Looking Over the Shoulder of a Gensaku-sha (article)
Looking Over the Shoulder of a Gensaku-sha- by Katherine Dacey
Manga-ka is a term that most Tite Kubo and Fumi Yoshinaga fans learn early in their love affair with the medium. We recognize that the process of developing a story from script to finished project may well involve a team of artists and letterers working under the supervision of more established manga-ka, but still credit one person for bringing Bleach or The Antique Bakery to life. But in her recent post at Drama Queen’s new RUSH blog, Tina Anderson sets out to debunk this misperception. She explains that manga-ka frequently collaborate with gensaku-sha, or writers, in much the same way as mainstream American comics artists do:
The writer/artist team is a standard in most manga genres, only within the last 10 years has the individual artist as story writer, become more prominent. Also, it seems to be the norm to many fans, because one-person creators are more active, in the popular licensed genres stateside [shoujo/shounen].
A similar misperception about the creative process exists in Japan as well, despite the fact that the prolific Kazuo Koike achieved fame without drawing a single panel of his canonic series Lone Wolf and Cub, Crying Freeman, and Lady Snowblood. Dark Horse editor Carl Horn explains:
Even in Japan, people tend to think in terms of “how to draw manga” rather than of the larger and more important question of “how to create manga.” Kazuo Koike’s confidence in the power of the writer as a force led him in 1977 to establish the Gekiga Sonjuku program to educate new creators: many of whom draw as well as write, but who have benefited from Koike’s dramatic, confrontational theories on character creation. The course is named for gekiga-the 1950s and 60s movement towards contemporary realism and relevance in manga that introduced the adult presentation of themes into a medium previously regarded as for children only. Two of the most famous graduates of the Gekiga Sonjuku are Rumiko Takahashi (creator of Inu-Yasha, Ranma 1/2, and Urusei Yatsura) and Tetsuo Hara (artist of Fist of the North Star).
So how do an artist and a writer collaborate on such a visually-oriented product? Anderson illuminates the process. She herself is a gensaku-sha, though she strongly prefers the term “comics writer” to describe her contribution to Roulette, the hard-boiled BL story that she and artist Laura Carboni are publishing in RUSH. In her recent blog post, Anderson walks readers through the process of transforming her initial outline from script to storyboards to finished product. Along the way, we’re treated to sneak peeks at a script in progress, and artwork in various stages from quick pencil sketches to inked images. Oh, and pictures of very sexy men. (How could I forget the most important detail?) Even if BL/yaoi-or, as Anderson likes to call her work, “mens’ love”-isn’t your cup of tea, the entry is worth reading for the insights it offers into the creative process.
I found the entry especially interesting, as “Roulette” was the only RUSH story that tickled my fancy. With its mixture of macho posturing, mob intrigue, pulpy dialogue, and straight-outta-Scarface costumes, “Roulette” won me over. As David Taylor opined in his final post at LoveManga, “Roulette” is “so manly even Carl [Horn] would be reading this.”
For more information about Roulette (as well as Anderson’s other projects), visit her blog Guns, Guys and Yaoi.