I'm bored, so I'm going to dump all of the translated

Luckily, I was somehow picked up at Otawa (where the publisher Kodansha is located). Eight months have gone by. When you hear about the life of a battery, it all sounds good, but no matter how much you try to charge a worn-out battery, it doesn't do much good. My rickety cartoon robot battery doesn't have much power left in it. Eight months. I hardly have any memories of that time. Or rather, there's not much to remember that'd be worth talking about to others. Not one thing. There was a puzzling memo I found in a coat I was wearing over the winter, "B-Z@panda." I couldn't for the life of me figure out what that was. The next day I remembered. It was a memo to remind me where I put my car in the parking lot. I felt like dying. Then, from another jacket, was another memo. (It said "A 7-cm stick, by the third..."). I don't think I'll get myself to try to remember what that was.

Negative

For some reason, I feel that readers are disappointed that I'm not dead. A longer life means more disgrace. "Plan to die before the age of forty" is a well-known passage in an essay from Tsurezuregusa (essays in idleness), by the author Kenkou Yoshida. I'm saying that from this point on, my life history gets the final coating of humiliation. It's the beginning whereby the more I draw, the greater the series of humiliations I'll receive. Incidentally, the akasaka SM club (manga street) is looking for "S" people. The entrance fee is 410 yen (including tax). This club can close without notice on the orders of the authorities. Just wanted to let you know that in advance.

Positive

For eight months, I tried to make sure that I got outside, since it's not good to constantly stay at home. But, since I'm not used to going out, I could only do one thing a day. Today, I went to the bank, so that's it. Today, I went to Bic Camera, so I'm done. Today, I went out to throw out the garbage, so that's it. If I went to the convenience store, I'd never pick up my laundry on the way home. One day, when it was extremely hot, I stepped into three coffee shops on my way to Shinjuku station, which is a nine minute walk away. That was just to be charming. Come to think of it, my days were busy and fulfilled

Recluse

I think I've had plenty of opportunities to become a hikikomori. In the sixth grade, all my report cards had the remark "uncooperative" on them. It's true that when the class would go to the park on a field trip, I wouldn't play with the other kids' groups, I wouldn't ride the rides, I'd play in game arcades alone, so I guess what the teacher said was to be expected. But even I wanted to play with others. When kids who liked one another got together to form a group, I ended up in a group with the rejects and outcasts. It was tough being in a group of people who didn't like one another. Out of the four of us, two were always absent. It was just the two of us, s-kun and I, who went to school. Teacher, please understand. I had my reasons.

Stalker

When I was in elementary school, in addition to playing spy games, secretly following girls from our class was popular. You tail the girl home, making sure you aren't detected, and always make sure to check out the surroundings. The next day, you'd announce your findings to the target, like "you've got a black dog, right?" or "your roof is red," etc. the girl would answer, "hey, how'd you know that?," which was so hilarious. One day, K-kun, N-kun, and I decided to follow Y-san, who was a popular girl in school. But Y-san had great instincts and found out what we were doing halfway through our game. To us guys, who were just clowning around, Y-san said, "enough already. What're you doing? and two days in a row, too!" K-kun and N-kun looked really puzzled. That's right. I'd tailed her by myself for two days. If it had happened today, I'd be arrested.

Animals

I was a gentle child; the kind who'd eat animal crackers from their tails. I even ate taiyaki, hato sable, and mushrooms from their tails. One day, my dad returned from a business trip to Aomori and brought me back some badly shaped animal cookies; I couldn't tell which side was the head and which was the tail. Since I didn't know where to start, I ate 'em from their bellies. That night, I cried. I cried because I felt I did something cruel. I was a kid that loved bending the tabs on those petit pudding cups. Now, I've grown into a mean adult who eats Mickey cookies by their ears.

Back to Your Country

I can't say this loud, but Shounen Magazine has an overseas editorial department and, as to be expected, Shounen Magazines of a high quality are being produced there. The group of authors in the overseas group are really amazing, and when they return to Japan, we're inevitably shunted farther and farther into the background. The most popular work from the overseas group is "Alps Detective Leno." It's a really funny hard-action story about confrontations with a cheese smuggling orginazation, the "Melty Snow Cheese Gang." (I recommend it.) As for the gag comics, I hear that "Monmarutoru-chan" is going to be turned into an animted film. The new comic "We're the Gentlemen Baseball Club" is now appearing serially by popular demand. (The first story's title: "The Hidden Prize is... The Death Penalty!"

Mail

I'm not the kind of guy who carries a cell phone with me, so I really don't need one. There's not much that I'd want to convey through emails, so the necessity's not quite there. Some say it's strange that I don't carry a cell phone, but it makes me want to ask them if they'd carry all the cell phone straps in the house around with them. We're even at the point of not carrying portables, so we're mutually strange. By the way, I do attach just the cell phone strap of Nayabashi Manju on my bag. I'm always working out of the house so a regular cord phone is plenty for me. It'd be more convenient for me if there weren't any phones at all. Smoke signals would be enough for contacts with the editor. When my original book is finished, a red smoke signal goes up. When it is accepted, a green smoke signal goes up. If you're cancelling me, put up a black smoke signal, okay? I ask for your cooperation.

Precision

Even I can't stand it unless things are in order. My life plans are also in order. The other day, I bought my grave. I've also recieved my posthumous Buddhist name in advance. Some of you may already know it, but it's "Manga Inkura Yaminosuke." Anyhow, excuse me, but I'd like to talk about my next life. I'm thinking of applying for the Hop Step Award for new manga artist. The title of my work'll be Cat Samurai's Coming. Of course, my pen name would be Hiroshi Yume.

Illegal Immigration

I can't say this out loud, but this is an illegal comic series. It didn't pass the magazine inspection into the country. Keep this hush-hush to the editor. Don't tip me off. I'd be foribly deported. When I was deported, my home was taken over by some other person so, now, someone else is living there. The nameplate said "Hida." I wonder what the person's like? My place in this new country is smaller than my last one. I'd like to live here permanently. Are the people in this country kind?

Normal

I thought I'd try to be normal. Like the students of that time, I tried to be pretentious. I joined a pretentious circle. Tennis in summer, skiing and hot springs in winter - it was pretty pretentious. I had a letterman jacket like everyone else. On the back was my name and number. 07 * Kumeda I just didn't care anymore. Before the summer, I stopped hanging with the circle. I'd thought I hadn't cared about the distinctions between the D and the T. The other day, that jacket appeared. It looked as if the letter D had been scraped with my nails. Sure enough, I'd been concerned about that all along.

Wishes

When a conversation starts with the phrase "I have a favour to ask of you," it's usually something that's not cool. They're like: lend me money, hurry up and turn in your manuscript, I've got to go to Comiket, so give me the day off.

So, just don't ask. Try imagining what it feels like to be the stars, with people making wishes on you all the time, and you'll get an idea of how tough it is for them when it's "the wish of a lifetime" that makes it even more of a nuisance. You can't make any more wishes, and you don't want to hear about them either.

I don't like people who make lots of wishes. If one comes true, they'll make another, and if that one comes true, they'll make another. It's always "gimme, gimme." There's no end to it. I don't want to be disliked, so I don't make wishes or requests of people. Even if my wishes weren't granted, I'd be disliked anyways.

In that case, it makes me want to make a wish. When should I make that wish of a lifetime? Can it be transferred to my next life? I'll use it on about my third life. Since it's a wish for my third life, could you please turn me into an animated character?

Open Up

"I don't understand your true feelings."

People have said that to me for as long as I can remember. Even my parents told me that. My homeroom teacher said that. Yesterday, I met a person for the first time, and they told me that. (We didn't get along so well.)

Strangers ask me to open up my heart a little more, but that's ridiculous. If I "opened my heart" and spoke my true feelings, people would cut off relations with me on the spot. As long as I keep this disgraceful heart of mine closed, I can somehow be involved with others. You put a lid over smelly stuff to not cause trouble. It's just good manners to get along with your neighbours.

Though people tell me, "I don't understand your true feelings," in truth, even I don't know my true feelings. What do I really want to do? What am I? Who are you to me? So, I'm nothing, you say? Well, I'm sorry.

My heart has two doors. Even I can't open the one in the back.

Non-Reporting

God isn't happy, because he knows everything...

God is omniscient, but I'm sure that there are all kinds of things that he's better off not knowing.

As for myself, I don't want to know, so I'm not going to know. But that might make life a little difficult, so I pretend to know. I open my mouth, looking like I know. So ask away kids.

Q: How Much does it cost to erase a neighbor's wrinkles?
A: About ten million yen per wrinkle.

Q: Why are the maids at the maid tea shop eternally said to be seventeen years old?
A: Even if she kills someone, a maid won't have her real name made public.(Age?)

Q: Why does Prime Minister Koizumi look like Dr. Mashirito?
A: Because they evolved from the same amoeba.

...even if we do know, it's pretty bad. I just remembered - only those of you who read this volume have learned the real truth of the universe.

I'm sure you didn't want to know. Sorry for that.

Shadowy Outcast

I don't know why you got angry. Calling you the emperor that's placed at the sunset... It's about the shadow emperor.
I like the shade. Every time I move, I choose a place facing north. Even in the shade, I wear sunblock. Of course, I hang my pants in the shade to dry.
I'm attracted to shady women. I support the shadow leader Yoshiko Sakurai. If there are rights to sunlight, I think there ought to be rights to shade. To think that shadow art's popular now, with the spotlight being cast on shadows - we're in strange times. They say that the shadows are getting more popular, but please don't put the spotlight on them. What are you trying to do by shining an inquisitive light?
I'm an advocate for shade. I don't like sunlight. I love the Toshigu shrine in Nikko, because there are monkeys.
See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil. See no dreams, Hear no surveys, and say nothing when people ask, "So, what type of work do you do?"

anga Koshien

"Oww!" There was a stabbing pain in my right instep. A cart ran over my foot, making me think that it was another flare-up with my chronic gout. It was a cart full of dreams that was being pushed by a young girl on Otome Road.

"I'm fine. Go on. Don't worry about me."

"May all your dreams take top priority."

Without asking about me, the metallic-haired maiden kept going. This road is dangerous. Policemen, please control this area. The maidens' carts are overloaded and they're always speeding; it's a lawless area.

The next thing you know, while desperately avoiding carts, I was nearly run over by a real car. I saw a black century with a noble emblem and the silhouette of the back of an elegant hat. As I expected, they weren't stopped by the police. I'm sure there must have been some misunderstanding.

ô Lu Lu Lu ô Lu Lu Lulu Lu ô

Otome Road, Chapter 13 by Tora Buryu

Extreme Limits

For eight hours, I couldn't remember names from various places, which made me irritated. The word "takumachine" kept getting in the way, so I couldn't remember a thing. I'm worth three gavas points and have less than 1mb of memory. It gets maxed out quickly.

My human capacity is the same way. I'm petty, so I lose my temper when the smallest thing happens, I've never held anything heavier than a pen. I don't know a world bigger than my manuscript. I fret over insignificant things.

But you know, because my capacity's small, I can be fulfilled with little things. Even getting a courteous smile that might mean nothing to you makes me spend the entire day in happiness.

The kanji for capacity - Ší looks like four people ready to kill each other. If that's the case, it's better to be arguing over something trivial.

Foreward

I changed the lightbulb in my toilet to the lowest wattage.

A dark room is calming. Even late at night, Tokyo is bright, and that doesn't suit me. Even though it's bright, once I slipped and fell on a piece of ice the size of a large paperback book. We had another severe winter this year. I got freezer burns from my toilet seat. When I turned my coat pockets inside out, mechanical pencil leads that had turned into powder scattered everywhere. Soggy Pocket Warmers came out of my washing machine. What does it say about my mental state when I dream of Takako Matsu, who I don't like that much?

Creepy Things Dare

I think I'm creepy. I just can't stand any part of myself. If I went to a picnic and saw my ugly face reflected in the lake, I'd just jump into it. If I went shopping and saw my ugly figure reflected in the show window, I'd bang my head against the glass and cut my throat with a fragment. My TV is always on. That's because if I turned it off, I'd see my ugly reflection. On sunny days, I have no desire to leave the house. Even my shadow is ugly. I'm an ugly manga child who'll never see the day when I become a swan.

I changed the lightbulb over my sink to the lowest wattage.

Reading

I was a kid who suffered a lot. I was often told to read out loud in front of the class. The teacher always told me, "You read in a real rod-straight monotone, don't you." I resented that, so I thought I'd go and really read rods. There were these wooden rods that are at the back of gravestones, but the kanji on them were too difficult, so I couldn't read them. I failed at reading rods. As a person who couldn't even read rods, I should've just crawled straight under that stone. I was a kid who suffered a lot. I never won a popsicle, so I couldn't read what was on a popsicle stick. That's because there's nothing written on it.

I changed the lightbulb in my kitchen to the lowest wattage.

Cultural Festival

I don't like festivals that go from midnight to morning. I dislike cultural festivals in general. That's because they demand culture of uncultured persons like me. Cultural work isn't my thing. For our cultural festival, our class put on a tea shop. I was given the responsibility of painting the character for "tea" (Ocha) for the sign. I don't like viridian paint. You can paint, and paint, but it always comes out uneven. I'm so uncultured that I can't even paint the word "tea" properly. So, don't try to get me to do any high-culture things. I don't understand Russian animation. or 800 yen manga, or 326, or Hiromix. Don't call manga the "cultural pride of Japan to the world," because there are plenty of manga in this country that aren't like that.

I changed my lightbulb over the stairway to the lowest wattage.

Previewing

I don't have clothes to wear to go out and buy clothes. Though I want to go and check out fashionable clothes to buy, there are no clothes to preview before I buy them. I have to go and preview clothes that I have to preview. People who are timid struggle to go and check things out in advance. When I wear old clothes that I forced myself to buy, I really look like I'm wearing raggedy duds. A pair of glasses that I thought looked trendy ended up being "Aneha glasses" and people made fun of me. One day I wanted a cat, so I went to the pet shop to preview some of them. I previewed the same cat over and over again. After I had previewed it several times, I went to the store and it wasn't there anymore. Of course, it was bought up by someone else. Before I even bought it, I suffered pet-loss syndrome.

I changed the lightbulb in my entryway to the lowest wattage possible.

Amakudari

Manga artist never get cushy jobs through Amakudari. I'll probably be unhappy in my next life. No, make that definitely unhappy. I won't have savings to live off of, nor will I have work. The only thing I can do is to try being useful to society through manga. For instance, I went on a sojourn in the Ururun world. I went to a remote part of Africa to teach disadvantaged children how to draw manga. When I confidently drew my best manga, the children unanimously said, "You're plagiarizing Dragon Ball. This is plagarism." The son of the head of the village got mad and criticized me bitterly. "The art style looks old, the stories are cliched, and the subject matter isn't appropriate for a shonen magazine." And so, I tearfully departed. With an injured heart, I vowed to never return. I couldn't even contribute to society.

I changed the lightbulb at my desk to the lowest wattage.

Omikoshi

The Fundoshi that I was forced to wear was nothing more than an exercise in humiliating masochism. It was for the Omikoshi for the village association. At that time, my Mongolian blue spot was still there and I really, really didn't like it. When I told people in my class, I was teased horribly, so I had no choice but to transfer to a new school, right? I had to keep hiding it. I applied my mom's foundation on my butt. It was the first time I 'd ever used makeup. I started feeling a little uncomfortable halfway through while putting it on. But I wanted to hide it well, so I applied the makeup meticulously. My friends who came to pick me up teased me, saying, "You smell like your mom." But I didn't care. It was better than letting people see my Mongolian blue spot. That was the first and last time that I put foundation on my butt. Even now, when I smell cheap women's foundation, I feel uncomfortable. Lately, I'm sure foundations have really become advanced, so kids can feel all right about not applying it too thickly.

I changed the lightbulb in my living room to the lowest wattage.

Finding Mistakes

My life has been full of mistakes, and I'm sure it will continue to be filled with mistakes. People often point my mistakes out to me. Even if I acknowledge my mistake and apologize, I'm told that it's a mistake to acknowledge my mistake so easily. That's me, I can only make mistaken expressions of love. During junior high, when I liked a girl, I checked out her address, made hesitant phone calls (it seems that society calls them "creepy phone calls where the caller doesn't say anything") and drew a realistic portrait of her. Actually, it wasn't just her face that I drew. Since I was the kind of kid who'd draw nipples in Jump manga when the characters didn't have any nipples, I did at least that. It was a mistaken expression of love. I'm sorry. In the end, I didn't talk to her even once during the three years of school.

I changed the lightbulb in my penlight to the lowest wattage.

Proof

Every once in a while I get uneasy. I wonder if the things I draw are actually being printed in magazines, and if people are actually reading them. I'm shy, so I don't have a problem with them not being read, but sometimes I think that's it's some rich person's hobby and that I'm being duped. Maybe they're intentionally choosing a talentless author like me to write these stories, and they make me think that the magazines are being published, but meanwhile that person's looking at them and laughing...the really ingenious, grandiose shocker is that perhaps the neighborhood convenience stores and bookstores are in on the joke, and they're putting free copies of Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei where my eyes will see them...no, that's got to be it. It's just too bizarre to think that I'm being published in Shonen Magazine and having books published. Are my manga being sold in your town...? I didn't think so... this manuscript couldn't even get to your town, so there's no way I could prove it. Every day my suspicions are getting closer to being confirmed.

