Rumiko Takahashi x Hiromu Arakawa Special Dialogue

Translation by Harley Acres

Rumiko Takahashi and Hiromu Arakawa, who profess to be fans of each other.
Immediately after finishing work on their respective manga, their busy schedules finally matched, and their long-awaited first meeting finally came true!
A must-see not only for Sunday readers but for all manga fans, we will deliver plenty of rich discussion between the two masters who are leading the manga world!!

Dialogue theme: Manga, each other and food.

Arakawa: Hello. I am Hiromu Arakawa.

Takahashi: Hello. I am Rumiko Takahashi.

This is the first time you two have met, right?

Arakawa: Yes, it is. I couldn't make it to the Shogakukan year-end party last year.



Takahashi: Me either.

How did you encounter one another's works?

Arakawa: The first book I ever bought was the 16th volume of Urusei Yatsura. When I first saw the anime broadcast, I thought, "This is super interesting!" The next day, I went to a bookstore... well, not a bookstore. There were no bookstores in my hometown... It was a rice shop. It was the manga corner of the rice shop. ^[1]

Takahashi: Wow. I didn't know there was such a thing.

Arakawa: Yes. A rice shop. Manga was also sold there. Convenience stores close at 10 p.m. in this world. So, for this interview, I reviewed the back of the first volume of Urusei Yatsura that I bought and found that it was printed in 1988... It's already been 30 years since I fell in love with Takahashi-sensei, huh? ^[2] At that time, I was copying Cherry all the time.

Takahashi: Wh... Why did you copy Cherry...?

Arakawa: I love drawing a variety of things...I loved drawings of yokai and animals. I also copied Ranma (Ranma Saotome, the main character in Ranma 1/2) a lot. He may be the prototype of the humans characters I draw now actually. Until then, I had drawn only animals. Anyway, I'm just so thrilled to meet you.

Takahashi: Thank you very much. I first encountered Arakawa-san's work through the Fullmetal Alchemist anime. My assistant was a big fan of it. She gave me a lecture about how great it was. And when I read the manga, I thought, "Wow! I don't know what to say." It was very logical. I don't feel like I'm getting drunk on it. I mean, I think there are times when you become so absorbed in a work that you lose sight of the world around you, but that wasn't the case. You don't have that problem.

Arakawa: Hmmm. I wonder.

Takahashi: But, you know, I thought this was really great. The series was always steady and stable, but it was also very passionate, wasn't it? It has been a long time since I have seen such a well-balanced manga. I was a little surprised.

Arakawa: You're too kind.

Takahashi: I said, "This is the real thing, right here!"

Arakawa: I won't be able to sleep tonight! No, but you really don't know what a manga will become until you put it out there.

Takahashi: But to have your first serial publication at that level... it's amazing.

Takahashi-sensei, You also had hits from the beginning, didn't you?

Takahashi: No, no, no, that was a different era. Why are you so good at drawing, Arakawa-san?

Arakawa: Eh, no, no. No, Takahashi-sensei is better.

Takahashi: How did you become so good?

Arakawa: What was it? I've been told that as a child I was always doodling if you gave me a flyer to draw on. As far back as I can remember, all I did was draw things like horses and stuff. That's how I ended up here.

Takahashi: That's amazing.

Arakawa: Takahashi-sensei, when did you start drawing manga...?

Takahashi: I started drawing manga-like things when I entered junior high school. I drew something like a four-panel comics. Until then, I was always drawing graffiti on things. I was really scared of the scene in the animated movie The Orphan Brothers (安寿と厨子王丸/Anju to Kurashiohmaru) where the mother and children are separated and kidnapped by Sansho the Bailiff. ^[3] So I drew it on the wall of my house. ^[4]



Arakawa: Were you scared?

Takahashi: I was terrified.

Arakawa: After all, "regret and fear" really stay with you.

Takahashi: It has an impact, doesn't it?

Arakawa: Yes, it does. I remember a lot of scary scenes like Mermaid Forest. Also Laughing Target was scary...

Takahashi: Ah...

Arakawa:　I fell in love with Urusei Yatsura and since then I've been collecting Takahashi-sensei's books, but...Did I buy Laughing Target around that time? ^[5]

Takahashi: Did it come out around the time of the Urusei Yatsura you bought? Laughing Target was first published in a special issue of Sunday, but the one recorded in the book was revised considerably and the story is different...

