午夜剧场

From a young age, I frequented the studio of my grandfather, a Western-style painter, to learn drawing. However, being impatient, I began to seek the dynamic storytelling of serialized art rather than the quietude of mastering a single painting.

In other words, I began to aspire to be a manga artist.

I didn't mind repeating a year or not joining a seminar; I went through trial and error aiming to debut while still in university. However, I failed to make a breakthrough and eventually took a job. Yet, unable to give up on my dream, I left the company, drew a one-shot story, and brought it to Weekly Shonen Magazine, where I was lucky enough to get an editor assigned to me.

When I told my editor I wanted to draw a manga set in China, he suggested, "Then why don't you try aiming for a series with 'Chinese cuisine' as the theme?" That was the beginning of the cooking manga series "Chuka Ichiban!" (Cooking Master Boy). Up to that point, everything went smoothly. I scoured and researched books on cooking, a subject I wasn't even familiar with, to prepare.

However, having been thrown into the battlefield of a grueling weekly serialization without any experience as an assistant, I quickly fell into a predicament.

The popularity was sluggish. There was the fear of the weekly deadlines and the reality that if survey results hovered at the bottom, the series would be canceled immediately. If I dropped out, I didn't know how many years it would be before another chance came my way.

While "cooking manga" is a major genre today, it was a minor one twenty-some years ago. Furthermore, the protagonist, Mao, was a foreigner who was too young, and it was a period piece. It was full of disadvantageous elements for a shonen manga at the time, and I didn't know what strategy to take.

I couldn't beat my rival in the same magazine, "Shota no Sushi," and unlike manga in other genres, it was difficult to create that sense of exhilaration from defeating an enemy directly. There was a sense of despair that even the most important element—the "taste" of the food—could not be accurately conveyed to readers no matter how much I exhausted my drawings and words.

After six months, I was told the serialization would end.

However, the turnaround began from the moment I decided to stop worrying and just go for it.

I decided that if I couldn't convey the "taste" accurately, I would at least exaggerate the "degree" of the taste. I used my full imagination to depict the reactions and the mental landscapes of those who ate the food through my drawings to show "just how delicious it was."

I also staged the cooking style with action sequences reminiscent of a martial artist.

Fortunately, that absurdity became a hit, and all the minor elements turned into rare positive ones. The series moved to a monthly magazine, returned to a weekly one, and was adapted into a TV anime, becoming a long-running work read and watched widely across Asia. Now, I am even working on the sequel, "Chuka Ichiban! Kiwa."