Yu Aida (相田 裕 Aida Yū, born November 8, 1977) is a Japanese manga author and illustrator best known for his work Gunslinger Girl. Aida has done character designs for the eroge visual novel, Bittersweet Fools. His latest work is the manga "1518!"[1] He actively posts on Twitter.[2]
From November 30, 2007 to February 22, 2008 he was interviewed in the Italian serialization of Gunslinger Girl (archived link here with translation).[3] According to the interview, he is very meticulous with his background research. He visited Italy on at least three occasions. The storyline for Gunslinger Girl was completed very early in its serialization. Yu Aida worked on Gunslinger Girl: Il Teatrino (season two) as an advisor and series compositor.[4][5]
On December 7, 2011 the website "Natalie.Mu" published an interview with Yu Aida in anticipation of the manga's finale.[6]
Meiji University hosted a Gunslinger Girl exhibit from 2013-2014 to celebrate the 10 year runtime and finale of the manga series.[7] The exhibit showcased Yu Aida's works, merchandise, a genealogy of motifs used in the manga, and words from the author. The "reconstruction" of humans motif was inspired by Sci-Fi works like Battle Angel Alita.[8] He thanked Madhouse studio for their work in creating Gunslinger Girl season one with little source material to work with. (Ed note: S1 was created with about 1-2 volumes of source material, that's crazy.)[9][10]
Translated Meiji Exhibit Commentary Page
"You see, “Gunslinger Girl” is a work of fiction, but (or maybe because of that) I’ve been very careful to draw the most possible realistic settings, picturing aspects from the Italian everyday life that are not necessary linked to the postcard images of the big Art Cities. Of course all the foreign tourists know them and they can easily identify them, and this helps a mangaka a lot because you can evoke a particular atmosphere just drawing a monument or a landscape. But the tourist destinations don’t represent the entirety of the Italian reality. It’s necessary to maintain a realistic stroke because “Gunslinger Girl” is a work of fiction and you can’t let it became too unlikely to eyes of the the readers.
For that reason I often wanted to go to Italy and to directly collect information. So far I’ve had the possibility to go there three times and whenever I’m drawing “Gunslinger Girl” in my studio in Japan I often dream how easy and satisfying it would be to live and to draw there."
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1518!
- ↑ https://twitter.com/aidayu02/with_replies
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20211006025210/https://hastebin.com/raw/witegigaxo
- ↑ https://anidb.net/anime/5418#stafflist
- ↑ Yu Aida Interview with Federico Colpi (D/Visual )
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20190421083701/https://natalie.mu/comic/pp/gunslingergirl
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20191009081659/https://www.meiji.ac.jp/manga/yonezawa_lib/exh-aida_gun.html
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20191009081814/https://www.meiji.ac.jp/manga/yonezawa_lib/archives/exh_aida_gun/index.html
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Gunslinger_Girl_chapters
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Gunslinger_Girl_episodes
- ↑ Yu Aida Interview with Federico Colpi (D/Visual )