I changed the lightbulb in my storage shed to the lowest wattage.

Hibernation

I envy hibernation. For the last several years, there hasn't been a day when I've slept deeply, or for a long stretch. Even when I tried drinking milk before bed, I got sick in the middle of the night and ended up running to the toilet. When I sleep lighty, I'll hear the assistants' conversations from the next room, and they all sound like they're criticizing me. No, but of course, they ARE criticizing me. Like, "For an adult, he's shameful," or "He has no presence," or "I'm not learning anything being here." There are limits to making fun of somebody. The whole world is saying bad things about me. Salespeople at convenience stores, passengers on the bus, fans of Gintama--they're all speaking ill of me. And finally, I heard this. The plan to kill Kumeta. A perfect plan to dump my body in the car, roll the car into the lake, and make it look like a suicide. I've got to kill before I get killed.

I've changed the lightbulb in my bathroom to the lowest wattage.

Yaminabe

Basically, when you're having an official yaminabe, the tension of the dark mystery already gets lost. When you do a hot pot stew by yourself, it's closer to being a yaminabe. When I look at the ingredients list for the seasoning mirin, this is what I find listed. Ingredients: Glutinous rice, Rice, Malted Rice. It kind of feels like I'm being made fun of in the worst way. Koji Kumeta, all alone, having a hot pot with rice. If you want to laugh, go ahead and laugh. I'm nothing but black malted rice, made from black market rice. The interior of my heart is pitch-black darkness, and the darkness in my heart is so deep, it's bottomess. As a kid, the color black in my paint set would be the first to go. I became a manga artist with few color pages.

I changed the lightbulb in my light box to the lowest wattage.

Foreword

Right before the World Cup, the world surges into a frenzy of excitement. I like soccer too, so I'd like to get all excited, but for some reason, when everyone around me is excited, I cool off

I've always been that way. Whenever there were festivals, I'd always be right outside the circle of excitement. I'd want to be in the circle, but I couldn't stand it, so I'd stay outside. Even when I went on a camping trip, I'd be outside the circle, and I'd stare distantly at the campfire from afar. When I went to karaoke, I'd stay in the bathroom. I can't get any pleasure out of funny manga either. When I read them, I'd be tormented by an inferiority complex.

It's supposed to be enjoyable, but it's not. I don't think I could ever enjoy anything. The second I think something is enjoyable, it ceases to be.

But of course, if something is uninteresting, it's just uninteresting. Life is about suffering misfortunes. Life, itself, is a pain.

Cut Off

When I think about it, I've lived a life in which I've often been cut off. When I was in elementary school and was supposed to become part of a group, I'd always be the one left out. I'm not invited to class reunions either.

I wasn't invited to weddings of people who I'd thought were close friends. Recently people who used to read me when I wrote for Shonen Sunday cut me off as well. If this continues, in my next life, I'll be the hems on a pair of pants that get cut off. It's just too miserable, so I decided to think positively, and I came to this conclusion:

I'm probably not being cut off, it's just that I'm not being noticed.

I'm confident in my theory that I'm not being noticed. Taxis don't stop if I raised me hand. Sometimes, automatic doors at convenience stores don't open for me. At revolving sushi restaurants, 80 percent of my orders are ignored. Someone even sat on my lap by accident once. When I cross at pedestrian crosswalks, cars drive right toward me as if I wasn't there. I was with an ishikoro boshi.

It'd sure be nice if trouser hems were useful one day.

Christmas

"You know, the second you were born, you tried to get back in."
My mother told me this half jokingly.
I don't believe it was a joke.
There's no way that I'd remember it, but if I was even a little like the way I am now, the instant I was born, I'd probably have grabbed my umbilical cord and hanged myself by my neck. I'd probably have planned to commit suicide by drowning myself in my first baby bath.
I'd probably have planned to commit suicide by jumping out my crib. I wanted to die from the moment I was born. The secret to my success is now clear.
Anyhow, I can forgive my mom for telling me what she did, but there was one more true story she told me that was a bit much.
"The obstetrician and the nurse who brought you out committed double suicide by driving their car into the Tsurumi river after their affair ended."
Mom, it wasn't necessary to tell me that, don't you think?

Dead Space

The setting: Kodansha's system's management room.
"There is unused space in the brain of manga robot KMT504. Originally, this was space reserved for talent, but manga robot KMT504 is a defective product, so it seems that part was never installed."
"What's a manga robot without talent? Send it back to the manufacturer, Shogakukan!"
"Well, the KMT504 is an old model; we no longer know the people in charge, and it seems its parts are no longer being manufactured. Plus, it seems that it'll cost money to recall it."
"It just can't be helped. Why don't we install our most advanced OS - Kibayashi engine XP, the pride of our company - into it?"
"No, we can't. After all, it's an old model, so it seems that the latest OS won't be compatible. Perhaps we could install Furonson 95, but there are no guarantees. None of the publishing firms are willing to handle this old model any longer."
"All right, contact the garbage department."
"I guess I'm finally turning into scraps."
"Run, 504, Run."
"You're FJTKZ2160."
To be Continued...

New Year's Bokes

Of course I had the New Year's bokes, but I'm a boke all year 'round, so it doesn't really need to be called the New Year's bokes specifically.
The other day, I found my favorite mechanical pencil in my fridge. I often wear my shirt inside-out to the convenience store. When I go to town to do some shopping, I forget what I'm shopping for. When I go out, I have times when I suddenly don't know where I am. I don't know where I stand with Shonen Magazine.
Where am I? And where am I supposed to go? I'm a lost child of manga. I'll wander around under the name "Maigo Hiroshi," aka "Duke Fleed."

Fukubukuro

If there were fukubukuro for books, my unsold books would be in 'em.
There's no good luck with leftovers. There's just garbage. Sorry that I'm garbage.
As an author, I'm a gomimushi, a garbage bug. I'm sorry that garbage is producing garbage. Garbage bug Kumeta's garbage manga award. Like Kumeta, the garbage bug has green in its leftovers.
The words I've heard the most often in my life are, "It came to a bad end."
This thought always lingers.
Every week I harbor regrets.

Taking Entrance Exams

In this line of business, every week seems like taking entrance exams. Every week, there are tests with surveys. You might say I'm a student preparing for my entrance exams.
The ones giving me the grades are, of course, you, the honorable readers. As long as I maintain a standard score of 30, my series can get published in Shonen Magazine. With such a low score, I developed entrance exam neurosis. On top of being a student preparing for exams, I've got entrance exam neurosis, so I need people to treat me very gently. If my manuscript seems like it'll be late, please have a police car escort it to the printer for me. Please try not to pay attention to the parts that don't make and sense. How many test do I have to take to pass?
I'm now on my fifteenth wave of tests to get into anime university.

Ehomaki

Other people may have "lucky directions," but not me. For Those of us with gloomy hearts, there's not a single lucky degree out of the 360 degrees on a compass.
If I go north, there'll be an avalanche.
If I go south, there'll be a tsunami.
If I go east, there'll be a tornado.
If I go west, what I'd think is the setting sun would be a nuclear test.
That's 360 degrees of cursed angles. In terms of human relationships, I don't have any friends anywhere in 360 degrees either. In the meantime, I've faced Cho, the lucky direction, and prostrated myself.

Why japs are so salty, holy shit?

Valentines

Recently, they say that chocolates contain effective polyphenols and are good for our health. I don't know whether it's a special health drink or a functional food, and frankly, I don't know what it's about. What is the catechin in tea or BCAA or Rutin? So, I decided to just arbitrarily come up with definitions for these words.

Polyphenol -> An italian painter from the middle ages. His masterpiece is "A Maiden Piling Bricks."

Rutin -> A Portuguese soccer player. Left winger. This year, he'll suffer from knee injuries.

BCAA -> A professional school for anime in Utah state, USA. It's short for Brilliant Creative Animation Academy.

Catechin -> The muscle between your shoulder and your hands.

Second Opinion

Without realizing it, I found myself in a long, long corridor. There were doors in the walls every three meters, and it continued on into the distance.
First, I looked at the name plate on the first door. It said "Attending Physician."
When I entered, the physician was reading my manga and said, "This is boring."
I replied, "Is that so? I think I'll get a second opinion."
So saying, I left the room. When I looked at the door of the next room, it said "Second Opinion."
When I entered, the "second opinion" doctor was reading my manga and said, "This is boring."
I went through the next door and the "side opinion" also told me, "This is boring."
In the next door and the next door they said, "This is boring," "This is boring," "This is boring." Even the forty-eighth person diagnosed my manga as boring.
Now I'm in front of the forty-nineth door. How many doors do I have to open to get a different opinion?
The long, long corridor that continues for eternity.

Degraded Doll Display

At a certain point in their life, people realize that they're at their maximum level and they can't go any higher. You naturally realize your limitations.
About seven years ago, I realized that there wasn't another level that I could go up to. I hadn't even gone up much, but I felt sad and pained, thinking I was going downwards. Anyone would think they'd stay in the same place forever, rather than go downward. But it doesn't work that way. The demons of time are demolishing the steps all around you, closing in on you, so you have no choice but to retreat downward.
From this point on, it's win or lose. Specifically, it's about finding the gentlest slopes to go down from. Fortunately, I'm not that high up, so going down is easy. In that way, I slowly head downward. What's going on? It's easy to go down, but there's the up staircase. God, I'm still capable. I cry tears of joy, strangely, it's easy for me to climb back up those steps. i can climb, hey man, I can climb!
But happiness is transitory. Suddenly there's another guy next to me running upward. Why? The old man sitting on the side of the stairs told me:
"It's a hallucination, you see. It happens a lot, you know that, don't you? It's an odd slope where cars appear to slide upward. As a matter of fact they're really going down and so are the stairs."
I'm getting close to seeing ground level. Goodbye.


>>149337941
Kumeta specifically just came off of having his previous series canceled.

The ones from around the time SZS was getting animated are much, much darker than these for some reason.

Preamble

Although I had no interest whatsoever, people seemed pretty excited over this summer's high school baseball world series... here I am, starting off with a general topic. The handkerchief prince is quite popular nowadays. A long time ago, people used to call me a half-assed prince.
I'm not going to forgive myself for who I was when I was younger. I'm probably not gonna change my mind till the day I die. I'm not gonna forgive myself for who I was last year. I'm not gonna forgive myself for who I was yesterday. I'm not gonna forgive myself for who I was earlier. The reason I'm suffering from a pulled muscle right now is because I was unprepared in the past. When I'm in my next life, I'm not gonna forgive myself for who I was in my past life.

White Lies

There are white lies told with good intentions and black lies told with evil intentions. I've also heard people talk about red lies, so I guess lies come in all different colors. I wonder what other colored lies are like. If you lied when you were young, that would be a blue lie. For example, if you lied about having a sexual experience during the summer... that'd be a blue lie. Let me give you and example. Summer break was almost over. Somehow, the ocean looked totally different in the summer. I was working at a gas station near the beach. One day, a red roadster came in, and the driver asked, "Can you wash the windows for me?" "Sure," I replied. That was my first conversation with Nagisa. Nagisa was a college student in Tokyo. She was four years older than me. She was mature and sexy, yet as innocent as a little girl. (Text partially omitted) Nagisa smiled at me, and suddenly pulled into a motel. "What do you wanna do, little boy?"

Part 1/2

She smiled again and looked me up and down with her seductive eyes. (Text partially omitted) The skin beneath her shirt was the ivory color of fine white linen. (Text partially omitted) When I put my arms around her, I felt her body shiver. Although she seemed like a playgirl on the outside, she was as pure and innocent as white linen. (Text partially omitted) I was inexperienced, and that was as far as I could take things. We ended up staying up all night talking about the stars... I guess you can call this a blue lie. A lie that's "almost transparent blue" is blue, but it's a very light kind of blue. A good example of a transparent blue would be... lying about meeting a girl in a swimming pool. Here are some other colors of lies: A green lie -> lying about recycling, or other environmentally friendly activities... like an oil company advertisement. A yellow lie -> when an indian friend tells you that a curry isn't that spicy, when it's actually crazy hot. There are lies that go with every color of the rainbow. What color are my lies, you ask? Hmmm...

Detox

Some people complain that I can be too harsh and others that I am not harsh enough. I've chosen such an unfortunate part. I can't make any money on this path. People get mad when I talk shit about other people. But people get mad when I say nice things too. I've chosen such an unfortunate path. I wanted to be loved, and make lots of money and live in a gorgeous condo where I could grow herbs and go to finishing school. Is that ever gonna happen? Wait, does such a path even exist?

Snow Melting

Whenever somebody experiences "snow melting," I'm the one who gets soaked by the dirty, gray water. When the snow melts, it turns into a river, and I get soaked. When I was in junior high, the captain and the coach had a snow melting experience, and I ended up being benched the whole season. Yep, I got soaked by the gray water. One time, my chief editor and a certain manga artist had a snow melting experience, and I was asked to quit writing for a magazine. Yep, I got soaked by gray water. Snow melting is fine once in a while, but people should know that there's always somebody who gets soaked by the resulting gray water. So people stop fighting and reconciling for God's sake. The dirty water always flows to the bottom.

Self-completeing

I heard somebody say, "this manga is over" after reading the first chapter of Zetsubou Sensei. To him, my manga was already complete. Well, sorry that my already "completed" series has gone all the way to volume 5. The end was actually the beginning. Nah, that sounds too cool. It was the beginning of the end. People start to get old the moment they are born. I'd say the same thing about this manga. The moment it was born, it was already old. It's as if a man were born at the age of eighty-eight... and could die at any moment. That's what this manga is like. People often say "I don't get your jokes." What can I say? I'm a self-completing manga artist. I write stories that make me laugh, but nobody laughs at my jokes. I'm like a lonely clown sitting all alone in the dark. Well, to tell you the truth, I don't find my stories that funny either.

Minotake Measurement

Even when I try to live beyond my Minotake Measurement, for some strange reason, I'm always forced to live according to my Minotake. When I order a set menu at restaurant, there's usually one item missing. The restaurant must've prepared my meal according to my minotake. When I order curry over rice, the only topping I get is thinly sliced almonds... It's like saying "That's all you deserve, you piece of trash." When I order pancakes, I don't get any syrup. When I order a coffee float, I don't get any ice cream. One time a reader sent me a chocolate, and there was a tooth mark in it. It's like not getting flora when you're playing Dragon Quest. It seems like my life is made up of one loss after another, but I'm not gonna complain because I'm just a simple, "Piece of Trash." I bought a long-sleeved shirt the other day, but it turned out to have three-quater sleeves. I always walk on the edge of the street so I won't get in anyone else's way.

Too Much Evidence

There's just too much evidence. There's just too much evidence that I'm a bad manga artist. I've been working for fifteen years, and nobody even notices me. I sent an illustration to Jump Broadcasting Station using my real name, and it was completely ignored. I've never even made it into the Toohan manga rankings. Prime Minister Aso has never said a word to me, and my neighborhood bookstore doesn't even carry my manga. There's just too much evidence that I'm not talented... way too much evidence. There's so much evidence that it makes it hard to believe. It makes me think, there's no way I could really be that bad. Wait a minute, maybe I'm not that bad. This is a new kind of positive thinking. There's no way I'm bad.

Dream Ending

I came up with a cool idea in my dream. I forgot it the moment I woke up, so I went back to sleep hoping that it would come back to me. I ended up having a dream about Takako Matsu. It was very real... maybe she was actually here. I'm an insomniac so I have a hard time telling the real world from the dream world. There's this editor who always appears in my dreams when I'm half-asleep. I'm not really sure if he's real or not. His name is Tetsusuke Takeki, and it's his second year working as an editor. He's a rich kid who lives in a penthouse all by himself. He drives an Alfa Romeo and dates models every weekend. He always says, "I've got at least seven girlfriends." He really gets on my nerves. He's actually a masochist, and he once showed up to a meeting while chained and gagged by a dominatrix. What makes him think he can conduct a meeting while he's bound and gagged? I felt totally abandoned. It was as if I was being forced into his kinky world. There's also an assistant named Kimura who appears in my dreams. He always looks down on me. He tells me that my drawing style is too old-fashioned and won't play to a younger audience. You bastards. Quit messing with me! Someday I'll kill you. I swear.

Be Prepared

Preparation backfires 100% of the time. I trip on slip-proof floors. I almost suffocated myself sleeping in padded headgear. I get a rash whenever I use bug spray. It makes total sense... since I'm nothing but a lowly bug. Why would a bug use bug spray? When I put mothballs in my closet, I end up not being able to wear anything. If my apartment was fumigated, I'd move out. What else could I do? After all, I'm just a lowly bug. I'm the lowest kind of bug there is. I'm a dung beetle. No matter what I do to prepare, it always backfires.

