Big Comic Original 40th Anniversary "Original & Me" vol. 6 - Rumiko Takahashi!!

Translation by: Harley Acres

This year Big Comic Original is celebrating its 40th anniversary. The creators and celebrity readers who have supported and appeared in Big Comic Original over the past 40 years will appear in this column! Our sixth edition will go one round with the popular "Rumic Theater" creator herself, Rumiko Takahashi!

[Volume 6 Rumiko Takahashi]

[Profile]: Born October 10, 1957 in Niigata Prefecture. In 1978 she debuted in Shonen Sunday with Katte na Yatsura which won the Shogakukan Newcomers Award followed by Urusei Yatsura . ^[1] Subsequently Maison Ikkoku was a big hit which appeared in Big Comic Spirits in 1980, followed by Ranma 1/2, Inuyasha, and Mermaid Saga which were also big hits. She first appeared in Original in 1980 with Wedded Bliss and in 1987 she began her yearly Rumic Theater series with The Merchant of Romance. She is the winner of the 26th and 47th Shogakukan Manga Award in the Shonen category and the 18th and 20th Nebula Awards for manga.

Original is sort of like udon, it has a large variety of stories in it.

This is Original's 40th anniversary and I've actually been a happy reader for all 40 years. So many great authors have written for the magazine and were readers before they were creators. In 1987 Rumic Theater debuted in Original and has appeared yearly since that time and has been well-loved by our readers.

Tell us about your first encounter with Original.

Takahashi: I was reading from almost the first issue. I was a high school student at the time, but anyway, I was buying it for Abu-san.

So you were a Shinji Mizushima fan. What was your first impression of the magazine?

Takahashi: Other than Abu-san (あぶさん) I read Haguregumo (浮浪雲) and I started reading a few other things too I think like Ryohei Saigan's San-choume no Yuuhi (三丁目の夕日) and before I debuted his Professional Retsudan (プロフェッショナル列伝)... ^[2]

In the early days of the magazine many of the series were in a gekiga style which comes as a bit of a surprise now.

Takahashi: I certainly remember (laughs). Toru Shinohara had a serial, Hitoshi Hirano's Sahara (サハラ) (written by Kazuo Koike), and Moribi Murano's Kakine no Majo (垣根の魔女). ^[3]

As a high school girl in the 70s was it hard to decide what you wanted to buy?

Takahashi: Well, the stories that were appearing in Original were good. At that time I was also buying Shonen Sunday, Magazine, King and GORO and later even Garo! Whatever Ryoichi Ikegami happened to be publishing in at the time. In general, I would buy them depending on the creators who were publishing there. I didn't feel embarassed about it. ^[4]

In Abu-san both the protagonist and the author are originally from Niigata. Do you think there was some fellow sensibility that you shared with them?

Takahashi: Sunday's Otoko do Ahou! Koshien (男どアホウ!甲子園) (with Mamoru Sasaki) and Magazine's Yakyuu-kyo no Uta (野球狂の詩) were two others that I was really into that Mizushima-sensei did and he always seemed like he was from Osaka to me (laughs). ^[5] Come to think of it, he came to Niigata for an autograph session when I was in high school. I got a drawing of Abu-san standing next to Kyuuichiro Kokuritsu. It is something I still treasure to this day. Abu-san was handsome, he was something I hadn't seen in shonen manga before, he was an adult.

Did you ever think that years later your work would be published alongside Abu-san?

Takahashi: Of course it was an honor. I didn't have that feeling as much since I am only published once a year (in Original), but it was still an honor. From the beginning when I published Merchant of Romance I felt like I was stretching myself, no doubt about it. It wasn't because of my age, but anytime I appear in Original I feel like my works have a more grown-up appearance. It was almost like, "oh Dad is home with his magazines that kids think are good too." So ages can vary but they're stories of fathers and housewives. Every year, in the editorial meetings it seems that it will be a story that really captures a sign of the times, a darker story that still has a happy ending. Maybe because it's always around the New Year. *laughs* Meanwhile Original is loaded with radical stories, it's addictive, there is such a large variety of ingredients in it, even if you only feel like having udon. This "Big" magazine is sort of like soba (laughs).

Next issue, volume 7 Shinichi Ishizuka ^[6]

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Footnotes

• [1] Takahashi won honorable mention for the 2nd Shogakukan Newcomers Manga Award (第2回小学館新人コミック大賞) in the shonen category. The way the Newcomer Manga Award is structured is there is a single winner and then two to three honorable mentions that are unranked. In 1978 the winner in the shonen category was Yoshimi Yoshimaro (吉見嘉麿) for D-1 which was published in Shonen Sunday 1978 Vol. 26. The other honorable mentions in addition to Rumiko Takahashi were Masao Kunitoshi (国俊昌生) for The Memoirs of Dr. Watson (ワトソン博士回顧録) which was published in Shonen Sunday 1978 Vol. 27 and Hiroaki Oka (岡広秋) for Confrontation on the Snowy Mountains (雪山の対決) which was published in a special edition of Shonen Sunday (週刊少年サンデー増刊号). Oka would also publish later under the name Jun Hayami (早見純). Other winners in various Newcomers categories include Gosho Aoyama, Koji Kumeta, Yuu Watase, Kazuhiko Shimamoto, Naoki Urasawa, Kazuhiro Fujita and Ryoji Minagawa, Yellow Tanabe and Takashi Iwashige.
• [2] Abu-san (あぶさん) is Shinji Mizushima's long running baseball manga. The series ran for 107 volumes from 1978 to 2014. Haguregumo (浮浪雲) is another very long-running series (112 volumes from 1973 to 2012) by George Akiyama. Set in the Edo period the story follows Kumo and his family as he chases women and avoids work. San-choume no Yuuhi (三丁目の夕日) is the 1950s set slice-of-life manga which has been serialized since 1974. Professional Retsudan (プロフェッショナル列伝) is also by Ryohei Saigan and is connected to San-choume no Yuuhi.
• [3] Sahara (サハラ) is a sexually charged adventure written by Takahashi's mentor Kazuo Koike and illustrated by Jin Hirano (a pseudonym of Hiroshi Hirano). Kakine no Majo (垣根の魔女) by Moribi Murano follows the daily interactions of neighborhood busybody Midori, an elderly woman who involves herself in the affairs of her neighbors.
• [4] These are all boys' and men's magazines, marking Takahashi's reading habits as rather unusual for a high school girl in the 1970s. Takahashi details very thoroughly her love of Ryoichi Ikegami's manga in her interview about Ikegami and also in "Examinging the Source of Masterpieces! Rumiko Takahashi's History".
• [5] Otoko do Ahou! Koshien (男どアホウ!甲子園) (written by Shunichi Yukimuro and illustrated by Mamoru Sasaki) is a baseball manga about a rural boy who trains to get to the high school baseball playoffs, Koshien. Yakyuu-kyo no Uta (野球狂の詩) is another baseball manga by Shinji Mizushima, the author of Abu-san. In Yakyuu-kyo no Uta the story follows a young woman, Yuki Mizuhara, who becomes a baseball player after entering college to study veterinary medicine. A 1985 live-action drama starred Maison Ikkoku theme song singer Yuki Saito as Yuki Mizuhara.
• [6] The following edition of this series of articles featured Shinichi Ishizuka of Blue Giant fame.

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