I’ve met three mangaka in my manga career. (Honestly, it could be more, but my memory fails me some days.)

The first was in 2000. I had started at Viz at the beginning of July, and San Diego Comic-Con, which was in August at the time, was fast approaching. I joined the company as the marketing manager with a seven week countdown to a visit from Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Inu-Yasha and Ranma. Fan anticipation at SDCC was high, and apparently Viz had a reputation for not having handled her previous visit well. There seemed to be a lot of concern that not all the fans who wanted to see her and get a signature would be able to.

That was justified, as it turned out. While we held a raffle and made it as fair as possible (if fans were upset this time around, I didn’t hear about it), we had been told to limit the number of people in the signature line to about 200. Those lucky souls who won the raffle got a signature and a chance to meet a manga master.

Turns out that this is how most mangaka handle the whole signing thing, which is a western phenomenon that they’re not as familiar with in Japan. If a mangaka puts in a public appearance at a local bookshop, they typically are there to say hello, wave, chat with fans, and then skedaddle. No signatures, although it is common for them to whip out a quick sketch on a piece of cardboard called a shikishi and leave it behind for the store to display. Which they do, usually just taping it up to a wall in a piece of plastic. It’s really an astounding thing to see in Japan - walk into a popular bookstore, and you’ll see original pieces of art from famous mangaka attached to the walls. It would be the simplest thing in the world to just pull them down and walk away, but things just don’t work that way in Japan.

Mind you, in the U.S., the art would be gone in a heartbeat.

Rumiko Takahashi, who has been at times the richest woman in all of Japan thanks to the success of her creations, was an incredibly pleasant person. As she spoke no English, my interaction with her was limited to say the least - other than the sweet Genma panda shikishi that I managed to score.

I suppose it would be more interesting if she had been problematic in some way, but she was polite and professional and a pleasure to work with.

The other mangaka I met was Pink Hanamori, artist of Pichi Pichi Pitch… for about 10 seconds at a party. The only thing that was remarkable to me was how young she was - she looked to be in her early 20s.

And then there’s CLAMP, but I’m going to leave that story for next time.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 4:15 pm and is filed under Fun Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.