Secret Code

I don't know if you can call this a secret code, but lately I've been using words that nobody else seems to understand. I'm speaking Japanese to Japanese people, but they still don't understand. Actually, I've always had a tendency to use weird words. I call 7-eleven "Sereu" for short (Most people call it "Seven"). And I call AMPM "Emupi" (Most people say "Eepii"). I also call Brad Pitt "Buupitto" (Most people call him "Burapi"). The other day I asked Maeda-kun, "Hey, is your mebon acting up?" and Maeda-kun was like "Huh???" "Mebon" is short for "metabolic syndrome." I use it all the time. I've probably said it so many times that I've convinced myself it was normal. Have you bought ohabi yet? Is Masene entertaining? I wonder how Fukahire is doing.

Old Friend

I don't have any old friends. I don't have any regular friends either. I have no friends. I'm serious. It's not like I love being alone. I just happen to be alone all the time. That's just my fate. I went to a diner the other day, and I was sitting alone in the nonsmoking section. Then a group of thirty people showed up. It was a bunch of ladies who had just picked their kids up from a nursery school. They put some tables together and made one huge group table. I was all alone again. There was a huge group in the middle and then me, all alone in the corner. I was completely isolated. It reminded me of what my teacher used to do to me back in elementary school. Tell me, god, what am I being punished for? Then a child stared at me in astonishment with his pure, innocent little eyes. He was probably thinking, why is there a strange old man sitting in the same room as us? There's one thing that I learned that day. It gets really cold in a diner when there're no other tables around you. The air conditioner was blowing right at me, with nothing to block the icy breeze.

Preamble

Saturday, December 2

On Sunday, this issue is gonna go to press, and I'm under extreme pressure. But here I am writing this blog. Forgive me if I say something crazy.

Ya know, people really are quite amazing. When we're under pressure, a strange power comes to us from out of nowhere. We accomplish things that we're normally incapable of. This is what you call latent ability or hidden powers. My room is super clean right now. Usually I have no desire or capability to clean. I am cooking right now. I'm making something I usually wouldn't have the patience to make, like pot-au-feu. I'm wearing nice clothes even though I'm inside my room. I usually don't put any thought into what I wear, but when I'm under pressure, I feel like dressing up.

Oh no. The Wii is going on sale today! I've gotta go out. I haven't been so active in such a long time. I might bake some muffins before my next deadline.

Pororoca

I've never had a hit series. Somebody told me that I'm a no-hitter in this business. I can't go with the flow or go against it. All I can do is try and stay where I am, just like a sprig of seaweed. All I do is try and resist the current as I'm slowly worn away until I eventually disappear. It doesn't matter whether the water is clear or cloudy.

I saw the announcement of the most popular word of the year on TV earlier.

I'm gonna go with the flow and say it out loud.

"One, two, three, I wanna die. Wanna try?"

That's right, whether it's popular or not, I'm always bending over backwards and suffering from Kumeta-Wanna-Die syndrome.

Assumptions

I've been dreaming on the assumption that my dreams are never gonna come true.

I've been in love with girls on the assumption that my love will never be reciprocated

This is when I was young and idealistic. Now that I'm old, I don't dream or fall in love.

People live on the assumption that they'll eventually die.

If I ever become positive again, I wanna live under the assumption that reincarnation is real.

I am writing on the assumption that nobody's gonna accept what I say.

My manga is published on the assumption that people are gonna forget about it.

I am living on the assumption that nobody cares that I exist.

But the chief editor gave me a few kind words.

"It's okay. Don't worry."

"We published your series on the assumption that it wouldn't be a hit."
The lowly insect felt relieved.

Based on Boulevard

Just give me one great story.

Give me one great story that will be loved by the world. As if to answer that prayer, a miracle happened.

One day, a worthless manga artist was walking through the forest, when he stumbled upon an author.

The manga artist was so happy that he decided to take the author home.

They passed a well on the way home.

The manga artist had been up for three days straight. He tripped and fell into the well, dragging the author along with him.

The manga artist stood there in shock. Then a goddess appeared from the well. She said, "Did you drop a golden Buronson? Or was it an ordinary Buronson?

"I dropped a golden Buronson."

"You Liar!"

"You deserve this rusty Buronson!"

Heard It A Million Times

I've heard it all a million times
I've been told a million times that I suck. I've been told a million times that I'm boring. I've been told a million times that I'm vulgar. I've been told a million times that what I write isn't really manga. I've been told a million times that I'm old fashioned. I've been told a million times that I'm not creative. I've been told a million times that I make no sense. I've been told a million times that I should quit. I've been told a million times that I should die.
I've said "I apologize" a million times
I've said "I'm sorry" a million times
I've said "Excuse me" a million times
I've said every apology you can think of a million times
I've been told that I should die a million times. It made me wanna die a million times.
But I never died
Voice: Die
Voice: Die
Voice: Die
Voice: Die
Voice: Die

Delusional Self-Blaming

I'm sorry that I have a series. I'd be better off if I was a delusional self-blamer, but I'm a nondelusional self-blamer. I cause trouble just by being alive. I'm a public nuisance. Please arrest me now. Please send me to the gas chamber.

There are about 50,000 people I'd like to apologize to. I'm really sorry about all the people who are reading this book, but I can't apologize to 50,000 people because I don't think I have that many readers. It would be nice if I could apologize to 500,000 people some day. Oh well... I'm gonna stop dreaming so big. But I'd like to apologize to a few of my readers out there.

I don't think just getting down on my hands and knees is good enough. I'm gonna dig a hole and bow down inside the hole.

Teminal Exam

It's the end of the year. I didn't accomplish anything in the year 2006. While everybody's out celebrating the end of the year, my life is falling apart. This year ends when the new year arrives, but the new year isn't gonna put an end to the fact that I'm falling apart.

A lot of things are falling apart.

My knees are falling apart even though I don't play any sports. I'm tired of love even though I'm not in love. I lost faith in love even though nobody loves me. My back hurts when I genuflect. I started losing my mind a long time ago.

One day, I couldn't remember the name of the station in between Shinjuku and Nakano, so I decided to get off and go see what is was. So I got on the Chou line, but I forgot to get off and ended up in Nakano. I wandered around Nakano Broadway and ran into someone in the manga business, but I couldn't remember his name. I thought about buying something, but I forgot what I wanted to buy. On the way home, the Chuo line was stopped due to a fatal train accident. My life is completely falling apart.

Day 46000

Although not many people know about it, "Day 46,000" really exists. Some shrines call it "1000 days prayer." It's a day when you receive 1000 days' worth of merit in a single day.

I can imagine how it all got started. It must've been like a bonus card competition between Bic Camera and Yodobashi Camera. Some shrine probably started saying "If you visit our shrine on a particular day, you get three days worth of merit." Then another shrine said, "At our shrine, you receive seven days worth of merit." Then another one said, "At our shrine, you receive ten days worth of merit." And it just kept increasing to 100 days, 1000 days, and finally 46000 days. Customers always migrate to the best deal. Even worship is based on market fundamentals.

I wish there was a day like that for reading manga. If you read a manga on a particular day, you'd find it 46000 times more interesting. On that day, somebody might actually tell me that my manga was really good. I am likely to feel 46000 times more pain than the average person... 365 days a year.

Expectations

It seems like people have all these negative expectations of me. 1. Don't expect me to be miserable. 2. Don't expect me to fail. 3. Don't expect me to be destroyed. 4. Don't expect me to die. It scares me that I might end up meeting your expectations. Well, please let me have some expectations too. I deserve to have a bit of a bright future after I fail.

In 200X, after being completely rejected by my readers and the publishing company, I'll open a studio made of cardboard inside a small park outside of Tokyo (illegally). There, I will draw manga for dogs. It will be a sexy dog manga titled Heart Dockin' Dog with forty-eight beautiful female dog characters in it. Although it won't be appreciated in the human world, dogs will really enjoy it... especially the larger dogs. The Chihuahuas and the Pomeranians won't be crazy about it, but overall it'll get a positive reception. Gradually, I'll become more popular among dogs. One day, a Shiba named Shibata, the chief editor of Dog Jump, will come visit me and say "I'd like you to write a series for Dog Jump." After receiving an unexpected offer, the manga artist who was once a failure will cry tears of joy. Imagine, someday I'll be a popular manga artist with series in magazines like Cat Jump and Comic Pun-Dog.... ahh, what a bright future awaits me.

Summer Retreat

I have a habit of avoiding things.

I'm used to being avoided.

Sometimes when I see someone coming toward me, I step aside so that I can avoid them, but I end up bumping into them because they stepped aside too.

I think this is the kind of connection I share with readers who purchased this book.

I don't like people who walk in the middle of the street.

I'm always walking on the edge so that I can avoid being seen.

Sometimes I bump into other people who are walking on the edge.

It makes me so happy when I get to interact with other people like that.

Thank you so much.

File: Real Kumeta..jpg (63KB, 800x600px) Image search: [Google]

63KB, 800x600px

Time Machine

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you write interesting manga, your career is gonna end up short. The career of a manga artist with no talent last a very long time. That's the category I fall into. It's been fifteen years since I started out in this business, and I've been writing boring manga all this time. It feels like I've been alive for 200 years.

People tell me it takes forever to read a whole book of my work. It feels long because it's boring. The sensory time for reading this one book is equivalent to reading 1000 volumes of Dragon Ball, or 500 Volumes of Orange Road, or 100 volumes of Cyber Blue, or two volumes of Zan. I'm sorry for making you travel back in time.

Once you go back in time far enough, you can confront the younger me... when I was just starting out.

Preamble

I had this dream in the middle of the day. I had the same dream twice.

I'm at some kind of venue. An award ceremony is taking place. The audience is cheering. I show up in a limousine as if I'm some kind of celebrity. Tough bodyguards stand beside me, and I walk down the red carpet ignoring the screaming fans. Maybe I won a big award... Thanks, everyone. Suddenly the cheering turns to roaring. There are stairs at the end of the carpet, and I see a rope hanging from above. The bodyguards turn into prison guards. They're walking right beside me. The red carpet turns into liquid, and I realize that it's actually the blood of the prisoner who was executed before me. The announcer turns into a priest. He looks into my eyes with compassion and says, "God is waiting for you. There's nothing to be scared about." What the heck did I do?

I had this dream in the middle of the day. I had the same dream twice.

Connections

I was ostracized by my classmates back in elementary school.
They said if you write "Kumeta" in kanji from top to bottom, it looks like the kanji for "poop."
Nakano-kun said I was easy to make fun of.
He said he was just kidding around but I remember how hurt I was . If you ask me, he was a tried and true bully.

Now that I'm an adult, readers ostracize me all the time by saying "I quit reading Kumeta's manga."
Please listen to me, everyone.
Ostracizing a manga artist is the same as bullying him.
You can't just say its because I'm easy to make fun of.
Haven't you ever heard of reader harassment?

Inconvenience

Convenient things can be very inconvenient to operate.
It's so stressful to operate those precision instruments known as humans.
I know my model is less capable than others, but still operating a "human" is over-whelming to me.

The latest version of the Kumeta operating system is very unstable. Kumeta OS '95 was definitely more stable. But it had problems with the conversation function. I would type in Ekiden in hiragana and it would give me the wrong kanji. It always converted what I typed into something totally perverted. It was terrible. With OS '97, the coverting function has improved, but it's gradually become more and more unstable. It's been freezing a lot.

Human daily activities create so much stress. Thinking and talking to others creates techno-stress. I don't understand why humans cry suddenly for no reason whatsoever. Humans are too complicated.
I hope I'm reincarnated as something simpler next time... maybe a jellyfish.

Priorities

I don't know if people are prioritizing things incorrectly, but I'm certain of one thing. Nobody ever makes me a priority. I made plans with a friend a month in advance, but he cancelled and said, "Sorry, I'm expecting a delivery today." Now, I'm not saying his priorities are misguided. If you're expecting a delivery and you aren't at your house, it puts the delivery guy in a difficult position. But hanging out with me is really of no importance whatsoever. Kumeta < Delivery.

I understand.

When I fell off my bike and my head was bleeding, my friend abandoned me, saying, "Sorry, I've gotta go to cram school." Now, I'm not saying his priorities are misguided. He's got a bright future ahead of him, and cram school is important. My skull, on the other hand, really isn't worth worrying about. Kumeta < Cram School.

I understand.

"Sorry, I'm gonna leave early today." Now, I'm not saying your priorities are misguided. The comic festival only takes place twice a year. The boring work you do for me every week can't even compare. Kumeta < Comic Festival.

I understand.

Right to Organize

There's a phenomenon called Monkey Ball. It's a sight you can only see during winter. In order to keep themselves warm, monkeys stay close to one another and form a circle. They kind of look like a big ball when the huddle together. Whenever I see them on TV, there's usually one monkey that's outside of the ball. Ah, that's me. I see myself in that monkey. I seriously don't have any friends. I was never given the right to organize in self-defense. People often try to lure me into joining cults by promising that I'll make new friends. People often try to lure me into selling soap by promising that I will make new friends. I know it's a trick, but there were times that I though it might be worth it. If I were born in a different era, I might've gotten myself into some left-wing political group just to make friends. I might've found the word "united" appealing, and I would've protested against the U.S.-Japan security treaty. I might've been intrigued by the idea of people referring to me as "comrade." I probably would've ended up getting shot. Where in the world can I find a monkey ball that I can be a part of? That would be my own personal version of a Dragon Ball.

One day Kouji Kumeta woke up to find that he had turned into a roly-poly.

Because a roly-poly can be a ball all on its own.

Half and Half

People usually only say "I trust you" when they don't trust you. If they really trust you, they don't have to say anything. If they say they're half in doubt, they're 99 percent in doubt. I have more doubts now compared to when I started this series. Something must've happened. Yea.

By spring, my percentage of doubt will be more than the percentage of employment for Yoyogi Animation School Graduates. I can't even trust myself. I never meet my own expectations. I've trusted myself and have been deceived so many times. Obviously, I can't trust other people either. This world is filled with doubts. Maybe this whole world is just a big lie.

It's hard to believe that I'm working as a manga artist, and I'm writing a series in a magazine. How can I not doubt that? The world I live in must just be a set created by a Kibayashi-san. My life is being documented on the True Manga Show and everybody's laughing at me behind my back. Wait! The bestselling manga in this lie of a world is called Nana, but what kind of manga is popular in the real outside world? Could it be Dynamine Itou or could it be Zan?

Doubt everything.

Oversupply

There are too many manga artist. The tax office told me that manga artist writing for Jump mostly live in the Kichijouji neighborhood. There are just too many manga artist. And they're not poor. There's an oversupply, yet they're rich. However, in 20XX, a mysterious virus called Bird Influenza, which only infects manga artist, will break out. First, the popular manga artist Wabirou Fujita gets infected through contaminated art supplies. Then Kenichi Muraeda and Takashi Shiina get infected. The virus quickly spreads throughout northeastern Tokyo, and 76 percent of the manga artist who live in Kichijouji, Mitaka, Nerima, Suginami, and Nakano get infected. They have no choice but to stop working. Shonen Jump is forced to suspend 90 percent of it's regular serials. Only Prince of Tennis and Ginkon remain. The virus begins to spread even faster, and within a month, every single manga artist in the country is infected. The Japanese manga world is on the brink of extinction... However, there is one man who survived. It's Kumeta! "I'm still available! The Japanese manga world is not extinct. I'll write for Jump." He thought that Prime Minister Asou and the Japanese manga lovers would cheer for him and greet him with open arms, but in reality, their reaction was ice cold. You didn't get infected because you're not a real manga artist. Nobody believes you're a manga artist. The Japanese manga world is officially extinct. This could happen in the near future.

World Heritage

Today, I'd like to take you to a world that's unlike the world you live in... I invite you to my spiritual world.

I'd like to introduce you to the spiritual world heritage site that my mind has created. Look at these walls.

They're 1,000,000,000,000,000 Kilometers high, nobody could possibly climb over them.

My "Mind Wall" was registered as a spiritual world heritage site in 1978.

The tower that rises above Genuflect Desert is called "I Give Up Tower."

There's a staircase inside the tower, but the stairs suddenly end halfway up, forcing climbers to "give up."

The "I Give Up Tower" was registered as a spiritual world heritage site in 1995.

Inside the Forest of No Green, there's a river that flows from the Fountain of Ignorance. This river is unlike any other river in the world... it only flows downstream.

It starts from Third Class, and then it goes down to Fourth Class, Fifth Class, and finally reaches the Open Sea of Limitations.

The Dreamless River was registered as a spiritual world heritage site in 1997.

Next week I'll tell you all about the Bridge of Envy.

Athletic Festival

There's a huge variation in body type among participants in school athletic festivals.

Why do they make people with vastly different body types compete against one another?

What is the best solution? I tried to come up with an idea. What kind of exercise would work for both athletic types and humanities-minded types?

The answer is the morning radio exercise program.

