This interview supposedly appeared in the Italian syndication of Gunslinger Girl and was published in fragments from November 30, 2007 to February 22, 2008.
Translation credits: Reid & KodokuRyuu of Cyborg Central
Interviewer: Let’s get started with the standard question, which in your case is definitely inevitable, because there is very little information about you on the internet: some personal data.
Aida: My name is Yu Aida and I was born on 8th November 1977 in Tochigi Prefecture, not far from Tokyo.
I: “Flowers”, published in 2001, and “Gunslinger Girl” are your two first works as a mangaka. What did you do before?
A: I attended university, where I was in the “club for studying manga[1]” and in the meantime I drew for some fanzines. I always loved manga, but after the degree I started working for a videogame company as an illustrator. The opportunity to become a professional mangaka came later, when I started to serialize “Gunslinger Girl” in a magazine.
I: The first time I saw “Gunslinger Girl” was in the 2001. I remember that the person in charge of a publishing house which we had close connections to told me to come to him because he had something to show me. When I arrived he was all excited and he showed me some photocopies of the illustrations of “Gunslinger Girl”. It was slightly different from the series you published later, but it was possible to see some common points, like the choice of Italy as the setting and the idea of using little girls with biomechanical limbs as killers. Some years later I was surprised to see that manga published by an editor so important as MediaWorks!
A: You probably saw the illustrations I drew for a fanzine. It was a short story of three chapters about 16 pages each. I published it between 1998 and 2000, while I was still attending the university. Many “experts” who read it were favorable surprised by it and so shortly later I begin to serialize it in “Dengeki Daio”, a monthly magazine owned by MediaWorks. Since the publication on a periodical requires a more developed plot than a short story I decided to revise and enrich all the plot, even if the two elements you pointed before remained practically the same since the fanzine.
I: A novice who had to work on a monthly series: it must have been a lot of work! Had you already gotten any assistants at the time?
A: No, the first chapters were drawn entirely by me, and they required superhuman effort…!
I: I didn’t expect you were a member of a “club for studying manga” and that you drew for some fanzines. I’m saying this because in your drawing style is difficult to find influences from any particular artists; so I always thought of you as a videogame illustrator become mangaka “by chance”, rather than a mangaka who started his career as a videogame illustrator.
A: Truth is I’ve been influenced by many authors and many works. For instance, I think “Gunslinger Girl” owes a lot to Masami Yuki’s “Mobile Police Patlabor”, Ken’ichi Sonoda’s “Gunsmith Cats”, and Naoki Urasawa’s “Master Keaton” and “Pineapple Army”. They all are authors that I love and respect, even if I don’t really have a favorite manga or author.
I also believe that many readers could misunderstand this work at the beginning: being published in a magazine which mainly contains comic or videogame related manga which are all about seductive girls, it’s often confused for a manga of that kind, especially because all the main characters are girls. Truth is that this has nothing to do with these categories: my narrative choices are very similar to the seinen manga like Urusawa’s ones, while the psychological introspection in my characters is often comparable to the stylistic features of the shoujo manga.
I: From the reading of “Gunslinger Girl” we can notice your deep knowledge of classic music, literature, cinema…
A: During my academic years I was attending the Faculty of History, with a major degree[3] in western history, so I’ll say that I’ve a general smattering on all western cultures. But I’ll not say that it’s a “deep knowledge”: it’s more appropriate to say “vast, but shallow knowledge”, of a standard academic level.
About movies, as you rightly observed, they are one of my main sources of inspiration, which have provided me many decisive impulses in my creative work.
I: Many mangaka, especially the ones of the “first generation” like Osamu Tezuka, always affirmed that they wanted to become movie directors instead, but due to Japan’s straitened circumstances during the post-war period they had to put their ideas on the paper instead of the film…
A: That’s right. Still now in Japan, due to budget reasons, it’s impossible to realize movies that can compete against the Hollywood ones. Me too, if I had the means and possibilities, I’d like to direct movies rather than drawing manga. But manga are still a kind of movie, with the fundamental difference that in manga there is only one person who is director, producer and “actor” at the same time. This could be an advantage, because it lets you have control on every production stage, while huge projects like a movie require efforts from hundreds of people and the skill to co-ordinate the staff and the cast, plus the need to accept every small compromise required by a team work. On the other hand, it’s the same for anime…
I: Are there some movies that you particularly love?
A: I’d have to make too long a list! I’d say that I generally prefer psychological introspection movies rather than action ones.
I: Even the “Bittersweet Fools” video game, which was published before “Gunslinger Girl”, is set in Italy, more precisely in Florence. From what did you develop this love for so distant a country?
A: If we want to be precise, the fanzine version of “Gunslinger Girl” is my first work set in Italy; then there is “Bittersweet Fools” and lastly the “Gunslinger Girl” series. I believe that one of the first reasons that drove me to choose Italy as a setting for my stories is that manga set in your country are extremely rare in Japan.
During the ’90s there were many manga which portrayed America, England or other English-speaking countries. There were also a few about Germany or German culture. I chose Italy to do something different from what was already available.
