonen stuff which I don’t even look towards but perhaps he has recently discovered that he likes stuff about feces and psychotic shit, not just in manga but in his average hollywood film or daily newspaper... There’s an anime/manga series for everyone. From Innocent souls, to Poets & Artists, Perverts, Lesbians, Gays, Hopeless Romantics, Horror Fans, People who like gross things like this dumbass author of this stupidass article, Action/Adventure Seekers, People who are stuck in a certain time period, Fashion/drug/chocolate addicts, Mystery/Detective Solvers, Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Faery tale lovers, etc.