Radio is a strong cultural symbol of the Showa Era. And exercise of any kind could be considered athletic.

That's exactly why people throughout the country love doing their radio exercise programs.

Everybody should do radio exercise for the athletic festival. It's both a cultural activity and an athletic activity at the same time.

Start by setting up your own radio.

See, I do say serious things once in a while.

Inappropriate Titles

There aren't that many appropriate names out there.

"Onizuka" means "demon," but someone with that name can still be very nice. Someone named Seigi, which means "hero," could actually be quite devious.

And even if these names happen to be appropriate, people often end up changing then to something inappropriate.

For example, take video games...

When I play the game Like A Dragon, the title becomes "Like A Lowly Bug." When I play Animal Crossing the title becomes "Snob Crossing."

When I play Legend of Zelda I'm so bad at it that it becomes "The True Story of Zelda."

"Love and Berry Dress Up and Dance" becomes "Love and Berry Try To Dress Up, But Lack Any Sense of Fashion Whatsoever."

The titles get changed every time I play a game.

I should apologize to the game companies.

But when I play Idolm@ster, the title stays the same. I'm pretty good at that one.

Original Form

Japanese figurine makers are the best in the world, bar none. Kaiyoudou is one of the most well-known companies. Their figurines look exactly like the original drawings that they're based on. They may even be more accurate than the original drawings.

Actually, there was somebody who made my manga characters into figurines.

I don't think anybody knows about it, but there's a manga that I wrote a long time ago called Katte Ni Kaizou, and they made figurines of some of the characters from the manga.

Every single one of them was perfect. One of them was a big Hami-chan figurine, and you could remove her hair and replace it with a different hairpiece and turn her into the Chief.

It was amazing, you just change the hair and suddenly you have a brand-new character.

It was exactly the same as the original manga.

It's amazing how skillful these figurine makers are.

Preamble

As it says on the cover, my manga is going to be made into a TV anime. You might be wondering why I don't sound excited... but I must say that's partially everybody's fault. When I first got the news, I was so happy that I went out to buy a celebratory chocolate cake. I really wanted to tell everybody, but it wasn't official yet, so I just made a vague reference to it in volume 7. Nobody believed me. Not only did they not believe me, I got a postcard: "It's so humble of you to plug your apprentice's new anime." What the fuck? I don't even have an apprentice. And if I did, I would feel nothing but bitter envy toward him. I would say things like "Hope it turns into a big piece of crap!" or "Hope you marry a crazy voiceover actress!" I really wondered why my reader would say that, and suddenly I freaked out and started thinking is it happening again? Of course it is. Somebody who likes my manga enough to buy a tankobon of it would never lie to me. What was I thinking? My manga is never gonna be made into an anime! My doubt soon turned into conviction, and here I am. The more I think about it, the more impossible it seems. Some rich guy out there probably set this whole thing up just to make fun of me. That would explain the way the staff's been treating me. They say the anime will be airing on channel U, which makes me think they must've found out that I don't get channel U at home. But the person behind this scam made one mistake. I get MX! I'm gonna watch it on MX! They'll probably end up going with an anime based on some manga published by comic Yoshimoto. They can't fool me. If by some odd chance my anime does come on, I'm gonna sing this song.

Anime is just a lie, anime does not exist, I was just seeing things, It's all an illusion. 

But there is a part of me... A little part of me... That wants to see it!  Anime is just a lie, anime does not exist. 

Duty

Looks like NHK viewer fees will soon become obligatory. Why don't we just make everything else obligatory too?

Buying Jump, DS, and Koro Koro comics could be made an obligatory part of compulsory education. We could live in an obligatory society where everything is done out of obligation. Everybody would start turning against Jump because they were obligated to buy it. Hee hee.... Ahh, what an ugly heart I have. It bothers me that people say I'm obligated to make nasty comments like this. Jealousy, envy, and spite aren't my top three obligatory behaviors.

By the way, as Japanese citizens we're obligated to purchase actress Aoi Miyazaki's photo for 10,000 yen. There's nothing you can do about it.

In fact, I'm also obligated to protect the planet's future. I must stop us from converging with parallel world, which could... etc., etc.

Portability

It's been ten years since people started saying I've run out of creative ideas. My artistic style and technique have been blown away with the wind. How have you been? I'm somehow managing to survive by recycling my old ideas.

It's really not so bad, since I'm at least aware of the fact that I'm recycling old ideas. I'm just a lowly bug who can't even remember what he wrote in the past. I can't stop myself from aging. I'm definitely getting old. So I've decided to just forget about everything.

I've forgotten about the photo of my bare butt that ran in that tankobon. I have no recollection about the hostess club manga that canceled almost as soon as it started running. I'm ass deep in oblivion, and a dark future lies ahead. I no longer have any need for memories.

But I'll never forget about the Capcom employees who completely ignored me when I was having a drink with Koji Kiriyama.

Rite of Passage

Well... it's sort of like an initiation process that exists in any field.

For his second series, a manga artist is given the chance to do a series that he really wants to work on, and it fails. It's almost like a rite of passage.

Like when you go to a friend's wedding, and a little kid says, "You're a manga artist, right? Can you draw Sailor Moon?" Or your credit card application is denied, or you overhead someone at a convenience store saying your manga sucks, or your parents tell you not to write anything vulgar, or the Public Security Intelligence Agency breaks into your studio, or some American yells, "Hey, manga manga!" At you instead of using your name, or receiving a copy of manga in the mail from an upset fan who wants to return it... This is the bloodcurdling initiation that all manga artist must go through.

Sabbath! Sabbath! It's a rite of passage. It's a path that everyone must travel... I guess.

Forgetting Your Age

My knees buckle even when nobody's kicking them from behind. An old man writing Shonen manga is completely age inappropriate. I apologize for writing manga with teenage characters. I must write something more age appropriate... at least I should try.

For example, the story of an aging salesman who is so ashamed of his own body odor that he constantly pours water over himself, or an artist who collects each hair he loses and makes a replica of himself out of it, or a middle-aged man living in a fantasy world who can't see Tinkerbell's face from up close because he suffers from presbyopia, or a romantic comedy about an old man who goes out to dinner and karaoke with a young girl and gives her money but doesn't do anything.

I'm pretty sure those would sell. I shouldn't write Shonen manga anymore.

I heard a young boy playing baseball yelling, "Bombardier!" as he slid into the base headfirst. I was impressed to hear such a surreal example of an age-inappropriate joke.

Infection

I received a complaint from a certain manga artist, but I never actually said anything about this manga artist. I was actually referring to that "other" manga artist. But both of them are making more money than I am anyway, so what's the big deal?

The certain manga artist I was referring to (A women) came down with an infection. The infection spread to her staff, and now they all wear the same kind of frilly outfits.

Viral infections can be scary, but don't worry... this manga is not infectious.

You'll be the last one to read it.

Unwanted Presents

Despite the fact that I put so much time and effort into drawing the bonus self anime (not a flipbook!), I'm afraid that people are gonna think It's worthless. In order to make it even more undesirable, I decided to add a theme song that goes with it.

I apologized to the slacker in the west. Deceived by the north I left on my journey. I headed south to collect the random. "Hide out in the east," said a forgotten relative. With the new CG anyone can be an internet idol. This is a gift for you, as you depart toward your next life. A graduation anthology of your dreams. I'm gonna be a voiceover actor in my next life. La La La, Next Life, Next Life, Next Life, La La La, Next Life, Next Life, La La La. *Genuflecting is part of my daily routine. people who look into other people's eyes when they talk, con artist, politicians, students returning from studies abroad. Chasing after actors and voiceover artist. Jumping over the rivers of exclusivity. The technological leaps of the internet lead to superficial friendships. I'm sending you a diploma of love. *Repeat

Grown-up Tricks

The phrases "childish trick" and "grown-up trick" don't sound too serious, but when you say "Shonen trick" or "Shojo trick," it suddenly sounds like a crime.

As I was mulling over this idiotic though, I suddenly started feeling guilty. Isn't writing worthless manga for Shonen Magazine a sort of Shonen trick?

I couldn't help but think that I'm committing a kind of crime against society. If I ever wrote manga for a Shojo magazine (not that I've had any offers), that would definitely be an example of Shojo trickery. I would totally get arrested. I would be ostracized by society.

You may say, "Don't worry. The average age of Shonen Magazine readers is pretty high," but that doesn't stop me from feeling like a criminal.

How can I ever be forgiven for this crime? Can I buy an indulgence to cover my acts of Shonen Trickery? How about Shonen Jump? Could Buying Shonen Jump count as an indulgence? Then I'll buy Shonen Jump every week and my crime will be forgiven. Of course, I guess you could say the idea of buying an indulgence is a crime in and of itself.

Other People's Drama

One time, when I was watching TV, I spotted myself in a TV drama. It was me in junior high, walking through Harajuku... Hmm, what was I doing in Harajuku that day? I remembered everything. I even remembered what I was wearing. I was wearing a Dodgers jacket and red Converse... The rest of my outfit was nothing special. The more I remembered, the sadder I became. Actually, although I was in Harajuku, I was on my way to the anime store Anime Police Pero in Shinjuku. To be more precise, I was trying to get a copy of the magazine Animec. For some reason, I though it would be easier to get there from Harajuku. Suddenly I'm feeling anxious again... I've started thinking about the anime police. If there is such a thing as the anime police, they'll probably arrest me, even if my manga does make it into a TV anime. I'll be convicted, and my anime will be canceled... but my anime hasn't even started yet. How could they arrest me? There's gotta be some other anime creators they should be arresting. Please don't pick on me just because I'm an easy target. If the anime police suddenly start investigating me, my editor might say, "you can forget about your TV anime..." but the editor in chief said something so kind to me. He said that if my anime ever got canceled, he'd make an anime comic instead. How are you gonna make an anime comic without making the anime first...?

Emergency Broadcast Network

The call I get from my editor every week is a real example of the emergency broadcast network. The phone is ringing right now as I'm writing this. It really is an emergency situation. I have no idea why I'm working on the bonus pages right now... I'm suffering from an unusual psychological condition at the moment. Please forgive me.

I'm really bummed out.

Zero Competition

Somebody please abandon me, leave me in a mailbox like a newborn baby somewhere where I'll have zero competition. I wanna start life all over as a baby. Kitaro will mistakenly pick me up, thinking I belong in his youkai monster mailbox... and that's how youkai Trash Manga is born. Youkai Trash Manga causes nothing but trouble for humanity. He keeps drawing manga that upsets the world. He wastes paper and angers Mother Earth. Even his stepfather, Kitaro, gets fed up and kicks him out. After getting beat up by Kitaro, Youkai Trash Manga changes his tune and starts drawing the ever-so-popular moe manga. He tries, but all he can come up with is garbage. One day, Trash Manga realizes that he needs to find another page so he can draw a two-page spread. He wanders the forest in despair, and finds another page sitting all alone on a tree stump. They take each other's hands, and a two-page spread called "happiness" is born. But there's one problem. Those two pages are stuck together, and nobody can read them... The End.

What the hell kind of ending is that? Why bother making it into a feel-good story? That's ridiculous.

The right page was actually the left page, and the left page was actually the right page. The right page was merely masquerading as the left page. The End.

The Truck

The truck... the truck is leaving.
The truck is leaving on Friday.
The truck will take my original manuscript to Numazu (The factory).
And you're asking me to write something interesting under such stressful circumstances?
The truck... The truck is leaving.
It's heading toward Numazu

Anishow (Anime & Show)

Do you have any idea what happens when someone who's had no luck for 17 years suddenly has his work turned into an anime and is awarded a manga prize?
The answer: "He dies."
It's more like the plot of a TV drama. There are little death flags all over the place.
It makes my skin crawl to think about what kind of unhappiness is around the corner after all this good fortune.
The devil is actually after me. In all the different ways, too: Signs come falling down on streets I often walk on, there was an explosion near a revolving sushi place I go to a lot, and the eel from my lunchbox that I just ate was from China.
I guess it could also be true that I traded my soul with the devil for an animation contract for this series. Hey, which one of you said something clever like "Animating a comic is like selling your soul"?
Well anyway, this means that this animation is something that I traded life for; something that I wagered my soul on. So if it doesn't come out well, it means that soul will be in a very bad state. However, I'm sure that anime created by gurus, whose souls are in a very good state, will be fantastic. I'm sure it will lead to a feature length film that will draw the crowds without any promotion.
More importantly, I have no interest in allowing myself to be simply killed off like this. The brainwashing war between me and the devil has begun.
Oh devil, if you are so intent on killing me, maybe I'll just go ahead and end it before you can get me!

Fake Funeral

So I went ahead and died.
I died and then came back.
June 21, a certain location in Tokyo.
Koji Kumeta, buddhist name "Mangain Kurayaminosuke."
The farewell ceremony was conducted funereally and properly.
I thank from the bottom of my heart the many people who came in order to commemorate my passing.
As for the ceremony... I tried hard to make it realistic. For example, I had a photograph of myself there, which was actually quite a shock to see.
It made me think, "I'm dead." "Ohhh, I'm dead."
I was dressed in white robes, put in a coffin, and carried into the hall while "Sen no Kaze" was playing.
To my dismay inside the coffin, everyone started chuckling, some people even laughed out loud.
I thought that if I did it this realistically, one or two people would think it was real and I would hear some crying.
But no, only laughter.
Even though I planned the ceremony, it's totally mean to laugh at another person's fake funeral. It's the kind of horrible bullying that would make your parents smack you hard.
I'm sure even the devil took pity on me for having to face such an unappreciated death.
I learned one other thing. Coffins are actually not meant to have (live) people in them. It was incredibly hot, and the oxygen was thin.
I highly recommend not dying in summer.

Part 1/2

I've always been awkward with people. The reason I planned the fake funeral was as a way of getting out of having to go to the after party for my award ceremony.
Whenever I spend time with famous manga artists I always get really excited, begin talking quickly, and end up saying weird things.
As long as I'm in a coffin... I won't have to interact with people. My strategy was to apologize for being unable to participate as I was dead, but, as mentioned above I got smoked out of the coffin and ended up sitting stupidly on a chair by the side that was prepared for me.
And since the whole idea was that I was dead, I got treated like a ghost. Everyone completely ignored me. It was total bullying.

[Note] I'm not here
I've become a thousand pieces of trash
I've become a thousand pieces of trash
Blowing around the huge sky

In the end, I got back into the coffin and got carried out. Some voice actors came up to the coffin in order to pray for the deceased and were kind enough to yell out, "Nooo! Don't die!"
This was going too far. It was total bullying. I mean, anime voices aren't right for funerals... lying in the coffin it made me feel like a confederate soldier from Gundam dying in battle. (Imagine a space funeral?)
I was a nameless soldier who had died a violent death. Ahh, but perhaps this isn't so bad. It gave way to strange fantasies. Thank you very much. And by the way, it's normal to use the million yen from the prize to fund the after party.
This and renting out the hall with food cost 800000 yen. It was an expensive ceremony that totally ran over budget. It might be obvious, but you can't lease a coffin...

Pre-work Meeting

Then, the day after I died, there was a "pre-work meeting" for the animation, and I got to visit the post-production facilities, etc. I'm really really moved that voice actors will actually put voice to my shitty comic.
While I know I should just be overjoyed, as I listen I become more and more unstable. "Why?? Why??" I asked myself as an elementary school student when I was drawing a manga in my notebook (Jibun Jump), and a bully in my class grabbed it and read it out loud in front of the entire class. He read it passionately, and with conviction.
"He-he-he... Do you think you can possibly defeat me, Ryu Heinrich?" (Excerpt from "Star Worry 711," Serialized in Jibun Jump).
Stop it!!!!!
Normally a quiet child, I punched him. As you would say nowadays with the English word: "I went berserk." Manga berserk,
My memory after that is not very reliable, but I do remember that after exchanging blows the teacher intervened.
In the end, this came up when my parents came to pick me up, but for some reason I got blamed for drawing the manga in the first place, and for some reason the content of the manga was discussed.
Apparently It was violent, and not well-drawn, although the most painful were the chants of "Pervy Kumeta, pervy Kumeta" that arose from the fact that I perhaps gave just a little extra volume to the female characters' breasts.
How could I not distinguish between male and female characters!?

Part 1/2

Yes, it was at that moment that I suffered a great trauma from my differential depictions of characters, and became a person who is unable to draw characters that look different, to this day.
Now it's easy to criticize me as "A piece of trash who can't draw characters that look different," but when you say that I want you to begin with the story of the darkness in Japanese society that gives rise to bullying.
And should we really blame my teacher, who took the side of the bully back then?
Along with trying to rehabilitate my heart, I'm also making great effort to draw characters that look different.

