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Lain said:

Some of your fans say that had you not decided to become a mangaka, you'd have been a perfect serial killer. What's your opinion?
Kago: I agree!

I'm reading a couple interviews with Kago (together with Furuya for the first one) done during Lucca 2015 and I was wondering if anyone here would be interested in some bad translations.

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Dedication Through Light said:

Wow he looks so good in formal attire on his cover. I wish Shuji and Inukai could have been on it too.

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Lain said:

Some of your fans say that had you not decided to become a mangaka, you'd have been a perfect serial killer. What's your opinion?
Kago: I agree!

I'm reading a couple interviews with Kago (together with Furuya for the first one) done during Lucca 2015 and I was wondering if anyone here would be interested in some bad translations.

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wonzo said:

hell yeah

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How did your passion for comics come to be? Both as readers and creators.

Furuya: Before becoming a mangaka I worked as an art teacher at a high school right after getting my degree from the Academy of Fine Arts. I started drawing manga at the same time. I dealt with contemporary art but I started feeling unsatisfied with my path when I was 24 years old and remembering the love I had for drawing when I was a kid, I decided to become a mangaka.
It was like a bolt out of the blue. When I did contemporary art I needed a lot of money while the thought that to draw manga all I need is a piece of paper and a pen fills me with satisfaction. I'm really grateful for the simple means needed to create a manga but at the same time I'm grateful for the path I followed because it led me to where I am now.

Kago: When I was young, at age 5-6, I liked drawing manga, in high school I joined a mangaka group and I started drawing. At that time I wasn't yet thinking about making it my job but I desired getting a creative job since I was young. Back then more than manga I liked cinema so my desire was to enter that world to become a director or a producer. However to produce a movie you need a lot of money and to expend a lot energy so, when I realized that the path to become a director was too difficult, I asked myself what I could do alone in a similar direction and I thought about manga.
I started when I was 19 years old and I understood that it was my path. For the time being I want to keep making manga but, who knows, maybe one day I'll try a new experience in the visual arts' field.

Sometimes in your works can be noticed the presence of the author in the story. Is it a way to get in touch with the public or to better express and explore the story?

Furuya: No Longer Human and Palepoli come to mind. In the manga based on Dazai's novel, which takes place in modern times, we start from Yozo's diary getting found. As I was working on it, I was reflecting on who could be the person who finds it and I thought about myself. This way can be conveyed a greater sense of realism to the reader but it is also satisfying for the author, because he draws the story at the same time as he's reading the diary.
Probably compared to other mangaka I am aware of my will to insert my figure in my stories, maybe it happens as a byproduct of the manga I read as a kid, Tezuka's ones for example. I was happy when I saw an author I loved inside his own manga, so once I became a mangaka I may have wanted my readers to feel that same happiness.

Kago: I show up in Fraction. In this story takes place a terrible murder and my character, Shintaro Kago, gets involved. There is a reason for all this: it is obviously a fictional story but I wanted to create a realistic atmosphere and to do that I put myself in the story, I wanted the line between reality and fiction to be very feeble. To reach this realism in the drawings I had my photograph taken and I traced it. Those who read Fraction know that at some point in the story there is a big twist, in a sense it could be said that I deceived the reader by putting myself in the story and making the reader believe that it was a real episode.

Both authors show a careful look at the present in their stories. The scenarios in which those stories take place are always very real and often show very raw details of present Japan. I wonder if they do it with a critical eye or whether it is a simple observation of what is present Japan.

Kago: In my stories I also dealt with the past and the future. To create a story I'm often inspired by true events I heard on TV or I've read in the newspaper and from chats with friends, so my stories reflect the current Japan in a satirical manner.
I like to use satire or black humor because I've always been a fan of Monty Python, which influenced me a lot; I watched the film at the cinema in eight grade, the way to make people laugh was completely different from the usual programs on Japanese television, it spoke of things that were taboo for Japanese morals.

Furuya: I write with the intention of calling attention to the problem of modern society, for example, No Longer Human talks about a boy who little by little becomes an outcast. 51 Ways to Protect Her instead talks about an earthquake hitting Tokyo and I analyze the behaviors the people involved could have and how the city could be affected: it's a manga set in the future but based upon a fact potentially real, the aim is therefore to stop and think about issues that are often ignored, to think about what could happen but also about how such a disaster could be avoided or resolved. I'm often misunderstood, I don't limit myself when I portray very strong scenes, but my purpose is not only to draw those kind of scenes.

What brings you to show violence in so much detail in your stories?

Furuya: There are very bloody scenes in Hikari Club, murders, but the moral of the story is that we shouldn't kill people, my drawings want to send this message: it's wrong to kill or to make someone kill. It's a kind of complaint, one has to understand this in their own heart.
Also in 51 Ways to Protect Her, the bloody scenes, the dead bodies, I showed those exactly to make people understand how terrible the violence that breaks out when such a disastrous event happens can be.
I'm a very nice person, I have two kids, so even if I draw these things my message is the opposite of what it might seem.

Kago: Instead I like to draw violent scenes a lot. Furuya sensei talked about his kids, but I'm also the father of a 6 years old girl. My daughter says "my dad is that one who draws the exploding heads!". Anyways I consider my stories as comedies, if you think about mute movies, you might remember that there are often explosions but they made you laugh. Monty Python also makes you laugh showing squirting blood, maybe in Europe black humor is more widespread. I consider my stories as comedies but I understand that someone might not perceive them as such.

Which past authors influenced you?

Furuya: As well as Osamu Tezuka, when I was in middle school there were Azuma Hideo, Moroboshi Daijiro, in high school Maruo Suehiro. I can't count them all, I like a whole lot Miyazaki, also the German painter Gerhard Richter. They're all part of who I am today.

Kago: In regards to the drawings, as a kid I liked Mizuki Shigeru, growing up I liked a lot Otomo. When I was young I was smitten by the surrealism of Salvador Dalì. In regards to the stories, I've been influenced by Monty Python, Fujiko F. Fujio. I also like a lot the novelist Yasutaka Tsutsui, author of The Girl Who Leaps Through Time, he wrote many stories which are different from that one, the complete opposite of it.

Kago sensei talked about the "deception scene" in Fraction, he also used that technique in another of his manga, Harem End. Something similar also happens in a David Lynch's movie. Did he take inspiration from that movie or from similar scenes in other movies?

Kago: No, I didn't take inspiration from that movie but from some Japanese detective stories. I like detective stories very much, for example, in Sherlock Holmes, Watson tells what his friend Sherlock does; detective novels create the illusion that a fantastical event could be real. It also happens often in the manga world that an author manifest himself in his stories.

What do you know of European comics and what do you think of them? Which similarities and which differences do you find with Japanese comics?

Kago: Few American and European comics reach Japan, I took inspiration from Moebius but most mangaka don't know European authors. Yesterday I noticed many comics with a manga style, almost like hybrids, so maybe the barrier between European and Japanese comic is fading little by little. In the last few years it seems like European authors are giving more importance to facial expressions, maybe it happens because they are taking inspiration from manga.

Furuya: Instead I own many European comics, for example Moebius and Enki Bilal, I believe that these two authors have had a strong impact on Japanese cartoonists. Moebius has definitely influenced the authors I mentioned before, and we too have been influenced by two Japanese authors who were themselves influenced by Moebius. Manga have become a lot more stylish and modern thanks to the influence of this author. Japanese drawing style had thick and static lines before compared to the European drawing style, maybe, without this author even Death Note might have been drawn with a different style.

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Lain said:

First one

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Lain said:

First one

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Lain said:

First one

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