Drugs and violence… The author reveals the unique manga “The Best of the Locals! The Untold Story of Its Birth

I drew the violent world of director Takeshi Kitano using only girl characters.”

usagi, who has been presenting illustrations themed around the underground world on Twitter for some time now. usagi, who has been presenting illustrations about the underground world on Twitter, created an account called “Local Best! in 2009.

There, he posted a manga filled with episodes of “drugs,” “poverty,” and “violence,” although all the characters were cute girls. The gap between the outlaw content and drawings that looked like they were drawn by elementary school students was “addictive” and immediately became a hot topic. The gap between the outlaw content and pictures that look like they were drawn by elementary school students made the manga “addictive” and it quickly became a hot topic.

Why did this author, whose gender and age are undisclosed, suddenly start uploading his unique manga?

I once drew a manga with a friend of mine when we were students and submitted it to a publisher, but it didn’t turn out well at all. After that, I drew illustrations, but I suddenly decided to try drawing manga again.

The “hometown” of the title is the countryside, far from the regional cities. You can’t live without a car, and there are rice paddies all over the place. The only place to buy clothes is at the nearby Aeon. That’s the kind of place I envisioned.

In the anime “K-ON! girls who have too much time on their hands form a band. But what actually happens when girls get together in the countryside is not only cheerful things. The girls have never left their hometowns and are unable to leave, so we used the title “Hometown Supreme! is the title of the manga.

Although the work focuses on days with a sense of stagnation rather than the joyous content often seen in everyday manga, many of the girls who utter graphic cryptic and disturbing words in the work are modeled on familiar people.

The main character, Shaneru, is actually modeled after a man. To make her an iconic character, she is all pink in appearance and has blonde twin-tail hair. I named her younger sister Koko.

The older sister, Kurea, who unites Saonryu and her friends, is modeled on the girlfriend of an acquaintance of mine, both in appearance and content. When my acquaintance and his girlfriend went out for steak, they were having a normal conversation when she suddenly lost her temper and stabbed him in the hand with a fork.

The illustrations are deformed and cute, something you don’t often see in outlaw manga. He says that there is an ingenious way to enhance the horror of the character.

I like Akira Toriyama’s works, and in the past, my manga designs were more in the vein of his works,” he said. But this time, violence and drugs are the base theme, so I thought it would be better to draw something opposite to that, so I searched for images of children’s drawings and practiced drawing them like that (laughs). Sometimes I dare to draw one frame delicately, but I learned that from my predecessors. Fujiko Fujio A. and Fujio Akatsuka used to draw out fear and laughter in this way. I took that technique as a reference.”

Sometimes he goes on interviews with his editor, who has worked on many nonfiction works.

There is a line that says, ‘You can play with the drugs, but be careful because they make you drop a lot of important things. This was said to me by a man who was a seller of found and stolen items on the street. I used the memorable statement as it was. Doing so gives the work a certain rawness, doesn’t it?”

The ratio of interviews to actual experience is about 7:3, and the depiction of violence is influenced by the world-renowned master.

I feel like I’m depicting the violent world of Takeshi Kitano, but only with female characters. Takeshi-san is a comedian who jokes around on TV, but he portrays violent content in his films, which is very scary.

I especially like “Sonatine” among Kitano’s films. It’s that feeling of smiling one moment and pointing a gun at the other person the next. The tension is the best, with the scent of death wafting through the air all the time, as if they could kill each other at any moment. Sudden depictions of violence and quiet action …….

I wish I could bring that atmosphere to my own works. Even in the scenes where Ms. Koureia and the antagonist collide, I try to portray them in a realistic manner, even if it’s not so subtle, such as with a head butt that makes a dull sound, rather than a big punch.

The world is very strict about compliance, but “Hometown Supreme! will “increasingly worsen the security of the work” in the future.

As of yet, this work only features a girl who looks like a half-religious gangster. In the future, I would like to introduce yakuza as well. That would probably be a girl like Takeshi-san, who was scary like a razor during the Friday attacks in the ’80s.

While comfortable, these girls are stuck in their hometowns, and today they still say, “My hometown is the best! Mr. usagi never runs out of stories.

From the October 28/November 4, 2022 issue of FRIDAY