The Day of the Award Ceremony

People are probably going to say that I'm being airheaded or unlike my normal dark self, but I'd like to simply enjoy this experience. This opportunity will not come for two more lives.
But something always gets in the way of that enjoyment.
I get the good news about the award. For some reason it comes from Shiretoko. Apparently my editor was taking a late golden week vacation, and was on vacation there.
I mean I realize Shiretoko is a world heritage site, but he must have had no idea I was going to receive this award.
Well... me neither, so that's fine.
So eventually I get all these phone calls. A lot of people say "congratulation" to me.
When the reality sinks in finally and the joy begins to swell up, I get another call.
"It's____ from Sunday Magazine."
Wow, how great, I think. I'm getting contacted by people from my old job to congratulate me! But then:
"We're making a Hayate fanbook, and there's a mention of you in it. Could you just approve it"?
"Huh?"
"I sent it by bike messenger so please do it today."
Click...
Well, that's fine.
On the evening of my good news, I had to check Hayate's print-outs.

I always just want to genuinely enjoy things.
But that enjoyment is always interrupted.

It seems that the author of that Hayate project was busy and not only couldn't come to the award ceremony but also didn't even call me to wish me congratulations (or condolences).
Apparently there was a signing event in a few days, and there just wasn't enough time. It's like Hatake-sensei's consideration to his fans - It's very moving. I won't forget this insult my entire life.

Part 1/2

After it was decided to make an anime version of Zetsubou, a lot of people told me, "Make an anime out of Kaizo. Kaizo is funnier."
Well, it's a little too late for that now.
Also, I wonder why people never told me it was funnier before?
Why didn't they support me more at that time?
Why did a work, believed to be so funny by all of you, fare so poorly in various reader questionnaires?
I am a man who is concerned with the past. I am a sticky man who can't let go of things that happened in the past.
I feel that somehow you overlooked the SOS signs that I sent to you back then, before the series got cut.
Just like you might overlook the unnatural bruises on a child from down the block.
It's easy to criticize my manga now for not being as funny as Kaizo.
Before saying that, though, what really needs to be criticized is the apathy of society that failed to recognize my SOS signs.

Now that I've started spelling out all my grudges, this really has come to feel like a manga artist's blog!
Well, it's better to begrudge others than to be begrudged. Hence, I begrudge. You, society, and... God.
It's true that certain good things happened at the beginning of this year. I began to overreach myself.
Icarus melted his wax wings when he flew too close to the sun, and came plummeting down to Earth.
I'm sure the same fate awaits me.
I'll try to think more positively. It's just that the descending hill had a very steep slope.
I just need to be careful going down, so I can roll.

The truck... the truck is leaving.
The truck is leaving on Friday.
With my manuscript, it's leaving to Numazu

17 Years in the Earth

I can't help but feel like I'm living like a cicada. Cicadas have stink bug eyes. I have Ground Beetle Eyes.
Cicadas were in the ground for 17 years and I was there for seven years. I was in constant regret about every series I was working on for different magazines.
The Earth was made of layers of regret upon regret. I spent 17 years there.
After I crawled out, the soil was just as polluted. After emerging, cicadas live or one week and then die....I'm likely to die any one of these days too.
The Summer days of exuberance over the anime adaption will soon be over. The Summer days will be over and I'm sure a long Summer vacation will begin.
It's enough already.
"Have I reached my goals?"
Coach: "We'll talk later."

Daily Wage 1000 Yen

It's a practice run for my long summer vacation. I find myself spacing out a lot recently. The other day I went to Bic Camera and hung out in the video game area. Suddenly a store attendant yelled, "We got a last minute shipment of Wiis! If you'd like to buy one, line up over here!" I watched everyone get in line.
Since I actually bought a Wii on the first day it came out (This is the only accomplishment I'm proud of from the last year), I puffed out my chest with a sense of superiority and casually watched as people lined up. Then, a Chinese man came up to me and said in broken Japanese, "You're not going to buy a Wii? If you line up and buy one for me, I'll buy it off of you for an extra 1000 yen!"
...So I came this close to being hired out by a Chinese guy for 1000 yen!
Ahh... looking closely at this, all the people in line were on their long summer vacations.
That's why the kids couldn't get in.

Foggy Vision

Even though I haven't entered my long summer vacation yet, I'm spacing out way to much.
I'm talking with people and can't think of the words for things.
It took me half a day just to remember Maeda-kun's last name. It's senility, I tell you.
I'm wearing old T-shirts inside out, different shoes on each foot, and right when I thought something was weird with my vision it turned out one of the lenses on my glasses had come out.
I've come off my axis as a human being.
I was asked at a convenience store, "Did a bomb explode or something?"
Apparently, as a way of avoiding coming up at a loss for words, TV announcers practice giving play-by-play of their everyday actions.
That's it!
I've decided to do the same thing to stop me from spacing out.
I'm beginning my play-be-play.
Koji Kumeta stands up slowly and puts on his shoes. He opens the door with his right hand, and leaves the room. Koji Kumeta goes into the hallway. He turns to the right! He goes down the stairs! Koji Kumeta goes back to his room to get his wallet. Now he has his wallet. And he's forgotten why he left in the first place. He remembers that he had wanted to go to the convenience store. He arrives at the store. He forgets what it was he wanted to buy. for some reason he buys a sabla. He forgets to buy lunch.
Ugh, I'm sick of this already. Goodbye everyone!
Koji Kumeta gently waves his right hand and disappears into the darkness.
He disappears into the deep, deep darkness!
Goodbye Koji Kumeta! Goodbye!

To Myself at 15

In the words of a certain wildly-selling Jump artist, "I'm always making manga with myself as 15 as the target audience."
If I tried to draw for myself at 15, we'd be in big trouble. All I thought about day and night when I was 15 were women's bodies. Running away with tights that I stole! Running away (even though I didn't steal them). That was how I spent my nights when I was 15.
It would by necessity become a huge adventure epic about women's bodies.
"I'll become king of the red light district!"
I would get a GomuGomu fruit from a GomuGomu vending machine, then get scandalous photos of women's bodies mostly from Sweden, then enter into the "Absolute territory" know as the Grand Line (between the knee-high socks and the skirt), and then get the hidden jewel. I would get the hidden jewel!!
So the paradox would be that if I drew for myself at 15, it would end up being an over-18-only series. I've come to a point in my life where it's hard for me to use adult themes anymore. But I'll shrug off my failures, so if Ms. Kikuko will be an eternal 17-year-old, I'll be forever over-18-only! <3

Anime University. Night Classes

After my series got animated, some people have said that I've been "acting really happy." In fact, I have. I know it's ludicrous, right? It might be ludicrous from the perspective of a manga artist whose first serialized work got animated and aired in the main networks. For me, it's like finally getting accepted into an anime university after 17 years of retaking the test.
And still, I'm happy. I'd be happy even if it was a local anime university and I was going to night classes. However, this has given rise to a more dangerous scenario.
My depression has become manic depression. My mood swings have gotten larger. They're flying all over the place! The length of the pendulum swinging between depression and mania has become larger, and I can't control myself. Back in the day, I would have contemplated suicide, but now I sometimes feel like flying!
People say that nothing can be done once you've served out Heaven's will. They say you can't do anything about destiny. In that case, suicide is the lifetime of the soul. I've served out the will of my soul. It's my natural life. The soul has it's own natural life.
Put another way, people can't live without actively trying to. It takes effort to eat food and drink water, and that's how we live. Slacking off on these efforts leads us to die.
I can see my Gappeldonger (it's me from my Doppelganger's perspective). Which will be stronger, the Gappeldonger or the Doppleganger?
Which came from the future, the Gappeldonger or the Doppelganger? Is the Gappeldonger "acting happy?" What about the Doppelganger?
My Baggeldonger has appeared.
My Baggeldonger said to me, "Both of you are acting happy."
"So are you."

Foreword

I heard the words "good old days" a lot recently, but I have to say, for me there really were never any good old days.
When I debuted, I was embarrassed of my work from one year before that.
10 years ago, I was embarrassed of my work I made one week before that.
Currently, I'm embarrassed at the same time that I actually draw it.
I will probably always be embarrassed of every work I produce.
I regret the future.
I regret it in advance.

Da Capo II

It gets me
My video player (HDV) really gets me.
It keeps recording Da Capo II for me, every week. Without even realizing that the Zetsubou Sensei anime has ended
I keep getting "Da Capo II" tapes with "Zetsubou Sensei" titles.
It's over! Done! The show you're recording isn't Zetsubou Sensei!!
Sometimes machines are even sadder than humans.
Like a pocket watch that keeps ticking away even after losing its master.
Like the robot that waters the shrubs in Laputa.
And also, like watching the last scene of "Silent Running."
Machines keep performing their assigned tasks, never knowing that their masters have died.
If we didn't have a second season, I'd take him in my bag and we'd go an a journey together.
We'd probably go towards the northern country.
All of a sudden, I hear the sound of an alarm clock ringing from inside the bag of the elderly gentleman sitting next to me on the early morning train.
As I must have given him a quizzical look, he gently tipped his silk hat at me, and greeted me.

Part 1/2

"Excuse me. This alarm clock keeps ringing at 6:30 even after my retirement, and it tries to send me off to a job that I no longer have to go to! I'm retired already! I'm retired! You're not waking up an office worker anymore! Sometimes machines are even sadder than humans. I couldn't stand it anymore, so I stuffed it into my bag and went on a journey."
"What a coincidence. I also couldn't stand this guy anymore, so I put him in a bag and we went on a journey."
"...Is that so? Could I treat you to a drink?"
At that moment, the door opened and someone appearing to be the conductor entered.
"I was listening to your stories. This train also never realized that the railway was abandoned, and is traveling to and from stations with no customers. Forever." "What do you mean, forever!?"
"Sir, sir! Here's the bag you left behind!" "I'm sure this was my only bag..."
Out of the huge bad I was handed emerged my dead Macintosh.
"That computer... it had no idea its owner died. And it keeps on making manga!"
That was when I understood everything.
"I just have one question. How have people responded to the manga that this mac, who hasn't realized it's owner's death, has created?"
"Apparently the anime got a second season confirmed." "I see..."
I had hoped to live to see the second season...

Kiyohiko's Night

Blogs are a place for excuses.
So it must be okay for me to make excuses about my manga here.
Please let me make excuses... about "Kiyohiko's Night!"
It's one of those once-in-four-years kinds of times where you feel like, "Yikes look what I did."
I had gotten to the point where I had no idea what was funny anymore... I feel really awful since it was a relatively new magazine, too.
It's a magazine that tries to support the careers of promising new manga artist.
And so, among all the bright and shiny new stories, I dumped "Kiyohiko." Man, I could just die.
"Kiyohiko" was supposed to serve as an example to other aspiring artists.
Writing about it this way might make some of you think I actually want everyone to read it, but that's really not the case.
It's different from when Dacho Club says, "Don't you dare push!"
I wonder what young artist think, reading Kiyohiko.
Do they swell with pride, having "won?" Or do they give up on becoming manga artist because they "see what happens when you're in the profession for awhile"
Okay, listen all of you young artist. This is exactly what happens when you're in the profession for a long time. You'll fail 90% of the time you try to do something new. Whenever you try to do something artistic, it was always seem contrived.
You won't be able to apply your skills even if you quit, and it's impossible to change professions anyway. There is no bright and shiny future in this work.
So I guess I'm trying to discourage any young artist in a roundabout kind of way. It's time to lobby.
If they're going to revitalize towns using manga, they should make a manga artist quota for public servants. We could work as "public servants" from 9 to 5, and create 12 pages of work in a year. And a golden parachute into the Manga Museum awaits us when we retire. And then another golden parachute into "My Work Museum," where I teach kids how to draw Dragonball characters would be nice.

Arggh!

A trip to expose myself like a whale.
Being a manga artist is like a self-exposing trip every week.
You are exposed and ridiculed on a weekly basis. Stories that get cut are particularly endangering.
It's actually too cruel from a moralistic standpoint. If enough Anglo-Saxon rights activists found out, they would crash into my ship and protest, shouting, "The poor cancelled story! Cancellations are too cruel!"
In the near future, the last story may get cancelled and the entire thing won't go to print.
Manga artists may need to be protected, just like whales.
And if that happened, there'd be too many manga artists in the world and it would suck.
Too-long manga artist, all-the-same manga artist, pervy-nude-drawing manga artist.
"Manga artists are sensitive creatures and must be protected!"

Sorry About the 420 Yen

Crude oil is expensive. Even for manga artist, it's a matter for life and death. Does everyone know how, after oil shocks, the size of comic magazines shrinks so small it's hard to imagine?
And of course, unneeded manga get cut out. That's why I roam the streets as an unwanted child.
It's another example of how anglo-saxon money games destroy the life of a poor manga artist.
This is the state of the world.
Sakurai-san, please do something. None of the friends of my friends are Al Qauda. Actually, I just don't have any friends.

Since the price of living has gone up, I've been thinking about prices. Is 420 yen for a comic book expensive? It is cheap?
Some people will probably think it's expensive and some will think it's cheap.
Either way, there's no way that this volume that you all bought is worth the 420 yen that you spent.
The most valuable part of it isn't the content, but probably the Luxurious quality of the cover paper (which is actually where the costs go for printing and why we can't print more pages).
If the price of oil keeps going up, we may have to start using recycled leaflets for the cover.
Or maybe I'll scribble the comic on the back of the leaflet, and the leaflet will be the cover.
Well then, how can we justify the cover price of 420 yen?
I think the problem is in considering it the value of the manga itself.
What if we though about it as consolation money for me?

Sorry About the 420 Yen Part 2

It's you all consoling me and pretending to like a manga that I'm basically so ashamed of that I don't want anyone to read.
If you think about Megumi Okina's consolation money, 420 yen doesn't seem expensive at all.
I'm already negotiating with Kodansha to see if they can change the category of "manga fee" on my paycheck to "consolation money."
But if someone asked me how much was reasonable to receive for being forced to read a boring comic book. there's no was that 420 yen would be enough...
Sorry about the 420 yen.
People who like to talk trash say things like, "I have no idea how that awful manga with its messed-up drawings manages to sell copies," but my fans actually don't buy the comic for the character drawings, but instead for the pages with cute designs. For cute designs, 410 yen is cheap! I can't even draw cute designs.
I wish I could apologize for each copy printed. They can only print as many copies as I can apologize for individually.

There are two Tetsuya Takedas

The other day, I had the chance to meet with my old acquaintance, and editor at Shonen Sunday.
"So how's your editor these days?" "So get this... his name is Tetsuya Takeda! Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha!"
That's me laughing. But his reaction was muffled. Huh...?
"Actually, there's an editor named Tetsuya Takeda in Shogakukan, too." "What!? There shouldn't be that many people with that name!" No wonder he didn't see the humor in it!
But still, coincidences like this are frightening. It's called synchronicity.
Two people with unusual names have the same unusual job.
When I told my editor, Mr. Tetsuya Takeda, about this on a later day, he showed more interest than he does to most of the stupid things I tell him, and he said he wanted to go meet the other one. I tried to stop him with all my might.
"You'll die if you see him!" "He might be your Doppelganger!" "Or maybe even your Gappeldonger!!"
"Tetsuya Takeda wants to meet Tetsuya Takeda!" "But Tetsuya Takeda might not want to meet Tetsuya Takeda!"
"I'm sure Tetsuya Takeda would want to meet Tetsuya Takeda!"
Our vigorous argument continued for awhile, and when we calmed down, we agreed on the following:
"Let's go to Shueisha to find the third Tetsuya Takeda."

Part 1/2

After weaving our way through several layers of intense security, we arrived at the Jump editorial department for a surprising encounter. "Let's just go ahead and ask. 'Is there a Takeda-san here?'" "...Which Takeda-san?" "Um... is there a Tetsuya Takeda?" "... Which Tetsuya Takeda?" "What do you mean, which Tetsuya Takeda!?" "There are 25 Tetsuya Takeda working here." "WHAT!!??"
Looking around, we saw several people with the exact same face sitting around the editing desk.
"They're mass-produced Tetsuya Takedas! Takeda-san's been mass produced!" "At this rate, Jump is going to gain a huge advantage over Shonen Magazine." "Wow, when did Jump obtain this technology?"
Now that you mention it, they recently succeeded in creating IPS cells at Kyoto University, but to think that it had already been applied.
"So now you know." Ritsuko appears from behind us, wearing her white lab coat.
"There are as many Tetsuya Takeda replacements as we need. And he recently gave the go ahead to start producing Eiichiro Odas... Several of them have escaped and have been sighted here and there, though." "...but it's all going to end now." Ritsuko presses the button. The 25 production model Tetsuya Takedas dissolve. (Play "Fly Me to the Moon" here). Cha-ra-ra-ra-ra.
"Run, Takeda-san!!" The Shueisha building crumbles. We escape in desperation avoiding collapsing pillars.
"We'll be safe here."
Turning around after running up the hill, we see the Shueisha building crumbling and a cloud of dust rising.
"Attempting to mass produce editors and manga artists... This is the line of God that humankind must not crosss."
"Say, Kumeta-san. Do you think I'm the real Tetsuya Takeda?" "You're the Tetsuya Takeda inside of me."
"...Kumeta-san..."

