Serialized for 20 years & over 400 issues! Horror? Gag? Interview with author Kouji Matsumoto on where the manga “Higanjima” is headed

In addition, Akira would later become strong and inhuman through the training of his “master”. Regarding the impact of the Master’s character, with his huge body and scary mask, and the fact that underneath the mask he is a handsome, austere man, he says, “I looked at various Japanese masks and came up with this one.

I looked at a lot of Japanese masks to come up with a visual for the master.

At the time, most masters were small and smart, like Yoda from “Star Wars,” and the editors seemed to think so, too. I thought it would be more interesting to have Ming being pissed off at the big guy.”

The master is also a surprisingly mischievous, screwed-up, and unreadable character. ……

When I write about various things, I wonder why, for example, when I have a plan, the persuasive power of the master’s delivery is totally different from that of the character who is a goofball.

The truth is that I came up with the plan, so the content is exactly the same, but when Kato tells it, it feels like it’s going to fail in some way when I read it. That’s a little bit interesting, and it makes me think, “Which one should I have someone say?　I think about it. I enjoy using the persuasive power of the characters.

I would be grateful if readers find the overall result of this interesting.

By the way, who is Matsumoto’s favorite character?

I know it’s a boring answer, but I always like the character who portrays the strongest emotion at that moment. Because I get into it.

For me, whether a manga is interesting or not depends almost entirely on whether or not I get into it. You don’t know what will get you into it until you try it.

I’ll try something that I think my future self will like, like “Let’s try this,” or “Let’s make this character move away from the character,” or “Let’s draw human sexual desire. So I like the characters who are eating the most at that time. Right now it’s Akira and Koharu.

Horror?　Gag?　The truth is…

In “Higanjima,” the tension is always high, even in serious or grotesque scenes, and sometimes it even looks like a gag. When asked to what extent he is aiming for this, he said …….

‘I hardly aim at all,’ he says. Recently, I started to see what readers think of my work on Twitter (now X), and I’ve noticed a lot of things that make me think, ‘This is how people perceive it (the way I do).

After many years of doing this, I’ve come to think that if I’m going to go to the trouble of drawing, it would be more interesting to exaggerate both the scene and the emotion.

For example, if there is a scene in which a person suffers from “Smell! I think it is more interesting if the scene is very stinky. The more exaggerated the scene is, the more interesting it becomes. As a manga artist, I want to write something that no one has seen before.

However, as I exaggerate various things, there are moments when I suddenly think, “This looks really stupid when I look at it calmly. But I didn’t really want to let those thoughts out, and I was enjoying it as a one-man game.

I had never seen a scene in “The Last 47 Days” in which the main character hugs her boobs, which are bigger than a human body, and drinks her mother’s milk like crazy. I couldn’t stop laughing when I drew it.

It’s one of my favorite scenes, even when I think back on it now. But I didn’t tell anyone about it; it was completely a one-man game. I had no idea that there were readers out there who would enjoy the same meta-play.”

In fact, it seems that the author was not trying to be funny, but rather, the thoughts he was quietly enjoying and the thoughts of his readers overlapped.

The reason why it looks like a gag manga to some readers is precisely because it has been serialized for over 20 years, always seeking “something never seen before” and continuing to exaggerate. In other words, it kept getting funnier and funnier, and kept evolving.

In the second part, we will hear about the “starting point” of the author, Koji Matsumoto.

In the second part, we will hear about the “origin” of the manga, “Higanjima,” which has been serialized for more than 20 years! 　The origin of the infinitely expanding worldview of the manga “Higanjima” ” is here.