The thing is that I don't normally think in terms of manga when I'm writing. Sounds odd from someone who has is getting a reputation for doing manga related work. But I would say that my scripts are NOT manga at the stage of my writing process, they are just comic book stories in a more general sense.

Despite the variety my books reflect my, perhaps foolish, tendency to place artistic above financial concerns; of enjoying the more mature themes in whatever creative form; of being on a mission to show that comics are not just for kids; and on a wider level of standing up for individuality against conformity.

Most comic book creators consider about making characters that people recognize and that can carry across many books. Something that becomes a trademark. For me I have always just followed IDEAS, and that takes me into a whole range of things.

Writing about a place is, of course, one good way of feeling close to it, feeling you have made something out of your interaction with that place. It's like a marker of your own experience, of that time in your life.

The thing is that I don't normally think in terms of manga when I'm writing. Sounds odd from someone who has is getting a reputation for doing manga related work. But I would say that my scripts are NOT manga at the stage of my writing process, they are just comic book stories in a more general sense.

An aspect of 'post-modern' approach to history is to include the mistakes and the prejudices of the era, without modernizing them or 'correcting' them according to our modern ideals.

Me being from a Celtic culture that tends to emphasize directness, conflict, openness has a big effect on my living in Japan, which tends to focus on indirectness, avoidance of conflict and keeping things close to your chest. So that has led to quite a lot of cultural misunderstandings in dealing with this East Asian culture I live in.