Stench of Death (Death Poem)

It's sort of inconvenient how the middle-school student in me likes "Negima!"
It made a popping sound. If you look under your shoe you'll die.If you look under your shoe you'll die.
I bought underwear at a convenience store and it said it was antibacterial underwear. If I wore antibacterial underwear, I myself would disappear. Since I'm aspergillus. Rice aspergillus, black aspergillus. I die if I wear antibacterial underwear.
I'm the descendent of the first Homo Sapiens who knelt down on the ground for forgiveness. A descendent of pain. We'll be kneeling until our line disappears.
Actually, no. We're not kneeling. We're just looking at the sky on the other side of the world. In this case, we'll kneel down until the Earth is gone. Until the day when kneeling down is not an apology but rather a greeting common to all lands.
When I think about the future, it's always the afterlife. If tomorrow means how it's written in Chinese characters ("Bright Day"), then I have no tomorrow.
But I'm sure I'll have a bright afterlife. Oh, the weather will be great in my afterlife.
I want to tell you what's on my mind. But if I wrote a love letter it would all become my will. Why don't I write a will. From me, it would be words of love. Let me just go on ahead. You can come with me if you like. You can come after you have as much fun as you want. After all, you're going to come eventually. Can you see the smoke from the window in your room? That might be me. If I wrote a love letter, it would all become my will. Eventually, the layers upon layers of regret packed into the Eart become an active fault zone and swallow me up whole.
Goodbye Koji Kumeta, Goodbye!

Preface

It's 2008
Perhaps because of the rat's curse that's particularly unlucky for copyrights, nothing good happens to me in the year of the rat.
12 years ago (Also the year of the rat), I drew a manga about digging a hole, which was immediately canceled, and I became a manga artist who looked for a hole to hide in. Or rather, since I was unemployed for the entire year following that, I wasn't even a manga artist. Each and every single plot I wrote was nixed.
Like "Nishiogi Super Pro-Wrestling," or the story about the girl illusionist: "Before you know it, it's dangerous illusions!" or gourmet manga about coffee: "Natsuko's Beans" (Tentative title)...
...I think that "Natsuko's Beans" could actually be a hit now. It's kind of like "Les Gouttes de Dieu," right? The coffee shop that high student Natsuko's father, Mamehiko, started, is overshadowed by a large coffee retailer "Satanbuck Coffee." She swears to rebuild her father's shop, and enters the world of coffee. While Natsuko had always scoffed at coffee, she is gradually seduced by the complexity of the bean.
She goes on journeys to find the phantom bean, falls to the mercy of oil money conspiracies that swirl through the international trade of coffee beans, learns the reasons why big coffee chains emphasize fair trade, and is almost killed, etc. She falls in love with a barista, De Tooru. She joins an artisan group, "Sakura Roast," that makes the best french roast in the world, as a disciple, and her final battle is with Latte King, whose battle line is "My coffee is without a single drop of regret."
...How about it, Tadashi Agi-san?! Can I be the author?
Yeah, so, this is what I was thinking about 12 years ago, when my mother called me and asked me if I'd already hit rock bottom, which made me think about changing careers for a while. I wonder if she'll call me again this year. I hope not.
Have I hit rock bottom?

OP

It's 2008.
I ended up working through January 1st.
I didn't have time to do laundry, so first thing in the new year I have no clean socks.
"...It's an L."
I tried scratching one leg with the other.
...I cried a little.
Not only socks, but I also have no clothes to wear.
And at this rate, I won't have any clothes to wear to go buy new clothes.
It's not that I want to be stylish or anything, but I prefer to avoid the situation of not having clothes to wear when I need to buy new clothes.
But I shouldn't be too greedy.
I shouldn't have even thought of buying that leather jacket...
The beginning of my mistake was in thinking that this year would be the last time I could wear one without standing out, since motorcycle jackets are popular this year.
Leather jackets tend to stand out anyway, so I was hoping to find one that wasn't too loud, but I can't seem to find the right one.

Part 1/2

I went to several stores, and finally found one that seems good.
I try it one... Everything seems good...
There's no doubt... This is the leather jacket I was meant to wear.
...This leather jacket is my destiny.
Then, all of a sudden I sense something on my back, and turn around.
I was appalled at what I saw in the mirror.
There's a huge Death's-head on the back...!
A huge skull made of studs.
...Sorry! I just can't!
I can't wear skulls. Skulls at my age is like trying to be like "The Tora- Buryu." It's like "Bludgeoning Middle-aged Dokuro-chan."
It should go without saying that my desire to purchase the jacket was bludgeoned away, and I returned to my usual chicken self and went home only buying socks.
It was a mistake to try to buy something that fashionable folk would wear, like a leather jacket.
I stopped calling myself ore and started calling myself boku.
I lost. I lost to a leather jacket.
However, I did not lose entirely.
There are little skulls on the socks that I bought.
It's resistance. A chicken-like minimum type of rebellion.
But if my staff ever say them I'd be really embarrassed, so...
"It's an L."

My Mourning

It's 2008
I haven't gotten any New Year's Cards. Even though I tried my best to interact with people last year, I still haven't received any New Years Cards.
Since I did a living funeral for myself, maybe I'm actually mourning for myself right now.
In that case why don't I mourn the heck out of myself?! You can only fake-die once, after all. I'll wear dark and boring clothes, won't eat meat, will avoid going out, won't laugh, and will draw manga with negative themes...
Wait. This is what I do every year.
But this year, I'll mourn a little bit harder out of respect for my own death.
It's actually quite challenging to mourn your own death.
Anyway , I started by making my computer screen black and white, and working on my manga with the lowest possible brightness and saturation.
Oh Koji! Poor Koji! If my drawings are sloppy, it's cuz, I'm drawing through the veil of my mourning. Nothing can be done. And any reader who decides to criticize them is basically slashing the back of the dead with a whip. Oh Koji! Poor Koji!
...Now that I think about it, drawing manga is black and white anyway, so it's kind of like being in mourning. So that's why I have so few color pages! And that there are certain artists out there who rudely neglect to go into mourning even at the death of a great master.
There should be no color covers or flaps when you're mourning.

I Began a Naughty Business

Since it looks like you're all thinking of something different, let me explain. Normally, when you sell goods and stuff, the people who want to buy them buy them, and there's no problem.
I'm not trying to defend Hata-kun, but a naughty business is when you change the CD jacket version and make people buy several copies of the same cd, or add different features to the same comic volume at different stores and make people buy several versions of it, or make people buy boxes of glasses in the name of trading... Basically, when you force fans to buy several copies of the same thing.
Individually, I don't think it's a problem to sell anything for any price.
Actually, those kinds of things are "tame" naughty businesses. Compared to the black business I'm trying to start, they're like elementary schools kids who try to act tough but are still sucking on their mothers' titties.
I should be frank: all of you have already fallen prey to my black business.
Those of you who have volume 1...
Isn't it kind of worn out by now?
I bet the color has kind of faded, and it's gotten frayed by now, hasn't it?
That's just what happens with washi (Japanese traditional paper)... Since it's so high quality.
Dear customer, isn't it about time you replaced it?
Have a second copy.

Part 1/2

There are no special features... It's the exact same thing.
Remember, if it gets too damaged, you won't even be able to sell it to "Book Off."
"What, it's damaged?!" "No it isn't... that's the way it was designed!"
I say you should just bite the bullet and buy a second copy. Oh, and please stop laminating the covers, just because they're washi. It's so low-class.
If this isn't a black business, what is??
I imagine this could even become the business model for the manga industry in the future. As I ready myself for an interview from world business satellite, I took the old volume 1 off my shelf.
I imagined that it would be hard to look at, but in fact it has more flavor than a new volume. It's slightly worn and faded, and quite beautiful.
No matter how much ink the printers procured, they wouldn't have been able to achieve the final processing for the cover... Time!
In fact, this is exactly what I intended when I originally drew the image for the cover...
I apologize.
I should never have tried tried to perpetrate a dishonet business.
In fact, I realized that all my Zetsubou Sensei volumes have achieved perfection having been on the shelf for three years.
"Sommelier, I wonder, do you have a 2005 Zetsubou Sensei?"
"...? I don't believe we have that in our cellar. Instead, how about a 2004... Negima? It's a perfect ripeness."
"In that case, I'll take it..."

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End Card

Hata-kun drew an ending card even though I didn't ask him to.
I was really happy.
Thank you Hata-kun, because I know you're busy.
I hadn't officially asked him to do it, so I really felt like people can be intuitive.
But I wondered what had gotten into him, since I had basically ignored him up to that point... so I asked, and...
"It's 'cause people were complaining online."
...
I would have been even happier if he hadn't said that.
Do web denizens have more authority than the master?
Well, the order is actually voice actors, web denizens, and then the master.
What am I, the lowest form of life?
Well anyway, one should never speak of something that someone has done for you.
Thank you for the very simple and cute drawing that looks like it fit in perfectly on a Sunday backstage special.
But, it just so happens that "adult politics" come into play...
It's possible that a high-ranking person at Sunday will say, "One of our star artists shouldn't be used for an anime or a rival magazine."
It's not my intention that it should air, and then cause harm to Hata-kun's reputation.
And right then, I received a report from a spy who I had sent to infiltrate Hayate's off-record discussions (Code name: Kicchiri).
"The sub-title for the next Hayate anime is going to be 'Sensei Sayonara Zetsubou.'"
...It should be totally fine if we use it.
This is no longer about "adult politics."
The only people who will get mad about this are people from Disney.
Just as I though, nothing good happens in the year of the rat.
Wait a second... I didn't even realize Hayate had been made into an anime. He never tells me anything.
Oh yeah. Congratulations on the animation of your series, Shina-san.

Living Off Royalties

Apparently, Maeda-kun gets lyric royalties.
How can someone who stands around muttering all day get lyric royalties?
How nice for him.
Are those lyrics, anyway?
Anyway, Maeda-kun's totally JASRAC's slave at this point.
To be fair, I also became JASRAC's slave and tried to milk them for what they're worth, which is why I composed Traumurei.
Have you all heard it?
I'm sorry Nonaka-san. They don't match.
The song and the words don't match.
Sorry for making 11 rounds of corrections.
I'm sure that the Traumurei I was listening too when I wrote that in the paper blog was perfect for those lyrics.
...There I go again being deferential.
It's a sign that I'm in a weakened state. Please don't tease me.

Moon

Dear Shaft, thank you for the second season of the animation.
Dear cast, your voices were beutiful.
Dear Tetsuya Takeda, the Fugu was delicious
Dear viewers and readers, please become outstanding citizens who serve your country. Koji is completely wiped out at this point. All the drawing manga, going to HELLO! Project concerts, and being jealous of hot selling authors. I'm really tired
To all the readers who felt confused by my high spirits.
As you wished, along with the opening of a new chapter of great depression, we will begin to lower the curtain on my life.
Bon voyage!
I'm currently suffering not from pet loss sydrome, but from anime loss syndrome. Like the owner who looks at the empty cage and remembers the days when his pet was alive, I am the author of the original series who looks at the blank television screen (Actually Da Capo is playing), remembering the days when the anime was alive.
....No, I should stop pretending to be the "original author." I'm sure that's just a nuisance for the animation company, the voice actors, and Animage Magazine. A nuisance, like a stalker who always hangs around. After the anime is over, the original author is out of the picture. I'm sure if any of them saw me on the street they'd be sure to ignore me.
Now that I'm no long an "original author," what am I? If I'm not an "original" author than what kind of author am I?
A "non-author"? The author of "crap"? The author of "flops"? A "loser author"? Call me what you like. While I'm sure that none of you are still reading by this volume anymore, I'd like to thank all of you who've come surfing into the manga from the anime.

Part 1/2

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I can feel people moving away. I can feel the pull of the Moon, like the ebbing tide.
...Moon!
They say that as the Moon wanes and the tide ebbs, people die. They say that if reader's ebb away like the tide, I will die.
...Moon!
But since I've been so vocal about dying, I'd like at least to get to choose everything about how I die. I feel like the popular method of mixing pills and dying these days is just too unoriginal. My problem is that any way of dying that I choose will seem like a "Higurashi" rip-off. It's a "Higurashi" rip-off if I die in the mountains, a "Higurashi" rip-off if I die in the rice paddy, a Higurashi rip-off if I die on a cliff, a Higurashi rip-off if I die on the stairs...
Shall I die in the ocean?
Shall I die in the mountains?
How about from a cold?
Is the sky the same?
Please teach me.
Now it just seems like some lyrics that Masashi Sada wrote.
I'll end up paying usage fees to JASRAC even in choosing how I die. It's a horrible world. Dying is a violation of antitrust laws! I'll have to think of a way to die without having to pay money to JASRAC. Copyrights are for ways of dying! In the end, unable to find a way of dying that doesn't impinge on any copyright, I couldn't die and decided to go to the dentist instead.

A Suspect Bullet

A year and a half. I've been going to that dentist for a year and a half!
Even though we'd never discussed anything of the sort, all of a sudden my dentist says,
"Kumeta-san, you're a manga artist, aren't you...?"
"...Yeah?"
Why would he ask me this, out of the blue? It caught me off guard because I had been so certain that he had absolutely no interest in manga!
Well, maybe I'm famous now! Maybe regular people know me now! My series did get turned into an anime, after all. And since I did use my real name on my insurance card, I guess it's natural! But I quickly snapped back to reality. But he didn't seem to know anything about my actual manga, so I asked him, why?
"The LA incident"
"Huh...?"
The trial with Kazuyoshi Miura?
"So actually, when I was reading about the LA incident on Wikipedia, I read that his grandmother was the actress Takiko Mizunoe. Then, on the page for Takiko Mizunoe, I read that she conducted a pre-death funeral. Then when I checked out the "pre-death funeral" page, your name was in a list of "people who have conducted pre-death funerals."

So he found out my profession from the LA incident -> Kazuyoshi Miura -> Takiko Mizunoe -> Pre-death funeral -> Me.
Wikipedia is truly frightening.
There was something more embarrassing about this than having him find out normally!
"Would you kindly blow my brains out with the drill and kill me? Would my insurance cover that kind of death?" Is dying by drill a rip-off of "Higurashi"?
While this kind of game-changing reveal of my profession was mysterious, what's even more mysterious is why that dentist was reading about the LA incident. It's suspicious... too suspicious! City police of LA! That dentist is suspicious!

A Cultural Figure

When I got back to work, Takeda-san came up and said to me,
"So apparently Shinta Furuta is doing a show, and he wants to print an interview with you on the pamphlet."
Why would he request an interview with me for a pamphlet for a play? Well, maybe I'm famous now! Maybe stage actors know me now! My series did get turned into an anime, after all. I guess I should get ready for people to start calling me "Cultural Figure." But I quickly snapped back to reality. It didn't seem to have anything to do with my manga...
"So actually, it seems that in this play '49 days' they're going to perform a pre-death funeral. Apparently, when they read the Wikipedia page for 'pre-death funerals,' your name came up..."
Pre-death funerals again... and again from Wikipedia! Why couldn't it at least have been from Rumiko-sensei's page? This way, only people who are interested in pre-death funerals but not people interested in manga end up finding out about me! It must mean that I'm supposed to die. Now I get it. Dying on-stage is a rip-off of "Higurashi." I should just quit drawing manga and become a professional pre-death serviceman. I can perform funerals about three times a year in Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. Eventually I'll become a pre-death funeral producer. Maybe I could even do Ken Akamatsu's pre-death funeral.
<First Chapter> Widow Kanon in mourning moe
<Second Chapter> A speech by director Shinbo
<Third Chapter> I participate in a wild fight over the will
<Fourth Chapter> If you collect 10 funeral manju you get a rare Negima! trading card
<Fifth Chapter> Even though he didn't come to my pre-death funeral, Hata-kun shows up, unbelievably
Voice actor Ryoko Shiraishi > All other voice actors > Denizens of the Web > Ken Akamatsu > Me (Or something like that)
And in the end, I'd like to consider expanding it into a bigger business, with possible franchises.

A Singing Event in Taiwan!?

I received an invitation to do a singing event in Taiwan. I've definitely heard that manga culture is very big in Taiwan and there are some enthusiastic fans. While I knew that zetsubou sensei was being published in Taiwan, I'm really curious to know if Taiwanese readers understand my humor, no matter how familiar they are with Japanese culture. Especially because sometimes even Japanese audiences don't understand my manga... I mean, even the names are Japanese puns...
I wonder if each joke requires an explanation... that would be awful!

Actually, for some reason Zetsubou Sensei gets treated amazingly well in Taiwan... Much better than in Japan. Even though Zetsubou Sensei's never been on the cover of Shonen Sunday Magazine, it's been on the cover and the first story in the Taiwanese version of Shonen. It even gets billed as "This year's popular black comedy."
I've been a manga artist for 18 years, and my work has only been on the cover of a magazine about four times. Now, I'm not sure, but could this mean that I'm now an international figure? But I soon came back to reality.
"Serialized since 2008?" What are they talking about? Did they miss the first three years? Oh, I see...
Even the Taiwanese must have been pororoca'ed in from the anime. That makes sense.
There was no way that I could win over the hearts of the Taiwanese all by myself.
Now that you mention it, didn't the voice actor Kamiya-san go to Taiwan? Maybe that's why. Even likes anime, don't they. In Japan and Taiwan. Even if I went to do the signing event, it would only be part-time people working in the anime industry!

