Interview 2 (Part 1 of 2) - Dec. 25, 2017

http://konomanga.jp/interview/133182-2

'Today We’re Interviewing:[S1] Kaiu Shirai-sensei (Story) and Posuka Demizu-sensei (Art)!'

The Promised Neverland is a powerhouse title that started causing a sensation immediately after its run in Weekly Shonen Jump began, with the total number of copies printed zooming past one million [S2] in the blink of an eye.

Momentum unchecked, the title dominated a fierce battle teeming with noteworthy manga series to waltz off with first place in the Kono Manga ga Sugoi (This Manga’s Incredible)! 2018 Men’s category!!

The three main characters – Emma, Norman, and Ray – live at Grace Field House, a small orphanage, along with other children and a kind “mom.” It was a peaceful, happy life, and they thought it would go on forever… But that tranquility came to an abrupt end.

The reality of the orphanage, and the workings of the cruel world, were laid bare.

Having learned the truth, in order to survive, they made up their minds to escape—!!

This novel “escape fantasy,” its secrets, and as-yet-untold anecdotes about how the two creators teamed up have attracted intense interest from readers, and you’ll find a deluxe, eight-page interview in the main magazine, Kono Manga ga Sugoi! 2018! This time, we’re bringing you a “director’s cut” interview with writer Kaiu Shirai-sensei and artist Posuka Demizu-sensei which includes all the content that couldn’t be printed due to page space limitations, available only on Kono Manga ga Sugoi! WEB! This is an interview all manga fans have been waiting for, so whatever you do, don’t miss it!!

'Story: Kaiu Shirai'

Author. Debuted as a writer in 2015 with the one-shot The Whereabouts of Ashley Goeth[S3] in Shonen Jump+. In 2016, teamed up with artist Demizu-sensei for the first time on the Shonen Jump+ one-shot Poppi’s Wish[S4] . Both stories were very well-received, and the pair’s series The Promised Neverland has been running in Weekly Shonen Jump since August of the same year.

'Art: Posuka Demizu'

Artist. Active as a popular illustrator on the artist networking SNS “pixiv.” Also active as a manga creator on Coro Coro Comic’s I’m the Demon King!! Oreca Battle series, among others. In 2016, she made her Jump debut with the one-shot Poppi’s Wish in Shonen Jump+, and has been drawing The Promised Neverland series in Weekly Shonen Jump since August of that year.

A “Jump”-like Series from the Ultimate Tag Team

──The manga that, for both of you, is your first-ever series in Weekly Shonen Jump (hereafter “Jump”) has just taken first place in the Men’s category.

Shirai:　I wasn’t expecting that at all, so when I got the notification, I was startled. I’m thrilled, and at the same time, I’m terribly grateful and rather overawed. I’d love to share this delight with Demizu-sensei, our editor, the comics editor, the designer, and the readers who give us their constant support.

Demizu:　I’d like to just cut loose and rejoice, but the thought that a lot of people are going to be watching the series from now on makes me really flustered and self-conscious.

──Tell us about the events that led up to the launch of the series.

Shirai:　To begin with, I’d been submitting manga manuscripts and taking them on cold calls, but had had absolutely no luck with any of them. Then, while I was studying for a technical exam for a different job, I came up with a storyboard and drew it in two notebooks, and a friend of mine told me it was good. That storyboard was the prototype for The Promised Neverland, and at the time, it was over three hundred pages long.

──Three hundred pages!

Shirai:　Not only was the page-count high, but it wasn’t the sort of project I could cut down to one-shot size, so I figured I’d have to shelve it. However, that friend gave me a push, saying, “Even if it is just a storyboard, go on and make a cold call with it.” Then the editor who’s my current editor praised it far beyond what I’d expected, and picked it up. …So I’m technically a “corporate dropout-type” writer. (laughs)

──Why did you choose Jump as the destination for that cold call? From your style, I think you could just as easily have gone with a young men’s magazine, where there would have been fewer restrictions.

Shirai:　That was because I liked Jump. After they picked it up, I did realize, “Oh, you know, I may not have been a good fit for a boys’ magazine.”

──Readers say the series “isn’t like Jump” quite frequently, in a positive way. What made you aim for serialization in the main magazine, Weekly Shonen Jump, rather than in Shonen Jump+?

Editor:　At first glance, the project does look like an unusual one for Jump. However, at heart, it’s a “Jump-like” action story about overcoming overwhelming adversity and trials with hard work and friendship, and attempting to grasp victory in the form of an escape. Even on that initial cold call, Shirai-sensei said we should be able to make the series fascinating in a new way specifically by running it in the main magazine, and so we had our sights set on serialization there from the very beginning.

──So you started preparing for the series based on that three hundred-page storyboard?