Arakawa: Ah, is that so?

What was your student days like?

Arakawa: When I was in high school, I was in the karate club.

Takahashi: Ah, so you're familiar with martial arts?

Arakawa: Well, I also like watching martial arts on TV. So, when I was in high school, I wanted to join the art club, but it didn't happen... I was thinking, "I want to do martial arts," when a classmate asked me to go with him because he wanted to see some karate, and so I did.

Takahashi: Really?

Takahashi-sensei, you were a member of the Manga Research Club, weren't you?

Takahashi: Yes. I founded it.

Arakawa: Oh, I didn't know you could do that!

Takahashi: I didn't have one in high school, so I made one, and in college I had one, but I didn't know where it was being done, so I tracked it down. There were quite a few of my classmates who made their debut. ^[6] Speaking of which, there are many manga artists from Niigata, but there are also many from Hokkaido.

Arakawa: Hokkaido has become independent... There are so many manga artists from Hokkaido that you could make a magazine with only manga artists from Hokkaido. ^[7]

Takahashi: My theory is that there is something to be said for eating salmon. Hokkaido and Niigata are in the same cultural spheres.

Arakawa: After all, it is salmon, isn't it!?

Takahashi: New Year's doesn't end without eating salmon.

Arakawa: When the salmon season comes, my father goes to the fields with a light truck, and when he came back, he'd found another light truck on his way back.

Takahashi: Why?

Arakawa: Fishermen, I guess they were fishermen...? Well, someone who enjoys fishing anyway. They'd come to the fields and exchange it with him.

Takahashi: That's nice.

Arakawa: And then my father would say, "I caught it in the field," and he would unload about five salmon from the back of his truck... and my mother would grumble in the middle of the night, "Who's going to process the salmon roe!?" The next morning, a bowl full of salmon roe would be served.

Takahashi: That's a luxury, isn't it?

On the topic of food, in Silver Spoon, there was a pizza making scene...

Takahashi: Did that happen when you were in high school?

Arakawa: Oh, no, we didn't have a pizza oven at that time. When I went back to my alma mater to do research for Silver Spoon, there was an outdoor oven there. I thought, "No fair."

Takahashi: What? I wonder who made that?

Arakawa: It was a teacher. He said he was going to make a second one. He was just doing whatever he wanted. The site is huge, so you never know who is doing what where. Sometimes he is a hunter too.

And so the conversation continued!

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Footnotes

• [1] Hiromu Arakawa (荒川弘) grew up on a dairy farm in rural Makubetsu, Hokkaido. Her farming manga Silver Spoon is inspired by her own childhood on the dairy farm. Arakawa provided a "My Lum" illustration for the shinsoban editions of Urusei Yatsura.
• [2] If Urusei Yatsura volume 16 was the first volume Arakawa bought and the publication date on it was 1988 it was not a first edition as the series concluded in 1987. Volume 16 was first published in 1983.
• [3] Pehaps the most famous adaptation of the story is the 1954 version Sansho the Bailiff (山椒大夫/Sansho Dayu) by Kenji Mizoguchi. The animated version that Takahashi is referring to was released by Toei in 1961.
• [4] Takahashi illustrated her graffiti incident in the autobiographical short story My Sweet Sunday.
• [5] Laughing Target was released in 1983, approximately the same time that volume 16 of Urusei Yatsura would have originally been released. The manga is one of Takahashi's earliest horror stories. Along with the aforementioned Mermaid Forest both series showed Takahashi's range beyond comedy as they were both dark, violent stories.
• [6] Takahashi founded the manga club at Japan Women's University (日本女子大学/Nihon Joshi Daigaku) as well. She mentions that other clubmates were able to make their debut. This would be mangaka Hanako Meijiro (目白花子) who, in college, she wrote Dust in the Wind and Equation of Nirvana with.
• [7] This issue of Shonen Sunday included a footnote that mentioned Kazuhiko Shimamoto (島本和彦), Masami Yuki (ゆうきまさみ), Saburo Ishikawa (石川サブロウ), Kazuhiro Fujita (藤田和日郎), Yukinobu Hoshino (星野之宣) and Rie Takada (高田りえ).

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