Part 1/3

I'm beginning to feel really sad. Why do they even both to do these signing events that make nobody happy? Is it a honeytrap? Based on the cover, it looks like this could very well be a honeytrap. I'm sure that there's a beautiful women standing in front of the door at the hotel where I'll stay. It might be a Yinling-Sama Honeytrap. It's erotic terrorist versus erotic terrorism as perpetrated by the viewer! Or maybe Takeshi Kaneshiro will be standing outside of the door. He'll try to get national secrets from me. It will be a trap! I bet they're trying to find out the secret of how Araki-sensei looks so young. Any leak of this secret outside of the country would be a huge blow for the Japanese publishing industry. But I musn't let that happen.
There's no way that I, who passed the "Like a Dragon" waterfall evil thought cleansing trainging in a single try, would fall for a trap like that. Even if they threaten to end my life as a man, I won't give in. I'll never give up the secret Araki-san's youth! I'll use positive counter intelligence. Instead, I'll give them the secret to Fujita-sensei's never-clouding glasses. You have to rub lemon juice on the lenses (or it could be kabosu).
But I actually do kind of want to go to Taiwan. I want to go, even if it's a honeytrap. I hear their mangos are delicious.
This makes me suddenly think of Mr. Maric. When people in Japan got sick of Mr. Maric, he traveled around to different asian countries and made tons of cash. That's right... now it's time for me, having lost all my popularity in Japan, to travel to asian countries and barely continue to make ends meet as a manga artist. Off to the south! The way of the ocean!

Part 2/3

I'll pack all the returned copies of the manga in a truck. I'll walk around cities in countries whose names I've never heard of. Then finally I'll arrive at a small island and find true happiness. Surrounded by the kind people of the island, the old manga artist will quietly and peacefully leave this world. There's a grave for an old manga artist on a hill with a view of the ocean. If you ever have a chance to come to this island, please leave him some flowers. Flowers of Aoi Hinata, who the old manga artist liked and who was diametrically opposed to him.
For me, traveling abroad is 99% escape. Escape from reality. That's why I'd like to go if I have time. To escape from my painful reality. I'd actually like to voluntarily fall for the honeytrap.
By the way, I just discovered that if you take out the "Ho" then it becomes a "Nii-trap." A trap for niito (Unemployed young people)?
EYo-yo I don't have to work! Hey mom, go buy me Jump Magazine. I have no desire to work at all. I have all these perverted fantasies. EI get 30000 yen from my parents a month.
...This kind of trap?
And plus, the scheduling directly overlaps the busiest comic festival in Japan in summer, so my anticipation of some Japanese fans coming has also been squelched, and I can see now it'll be industry part-timers only. They'll probably write on their blogs, "I met a manga artist!"
I feel like I should do a pre-death funeral in Taiwan instead of a signing event. I'm fine with just being an international pre-death serviceman. Should I buy a copy of Marina Watanabe's Taiwan suit book?
Oh, and I just discovered that Marina Watanabe's real name is Marina Nagura! That's so cool! It's like Dogra Magra! I've had a lot of discoveries today.

Skip

Anyway, since I have Anime Loss Syndrome, I can't get excited about things.
How can I motivate myself going forward? I put this in the comic at the end of this book, but I don't think I'd get excited even if my name was on an oil field, or a street, or even a star.
They talk about keeping track of the age of children who die, but if the anime had continued, the 20th episode would have come out right around the time of this manga. The 20th episode would have been amazing! Chiri-chan would have a boyfriend. Meru-chan would have a new rival who talks trash about her via smoke signals. That would be some deadly smoke! And considering the times, deadly smoke will become a problem and the show will get canceled.
...Huh?

Can I not count the episodes of an ended series? Do I just have to accept it?
Is there any way to keep up the motivation for an aging manga artist who's losing both the will and fancy to pick up a pen? I read in a book that if you make fun movements when you're feeling down, your brain will be tricked and you'll start feeling like you're having fun.
I guess a "fun movement" would have to be skipping. So I tried to do it, but my skipping came out weird.
It's like I forgot how to skip. Somehow my feet got in a shuffle, and ended up having it described by Maeda-kun as a "gross-looking Moonwalk."
Humans suddenly forget how to skip after not doing it for 20 years. You guys should stop making fun of skipping and practice it from time to time, or else you'll lose the ability.
...Oh, wait, excuse me.
You all skip all the time, don't you. You skip over my comic in the magazines, don't you! I hate skipping. Skipping isn't fun at all. My brain wasn't fooled.
I heard that listening to music to get me excited is another good way. I had an Enya CD. I listened to it. I got excited. About dying.
Should I just go for it!? Die without a third season?

Oh shit, thanks for this, OP.

Sad Memories (Warning: Long Entry)

Hello everyone. It makes me sad to announce that I will be unable to hold the second round of last years's pre-death funeral, which was such a resounding success. My apologies to everyone who was looking forward to it!

But you never know... I might have my real funeral this year suddenly, so make sure to check the obituaries of the paper, okay!?

...alright, jokes aside. It's the first anniversary since my pre-death funeral, everyone! Did you all get over your grief and share stories about the departed?

What's that? You forgot!? I guess people forget about you when you've been dead for a year. How sad.

That's right. It's been a year since I officially died. Disrespect for the dead is a sacrilege for Japanese, isn't it? No matter how hated a person was, you must never speak ill of the dead in Japan, right??

...So what's with all of you, wanting so bad to trash-talk my dead personage!? I'll have you know that anyone who trash-talked me since my funeral last June is going to Hell for blasphemy. Too bad, so sad!!

Manga artists who forced the deceased to make stupid speeches are going to Hell. Readers who spoiled the deceased's storylines are going to Hell.

The eighth and most painful Buddhist Hell... Avici Hell. The second you put tone on a nipple, you'll be poked by a demon, and forced to put tone on nipples for all eternity. Avici Hell.

And it will be the worst kind of Hell, too. Right as the manga draft is complete, the next week's deadlines will already be upon you. And when that draft is done, the deadlines for the week after that will be upon you. Avici Hell.

...Wait a second. Does this mean I've died and am in Hell now?

Part 1/3

I admit that when I was alive, I played a few small pranks, but I don't remember ever committing a huge crime worthy of such horrible, infinite Hell!!

Is it because I wrote an Un-broadcastable word in my manga once (with the vowels replaced by X's)? Is it because no matter how many times I watch "The English Patient" I fall asleep in the middle? Is it because I didn't go to the after party for Mr. Peach-Pit's Kodansha manga prize award ceremony? Is it because I lied about my age by two years in the members' card I registered for at a clothing store? Is it because I treated my dentist as a suspect for the Los Angeles Miura incident?

...In any event, I'm in Avici Hell right now.

Making reports on Hell like this has helped me learn the Ponyo theme song.

...Anyway, since all you blasphemers didn't even bother to share stories about the deceased, I'll go ahead and share my own stories.

So, ahem, before he died, the deceased drew manga for Kodansha, and before that, he worked for Shonen Sunday and Shogakukan...

Wait! You want me to talk about all that? At this point!? Right when I was beginning to forget about those days of shame and humiliation. Right when I though I had finally achieved peace in death.

And you know, if I told my ENTIRE story, this story will go on through the paper blog of volume 20. If I told my entire story, it would also be bad... both for me and for the industry.

Recently, a whole bunch of people from different publishers come to visit me. They have there huge grins on their faces and tell me, "So it looks like you're a big-shot now." But they always leave and never mention any type of new job for me. They just ask me, "So are the stories about that true?" It just makes me want to scream, "No, the anime is all over now!!"

Part 2/3

I mean, I usually reveal the answers anyway. Somewhere. Either backstage, or in this paper blog, or maybe even in the manga. It's because everyone always thinks everything I write is a joke. If I say I'm going to sue someone, it's a joke. Oh wow, that big-shot manga artist sued someone in a court of law? Has society come to this?

And really, if it's just a joke, please treat it that way. This whole fiasco has been one way of ruining my storylines. Here I am, Humbly accepting my circumstances and trying to portray them in a silly and interesting manner, and people take them seriously. Where's the laughter?

It's awful.

It's a living Hell. Oh whoops, I mean a Dead Hell. Avici Hell. It's Jigoku ('Hell') Sensei Nude. No, that's an old story. I'm wearing clothes now.

Just by sharing stories about the deceased on his one-year dead anniversary, I've been drawn into legal battles. Really, being dead is no fun. It's like they poured oil on my remains and tried to burn me some more. Now there aren't even ashes left.

If any of you readers are able to commune with the dead, please let everyone know. "I have rolled over in my grave."

Its true that losing the color pages for my first series was a big deal. But, some manga artist don't have the opportunity to lose their color pages. Some artist begin volume one chapter one in black and white.

The truth is, I had color pages for the first chapter. But then, when it got printed, it was in black and white. I drew it in color, but it got printed in black and white!

Couldn't they have just printed it in color!?

This is why you should never let the deceased tell their stories.

As a memorial service to the deceased, Kodansha supplied me with a few color pages for the first time in this manga volume. Since it's a memorial service, the price stays the same. Now I have no more regrets. I think I can finally attain Buddhahood.

Phew. Oh but wait, I'm still in the Avici Hell. This Avici Hell is a little warmer than that Avici Hell.

The Sins of the Deceased

So there you have some of my stories

While some of you probably have the sense that the deceased was generally the victim during his life, he did, in fact, commit some sins as well. This is back in his Hell Sensei Nude days.

There are certain storylines that just can't be drawn. And every year, the breadth of my permitted expression shrinks. Some types of storylines wouldn't have even made anyone blink ten years ago, but today are met with fierce opposition.

Looking back, it's a miracle that some of that stuff even made it to print.

So there was one story that made it in the normal graphic novel, but not into the collector's edition. It was a story about a person on a certain sexual preference, house-sitting for the main character when he was away.

The title was... <Ehem> "Homo Alone."

When the main character comes back to the house, the house-sitter has laid various traps for him, and the story ends with the main character on the verge of a receiving a surprise from behind.

When I complained to my editor about it being cut from the collector's edition, he calmly explained to me that "even Kodansha" couldn't print that.

Which means that that one story (a different one), which didn't even make the magazine and was nixed from the start... probably... yeah, it was my fault for even drawing it. If it had been printed... we wouldn't be talking about storylines but instead next lives at this point.

Hint: Penis Levitation

Thank you for stopping me, my editor back then. I own you my life.

Sa-Yo-Na-Re Zetsubou Sensei

After talking about the afterlife, why don't I talk about the real world?

This is a realistic story.

It's about money. I bet it's worth a lot.

O - Original

A - Animation

D - Dayo!

The more we make, the less each one would cost, but unfortunately I really don't think I can make any more. And believe me, I tried to negotiate down the price.

At first, no matter what I said, they told me the DVD couldn't be less than 3500 yen. They refused to lower it even by 10 yen.

The only was I eventually managed to lower it was through thinking really hard... and with a play on words!

Knowing they would say no, I said, "How 3470 yen, since it's Sa-Yo-Na-Ra?"

They paused for a moment, and then said, "That's a great idea!! It's brilliant! Since it's Sa-Yo-Na-Ra, we'll do 3 (san) 4(yon) 7 (nana) 0 yen!!"

"Really? I mean... it was just a suggestion..."

"Great! Let's make it final! 3470 yen!"

Come on. These are the same people who wouldn't even lower it 10 yen. It got lowered a whole 30 yen just because of number word play. Go me! Go Koji Kumeta! It's a huge victory for us. Now, everyone can save 30 yen!!

...But still, I feel awful.

I wanted to think of a way to lower the price, but I don't want people to think of me as "that punny manga artist." Even though it was my idea. Puns and word play are the bread and butter for an artist. So anyway, please keep my little victory a secret.

And plus, the 0 doesn't match. This was it had to be Sa-Yo-Na-Re Sensei (0 = Rei).

Volume 15 of Sayonare Zetsubou Sensei will be on sale with a OAD for 3470 yen, everyone.

I Am a Manga Artist

I am
A manga artist
Or something like that.
Stuff like this has become pretty popular recently. By the time this is published, things might have changed, though. I'm sorry.

You know, I have to write almost 4,000 characters a day for these Paper Blogs. But if I were to make use of this newly invented literary medium, I could probably finish things off in about seven minutes. Even in manga, don't you sometimes see two-page spreads where only one half is printed? And two-page spreads that are nothing but text. These are inventions to rival the cell phone novel.

But I'm nowhere near brave enough.
I can't
Do that
Or whatever.

Alas! Human beings will always tend towards degeneration, once you show them that there's an easy way out.
My readers are especially unforgiving about taking the easy route. They will never forgive me. In interviews, if someone asks me a question I've been asked before, and I give the same answer as I did the last time, they scream that I'm taking an easy out by repeating myself. But if I give a different answer, they'll say that I'm lying.

I can't
Take it anymore
I just want
To leave

In this strict, unforgiving country, you can't help but want to escape to a place where the people are kinder. It makes you want to go have a new passport photo taken at Princess Studio and flee, doesn't it?
Such a country exists. It is paradise on Earth.

The People in This Country Are So Nice

So, I went. To Taiwan. With the worst possible timing.
The day before the signing was Retrocession Day. That is, the day Taiwan was liberated from Imperial Japanese rule. It was also the day of Taiwan's Olympic baseball match against Japan. Which was a crushing Japanese victory. It was exactly the kind of situation that leads to rotten tofu being hurled at you. And yet, they were very nice to me, as a Japanese person.
If it had been a certain other Asian country instead, I probably would have had kimchi rubbed into my eyeballs.

—Anyway, you can't expect to go overseas and not have a single bad thing happen at all. A long time ago, I asked a certain well-known manga artist (my assistant at the time) if he would like to come along with me to Greece. His answer was "Eh? No, it's fine. You can just give me money instead." I remember having incredibly negative thoughts before the trip had even started.
Voice Actors Named Shiraishi Kyoko > Voice Actors Not Named Shiraishi Kyoko > People on the Internet > Akamatsu Ken > Money > Your Boss, is how it works, I guess.

So the fact that nothing bad happened to me on this trip was a miracle. The miracle of Asia. That is Taiwan.
On the other hand, since nothing bad happened, I couldn't use it as material for jokes. In an interview, they asked me, "Has anything left you in despair since you arrived in Taiwan?" In desperation, I answered, "The fact that nothing has left me in despair has left me in despair."

That's why writing about my Taiwan trip has turned into a normal travel essay. Something like Tawawa Taiwan.

Nagura Marina (Dogura Magura) is going to get mad at me for slandering her beloved Hata.
She'll definitely serve me enchanted sweets and tell me to dream forever.
But I think Magura is right. It was all just a dream. I was dreaming of the Palace of the Dragon King, with a tube coming out the back of my neck.

The Princess Who Became a Witch

The Palace of the Dragon King was full of very kind fish.
But one of those kind fish came up to me carrying a single sheet of colored paper.
"A scary witch is threatening to turn us into Acqua Pazza if we don't get your autograph for her," she said. (This was all happening in a dream, of course.) What a wicked witch.
"If I sign this for you you won't get turned into Acqua Pazza, right? She won't have to fry you in hot olive oil and roll you in rock salt? Then, if my autograph is what she wants, I'll sign it. Even if she tells everyone about it on her blog, I'll sign it."
Just as I was wondering what this wicked witch was doing in the Dragon King's Palace, I remembered. I had seen her before, at a ball in the Shogakukan Palace. Together with Kazuhiro the Pumpkin and Glass Shiina Takashi, from a distance.

I thought about going up to say hello, but the huge panniers spreading the hem of her dress meant that no one could come closer to her than two meters. (I don't think the part about the dress was a dream.) I could feel our difference in standing quite distinctly.

To think that coming to the Palace could turn a princess like that into a witch... (I'm still speaking about a dream.)

Part 1/2

An Announcement and an Apology

To all of you who so graciously bought the OAD, I'm sorry about the worthless tankobon that was bundled with it.

And now, I'd like to tell you a story.
One of the reasons Taiwan is pro-Japanese today, is this:
During Japanese rule of the island, when local merchants were of course overcharging for everything, the Japanese in Taipei did not attempt to haggle with them.
Because of this the Taiwanese prospered, and development of the city prospered. Because the Japanese did not try to argue over prices, the Taiwanese stopped charging so much.

... What a good story! Isn't it?

Now if only the noble Japanese people did not think that ¥3470 was too much, and try to have the price lowered, this industry would prosper. From there, we would begin charging less for manga out of respect to our readers. Seller and buyer would both benefit, a win-win business scenario.

And now, dear readers, I must tell you something.
Starting from the next volume, Kodansha will be raising prices by ¥20. My story is ruined. But, with the increasing price of paper, it can't be helped.
I've started cutting back on Maeda's food, doing my manuscripts on the backs of old flyers, and begun working by moonlight at night, all in an attempt to cooperate with the company, but that can only achieve so much. But if I can get you to accept the ¥20 price hike, I think I'd like to do even more.
And so here is a survey for my readers:
What part of this manga's content would you like the equivalent of ¥20 more of?