Shirai:　We refined the storyboard, and while we worked on that, we searched for someone to handle the art. As part of that effort, I wrote other one-shots, and they published two of them (The Whereabouts of Ashley Goeth and Poppi’s Wish) in Shonen Jump+.

──And Demizu-sensei teamed up with you starting with that second story, Poppi’s Wish.

Demizu:　At first they told me, “There’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to run (the one-shot)” and “We don’t know if we’ll be able to do the series.” Up until then, I’d drawn illustrations for game and novel packaging, and I’d been working on a series geared toward young children in Monthly Coro Coro Comic (Shogakkan). However, this project came up just as that series ended, and I thought, “Even if it takes time, there’s really no reason not to give this a shot.”

──Why did you choose Demizu-sensei?

Shirai:　Because I thought she was “the ultimate.”

── “The ultimate”! Now there’s a phrase that sounds like Jump!

Shirai:　She can draw incredible monsters, her children are cute, she’s particularly good at androgynous girls, she’s able to use rich expressions to show how two-faced humans can be, she’s capable of creating worlds, her drawings of food look delicious…etcetera. I thought she was the ultimate on so many points I can’t count them all. I thought, “It’s all right if she turns down the offer; I just want to establish a connection with her,” so I asked her to help on the one-shot, fully prepared to be rejected.

──Demizu-sensei, what did you think when you first read Shirai-sensei’s storyboards?

Demizu:　I read the rough manuscripts for Poppi’s Wish and The Promised Neverland on the same day, and I thought, “Huh? That wasn’t anything like what I expected!”

──Both are significantly different from your earlier style, after all.

Demizu:　First, even as I was startled by how unlike Jump the content was, I was bowled over by the skill behind the composition. Take a class in school, for example: Even if it covers the same material, depending on the teacher, how interesting the class turns out to be differs wildly. This is just like that. Shirai-sensei has a genius for presentation. At the time, I’d been drawing art that was geared toward little kids, and so suddenly working on a suspense story made me uneasy, but I said, “I’ll do it!” They presented me with several alternatives and asked me which I wanted to draw, and I chose Poppi’s Wish.

Shirai:　I really am glad she agreed so readily. Demizu-sensei’s transcendent, super-fast art is practically god-like!

'What is it Like to Make Manga as a Team? A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Production!!'

──What does Shirai-sensei’s story look like when you get it, Demizu-sensei?

Demizu:　It’s formatted as a storyboard. They have fairly detailed instructions written on them, and I do my best to incorporate as many of those as I can.

──So it’s what they call a “storyboard manuscript,” then.

Demizu:　At first, the small size of the panels threw me for a loop, but I think I’ve gradually gotten better at drawing the detailed parts as well. Sometimes people ask me whether working from a storyboard manuscript feels restrictive, but it’s nothing of the sort. The style is significantly different from any of my previous projects, so the idea that what I’ve made is eventually going to define my own style is both strange and something I’m really looking forward to.

──From the comments under the creator portraits in the comics, you seem to look forward to the pictures Demizu-sensei draws quite a lot, Shirai-sensei.

Shirai:　There was a time when I submitted finished manuscripts and made cold calls with them. However, looking back, I never felt as if both the art and the story had to be all mine. The characters Demizu-sensei draws are vibrant, and it really feels as though they’ve had life breathed into them, so I enjoy that, for starters.

──Your art has changed from what it was before, hasn’t it, Demizu-sensei?

Demizu:　I’m reinventing it, so that the art won’t end up looking like my previous drawings. I took the deformed illustrations I used to draw for little kids, stretched them out like bread dough until their proportions looked human, then added Shirai-sensei’s style to them. And also…Jump! I add in the atmosphere of the Jump I used to read ages ago, and the style of the current Jump; it’s a mixture of a whole lot of things. I thought about how to depict the world of children – when working with main characters who are children – in a shonen manga, rather than a manga for very young kids. I want to work landscapes that feel the way they did to me when I was a child, from a child’s perspective, into this world.

Interview/Composition/Writeup: Ryuji Kayama

[S1]

No spoilers past…

Most recent volume released: Vol. 6

Most recent weekly chapter: Chapter 68 (Released the same day as this interview.)

[S2]This interview is from Dec. 25, 2017. By April 2018, the series had sold 4.2 million copies worldwide. By Jan. 2019, it was up to 8.8 million copies. (And that’s all pre-anime sales.) …So even at the time, this was either an understatement, or old news.

[S3]Story available in Jump+ for free (in Japanese). Find it here: https://shonenjumpplus.com/episode/10833497643049549911

[S4]This one’s also available in Jump+ for free, at this link: https://shonenjumpplus.com/episode/10833497643049550006