1. ¥20 worth of gags
2. ¥20 worth of fan service
3. ¥20 worth of moe
4. ¥20 worth of female characters
5. ¥20 worth of male characters
6. ¥20 worth of badmouthing other manga artists
7. ¥20 worth of jealousy towards Hata-Sensei
8. ¥20 worth of gold powder added to the paper
9. ¥20 worth of prayer

Wait a second
That first one
I just
Can't
Or something

A Written Apology *Spoiler Warning*

And so it's over. Really over. Done. Finally done. Everything is done.

Comic Natalie came to do an interview. I thought for sure that it would be about Zetsubou Sensei, but it turned out to be in regards to Joshiraku being animated. Of course. No one cares about finished series. There's no place to talk about them. No place to make excuses. So please let me talk about it here. I don't particularly enjoy talking about my own work. I don't believe it should be done. But please, let me say a little. Let me provide some answers.

I'm often asked, "Was the ending planned from the beginning?"

How foolish. That is a stupid question. It's like interviewing a soccer player, and asking him in regards to a missed pass or an awkwardly-angled kick just happening to send the ball into the goal, "Was that shot intentional?" Any striker would answer: "I planned it from the beginning!"

It's the same thing. And so I will answer the same way:

"I planned it from the beginning!!!" ...

Part 1/2

No... that just makes it seem like I didn't. But I really did, for what it's worth. In order to dispel such doubts when it comes to serialized manga, I think endings which are decided from the beginning should be written down and sealed away somewhere for safekeeping.

An Initial Document. Initial Documents containing especially terrifying endings should be held by the Vatican. Then, it can be proved afterward to humanity that it was really planned from the beginning. Although, if the ending is too horrible, I suppose there's a chance the Vatican would refuse to make it public. But in the majority of cases it should be able to be proved. Of course, it would be written in an angelic script, so you can make of it whatever you wish (niyari).

One good thing about an Initial Document, is that it can be used as an excuse in the event that an ending gets stolen. For serializations, especially long-term serializations, it's not unheard of for the ending to be stolen by another series that started later and ended earlier. If an ending that you had planned from the very beginning gets stolen, there's nothing you can do but throw your hands in the air. If you change the original ending for fear of overlapping with another series, each change requires more changes, until the balance of the whole work becomes off, and on top of that no one ends up being able to see it coming. I think I would like the industry to consider buying into this idea of an Intial Document. Now then, maybe I should try to predict the ending to One Piece based on the foreshadowing and steal it in a series that ends after only five volumes (niyari).

Criticism Training

I'm a guy who's used the criticism, but sometimes I feel as if I'm worth something. Like the time I happened to see someone buyingone of my manga, right in front of my eyes. To have someone read my work is so embarassing that it makes me want to die, but as an adult, the truth is that I'd be in trouble if they didn't sell.

On a certain month, on a certain day, in a certain bookstore in Shinjuku, I overheard this conversation between two angels, who had taken the first collective volume of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei in their hands, and were getting ready to buy...

"You know, this thing here....you thinkI can use it as a reference for drawing kimonos for Gintama?"

Thank you for your purchase. We, the staff, will continue to work our hardest for you, our customer, so you can find reference material for Gintama doujinshi.

Award Speech

I thought that it would be impossible for me to receive an award in this life.
I thought that it would be nice if I at the earliest could receive one in my next life, or the life after that.
So, I am really surprised.
My editor is also surprised.
The staff are also surprised.
The readers are also surprised.
The editors at Magazine are also surprised.
The editors at Shounen Sunday are also surprised.
I have used up three lifetimes' worth of luck.
So not even one more good thing will happen in this life, of course. Or my next life, or the life after that.
But even so, it's okay.
I know that a garbage bug that has been covered in gold leaves will absolutely not turn into a gold bug.
But even so, the garbage bug was happy.
Because for just one moment, it was able to shine.
Thank you very much.

Parents

I can't find the right time to visit my parents' house. I'm busy during manga serialization time, so it's hard to find the time to go home. After a manga series is finished, I can't go back home, because my parents will worry that I'm unemployed. During obon and the new year, there's the probability of lots of different people visiting my parents' home, so I can't go them. I don't have enough face to face anyone, so to speak.
There was a time when I made up my mind to go, but when I got there, nobody was home. I felt rather relieved. I hadn't been there in quite a while. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and left before anyone returned.
It sure is nice to visit my parents' home from time to time.

Jiiii~

I like the back of people's heads. No matter how intently I state at them, there's no way that our eyes will meet.
I really can't look someone in the eye when I talk. I always walk by with my eyes downward, so I never have to look at anyone in the eye. But on rainy days, if I'm not careful, I'll look at my own eyes by accident. I feel like dying when I see my repulsive face reflected in a puddle.
When I was in junior high school, I was scolded by my homeroom teacher, who told me to look into people's eyes when I talked. But when I did look into his eyes, he told me, "what do you mean, looking at me like that?!" and beat me.
I don't look into people's eyes when speaking anymore. But if someone tells me to look into their eyes, and I have no other choice, I'll loon into the whites of their eyes. People with larger pupils are a problem. People with all white eyes are also a problem.

March 11

What on earth can I draw now?
With March 11, Japan changed entirely, so these honestly aren't the circumstances to draw manga, I think. There is the opinion that [especially] in these times, pleasure is important too, but even if I'm told "and therefore, you can just draw on like usually", there's no way I could draw like usually. Whatever I draw, it's indiscrete, whatever I draw, it will hurt somebody. What sense would there be in choosing the words, choosing the jokes, contracting them and drawin this? When I couldn't draw nor think about anything and was terribly troubled, my editor's words saved me.
"There's nothing left for you than worrying, since the one word you mustn't say right now is in the title, like "Despair""
Well... that's true...

But still, I have to write about something, so I'll list recent conditions that aren't really interisting without any concern. I think there maybe nothing to laugh in there, but please understand.

On March 11, 2:46p.m., I was in the government office's viewroom [Note:He's referring to a room in Shinjuku's Government Building from which you have a great sight on all of Tokyo] together with my staff.
We had begun our work and gone to Shinjuku to get some lunch there together, and since one of my staff members had never been to the government building before, well, we just got on the elevator. To the Southern Viewroom on the 45th floor in 202 meters of height. You can see all of Tokyo from here, see over there is Shogakukan and over there is Kodansha, explained one of me staff - that was when the earthquake occurred.

Anyway, the shaking was frightening and it was the first time I experienced a quake where you could not keep standing. Since it was a building with quake-absorbing structure, we felt the floor moving about 1 meter in all directions [Note: I guess the upper parts of the building were wobbling like you may have seen on TV. They're built like that, so they don't collapse during quakes]

Part 1/3

Anyway, the shaking was frightening and it was the first time I experienced a quake where you could not keep standing. Since it was a building with quake-absorbing structure, we felt the floor moving about 1 meter in all directions [Note: I guess the upper parts of the building were wobbling like you may have seen on TV. They're built like that, so they don't collapse during quakes]
Because the [government office's] personnel calmly gave instructions, we all stayed calm without panic coming up. Why of all things had we been on the government building's viewing point at such a time, I thought as I lamented on the badness in my self, but thinking about it later, it probably was the most safe place in Tokyo to stay at. The elevator stopped because of the quake, and we waited on the spot for it to start working again. In the meantime, the situation steadily turned worse. Smoke rose from here and there on the ground, and what we saw from the viewroom seemed as if the world was going to end. We didn't know if it were aftershocks or effects of the building's base-isolation, but the shaking continued and when we had waited for about an hour, the personnel member informed us that the elevator wouldn't be restored for now. Since there was no other option, we went down all 45 floors via stairs, which took us ca. 45 minutes. I didn't think I would climb up, no, down a mountain in the center of this big city. From going down, my calfs became all stiff which made me fully realize how weak I am to emergency situations. At the exit near the stairs from which we had gotten down, newspaper journalists were standing, and Maeda was interviewed. I don't know if he was freaked out because of the quake or the interview, but I remember him saying incoherent things. I won't write the contents because then I'll be told I'd kid you, but it felt like comparing the shaking of the building to pudding.

After that, when we went back to our workplace to confirm the situation there, we were relieved that no glass had broken and there was no really big damage. ...but, something felt wrong and when I took a closer look, I noticed that my interior had moved about 50 centimeters to the right. Because all of it had moved to the same side, I didn't notice it at first. When I took an even closer look, I noticed my TV, that had been placed right in the middle of a TV-stand, had moved to the edge, close to falling down.
Of course, here had also been some frightening shaking, but fortunately, nothing had fallen down.

What fell down was my manuscript.


March 11, evening

When tragic news were spread on the TV, the trains stopped too and my staff became go-home refugees. A joke on how there are too many refugees... that's something I couldn't draw now [Note: Chapter 251 dealt with this].
One of my staff members worried about his cat so he wanted to go home by all means. "I'll buy a bicycle and go home by this," he said as if he had thought of an excellent plan and turned to the volume sellers. But it seemed everybody else had thought of this too and there had been no bicycles at all neither at Hands nor Donki. If you think about it calmly, it certainly means the people who came last bought bicycles for children or those cycles with very small tires.

Eventually, with all the lines of people and the congestion of cars, even if you had had a bicycle you would have only been able to push it by hand, it seems. When there's a calamity like this, the balance of request and supply breaks down in an instant. In all the convenience stores, there was not one bit of food left. What was left had no connection to the necessities of life. It were things like Magazines, DVDs, dog food, copy-books, rubbers, bonds, or Hayate Tankobon.

March 18

And one week after that, it so became that I could draw a cross-section view of the power plant even without looking [at a source].
Maeda, who had frequently been fighting against an invisible enemy from the start, was now forced to fight against an invisible enemy called radioactivity. He became more and more insecure day by day, and aimlessly started to draw lots and lots of portraits of the securitiy officers as if he were an automated secretary. In the meantime, he started to sing the unnecessary and irritating songs "Popopopooooonô", "Hello there cat" and "Thank you, Dog". The measuring unit used the most at our workplace became Microsievert. Then it became Millisievert. Now it's Becquerel.

Talking about the influence on our work, when the problem of the power shortage due to the accident at the power plant became serious, we had to think about how to deal with planned power outages and brownouts. For us who draw digitally, having no electricity means we're unable to work. My editor also seemed like he worried about this to an unusual degree. After that, he said the words "Thank you!" to us for some reason. When I was thinking about the reason, Maeda declared "When it comes to the crunch, we'll go analogue and draw with pen and paper!" Saying something like this as he pleased made me worried. To insert a pen into ink after such a long time... it's too hard, I can't do it.

Part 1/3

>>149337288
Thank you.

To try it, I took out my old tools and when I drew the characters with ink, even if you looked at it from the "he's exhausted"-point, it was cruel. The contour lines were bending in a way that made you think if this could really be a picture drawn by somebody who's so good at drawing a power plant's cross-section view. The eyes were blurry and my hand was shaky. When I debuted, I had been able to do this acrobatic thing every week - for the first time I praised my younger self. I looked at manuscripts from this time and found this thought to be wrong. They in themselves were weak and weary.

Part 2/3

Anyway, as I am now, it seems I cannot work without electricity.
In my everyday life, their also is one problem. The purchases we usually did as staff include food for 5 people, so society is not unlikely to treat us as if we were buying up everything. It's ineffective, but because there's no other choice, everybody goes shopping individually now. Moreover, the convenience stores are cutting down working hours, so 7/11 that used to be a 24h-store, has become less than 7-11. As for the amusement industry, I don't know how they are singled out in a crisis like this. To not stand out whenever possible, when I work at night, I shut off heating, put on a coat, pull on a massive curtain so that now light from outside will come inside and continue my work quietly and calmly.
Water, Electricity, Radioactivity - with all these problems that don't seem to come to an end, I need to think about if Tokyo isn't doomed and I should move to the west... just when I was on the point of thinking about this, it was verified that Tokyo is alright.

An important author who had promptly said "WHAT IS THIS?!!" "If Caesium comes out, it'll be dangerous!" and flown to hotels in Osaka, got tired of it and returned to Tokyo. That this person as returned to Tokyo must mean it's safe.

Everybody please be relieved. If there were a real emergency situation, according to MMR [Note: Magazine Mystery Chosahan, a well-known mystery manga], it would be pointless to flee to Osaka or anywhere in the world. No, please wait, why does even somebody like Kibayashi [Note: the main character from MMR] not own a nuclear bomb shelter? Why doesn't he own a nuclear bomb shelter when he even has a giant wine cellar? This is the strange thing here. How would it be to use an emergency nuclear bomb shelter as a wine cellar in usual times?

But well... if you judge from the actual results of MMR's predictions, the people who flew and still stay away make Tokyo feel safe.
[Note: I'm not sure because I haven't read MMR, but somehow I think he's referring to all the foreigners leaving Japan]

Don't Miss Your Stop

To all of you who stuck with me until the very end, I truly thank you.

Judging by the sales numbers, it's glaringly obvious. There are many people who got off the bus about halfway.

Thank you, everyone who chose to stay on until the last.

Four different stops have been prepared for you in the final volume. All of them were designed to feel like final stops.

It's all one continuous route, rather than four branching paths, but you still get to choose where to get off. I made it into something that alternates manic-depressively between good and bad endings. Whichever bus stop you want to get out at is fine.

Chapter 30X was written during an especially unstable period, so it's actually the garage. Although I wrote it as a gag, the final product turned out more disturbing then I intended.

Because this series began as a tongue-in-cheek attempt at a harem manga, I decided to try to come up with a more interesting take on a harem ending, rather than multiple endings. It would make me happy if you could laugh and think of it as a gag. The foreshadowing for "Entrails Island" from 12 years ago was not something I had planned out at the time.

The Sweet Circumstances of Joshijima-kun

This is turning into an afterward where I actually talk about the work, isn't it?

Kafuka-chan was broken into pieces, and so was I. Words and pictures have now been broken apart. Now that the manga is over, only broken old me remains. The me that draws pictures and the me that comes up with dialogue will now be sold seperately. The criminal known as Miura is on the run. Shonen Magazine is still looking for him. Please come to us with any information.

Although it was briefly without a manager, it's been decided that "Joshiraku" will be placed in the care of Joshijima-kun. In true "joshi" (read: girly) fashion, 'like button!' He seemed excited to bring refreshments to the anime after-recording, but... he won't go. Because the after-recording starts at 10, apparently. ? ... It's not that he doesn't like waking up in the morning. The real reason surprised me. "Because the store isn't open," he said. The shop selling the special sweets he wanted to bring didn't open early enough. Even if it was open, he said 10 o'clock was too early and he'd never make it. When I asked, "Why can't you just buy them the day before, or buy something from a store closer to the studio," his response was "That doesn't make a girl happy!"

—You're a girl!?

Part 1/2

Joshijima-kun's girlification never stops.

One day, thinking it would make her--I mean him, happy, I bought Joshijima-kun some financiers, which I knew he liked, from a highly-reviewed bakery. ...But when I gave them to him he only made a long face and started tearing up. "Thank you," he said, in a flat monotone. "I was just thinking of going there this weekend..."

I regret it. I stole Joshijima-kun's happiness. I ruined the weekend trip he had been looking forward to. It's like giving someone a completed stamp card that you got ahead of time at a kids' stamp rally. Like a thief from the future. Of course I regret it completely. But to hate you for giving them a present... girls make no sense. Even when they're boys, they make no sense. He says he's had a thing for honey recently... I can only imagine him covering me in it and leaving me in the forest.

Closing Words

Time flies like an arrow. Seven years of serialization went by in a flash. No, my twenty-year career as a manga artist went by in a flash. Like they say, peaches and chestnuts take three years to bear fruit, and persimmons take eight. It's not quite Girl Who Leapt Through Time, but in our industry it goes like this:

"Monochrome takes three years to bear fruit, drawing takes eight, Hata-Sensei takes nine years to come down, and non-existant anime come down in 18."

In other words, rough drafts take three years, putting it in ink takes eight, and if you want it to get animated you'd better wait 18. That's how I always thought it was.

This means if I lose my part-time job doing speech bubbles I'll be unemployed, but I will not forget the kindness of those of you who stuck with me until the very end. Will I be able to draw manga in my next life, as well? Or will I continute specializing in speech bubbles? I don't know if I'll be opening a KFC in Sado any time soon, but I was happy. That such a commonplace artist such as myself ever made it this far is thanks solely to my gifted readers. Thank you very much.


This is the final blog at the end of volume 30.

The blogs in volumes 16-29 have not been translated to my knowledge.

Hope you enjoyed.

File: 35382783_p0.jpg (147KB, 580x750px) Image search: [Google]

147KB, 580x750px

>>149340382
Cheers, man.

>>149339936
This is the most brilliant marketing scheme I've read in a while.

Thanks anon!