And what was just a pictorial excuse in the fanzine version of “Gunslinger Girl” has successively become a deep personal interest for Italy during the making of “Bittersweet Fools”. I remember that, when we decided to set it in Florence, I went to search some documentation about the city and I found a sort of tourist guide which contained a small poster of the Arno’s view where it crosses the city.
It fascinated me as soon as I saw it and in that moment the irresistible desire to visit and know those places better was born in me. Still today, even if I have the chance to visit many Italian cities, Florence is still one of my favorite destinations.
I: So did you not visit Italy for the first time until after you painted it in the fanzine version of “Gunslinger Girl” and in “Bittersweet Fools”?
A: That’s right. The Italy which appears in those two works is just a result of my imagination and of a wide iconographic stock which I referred to.
I: I thought you visited Italy many times, because in your manga there are cities like Taormina or Montepulciano which are definitely famous, but they aren’t the typical destinations of the Japanese tourism.
A: 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.
I: About the realism, you’re very accurate even when you draw cars, mechanical objects and weapons. A personal passion?
A: We can tell that it’s the result of a general interest that we men have for this kind of things. To tell the truth I don’t have a particular passion, or at least not more than anyone else of my age. But I’m interested in the industrial design and in the continuous pursual of the union between beauty and functionality which is characteristic of every Italian designer. Both cars and weapons of your country share an incomparable elegance, esthetical beauty, and usability, and this is something really fascinating.
I: You defined “Gunslinger Girl” as a fictional story with a lot of realistic components without which the manga would become unbelievable. I think this is not restricted to just the graphical aspect of the series, but also to other aspects like the references to the North autonomist movements and the conflict with the Rome government, even if in the manga these aspects are very exaggerated compared with reality…
A: The girls in “Gunslinger Girl” belong to a killer government association that deals with “dirty” works and particularly with anti-terrorism activities, which, if carried out in the sunlight, would be condemned by the public opinion and by the organizations for the defense of human rights. When we speak about terrorism, especially in Japan, lately we think of the Islamic one: when I went to publish “Gunslinger Girl” in a magazine there was the attack on the Twin Towers. Since then, in stories and in manga, “terrorism” became a synonym for “Islamic terrorism”.
As I already said, I hate to tell stories similar to the ones already written, so I decided to search for different ideas, more intrinsic to the European and Italian reality. It was then that I bumped into the anti-globalization theme, into the diffusion of far right ideology in a wide part of Europe during the 90’s and into the studies about the red and black[4] terrorism in Italy during “the Years of Lead[5]”.
I remember a book about the federalism and the autonomist movements of North Italy, and those topics fascinated me because they gave me the idea to develop some very radical and original ideas. After I made them extreme, they became the ideological framework for those terrorist groups that I chose to be the “enemies” of my main characters. Also, from my external point of view, I noticed a curious contradiction between the European unity in Italy and the presence of some centrifugal forces which tended to break up the local groups. The same topics of the racism toward and the marginalization of immigrants are difficult to understand for a Japanese like me, who imagines Europe like a puzzle of different countries that are trying to forget their differences and their previous conflicts to forge a new socio-political organization.
I: In the manga, the nationalists are also called “the Five Republics Faction”. Where did you get this name?
A: Right from the book I was talking about. Between a lot of theses there was one about the constitution of five independent republics: North, Centre, South, Sicily and Sardinia. The name derives right from this concept, even if the terroristic organization of the “Five Republics” as it appears in the manga hasn’t got anything in common with the Italian federalists. I don’t know how an Italian would react while reading this manga, because I’d never have imagined that it’d be translated and published in Italy!
I: A very direct question: at the end of your studies, your travels and your researches, what opinion do you have of Italy?
A: That it’s a country which gives extreme importance to personality and to originality. Japan obviously has its culture, but if you look closely you’ll find that it has been heavily influenced by other eastern and western civilizations.
On the contrary, Italy boasts an highly autonomous and original culture. I think it’s one of the aspects that fascinates many of us Japanese people.
I: The subject of a child fighter with a mechanical body has already been developed in the past, for instance in Go Nagai’s “Cutie Honey”, but with a total different outcome. “Gunslinger Girl” is maybe the first manga to depict with so much delicacy and depth the feelings of the girls transformed into machines. At a structural level, we can notice that you alternate action episodes and introspective ones, as if you were trying to picture the feelings of the “marionettes”, but at the same time you were conscious of the need to keep alive the interest of the readers with more lively scenes. Should the existence of so accurate a structure make us suppose that you already know how you’ll develop the story and how you’ll end it?
A: The main topic of “Gunslinger Girl” is the representation of the personalities and the sufferings of these little girls with a mechanical body. As a “plus” I added the description of very delicate and complex human relationships and some narrative elements so that they can form in the mind of the reader the illusion of a realistic and plausible story. All these topics merged into an unicuum in a very spontaneous and natural way; this is something that, as an author, made me very proud. From the beginning I had already in mind how “Gunslinger Girl” would end, but with the passage of time I added and developed various topics and stories which “averted” the ending. But now the story is coming to a climax and soon the moment to put the basis for the ending that I have had in mind for years will arrive. Probably the story will take up about ten/twelve volumes.
I: Be honest, did you expect this success from your first work?
A: No, absolutely not, even if I were aware that it was an interesting subject that could fascinate a large slice of readers.
I: “Gunslinger Girl” suffered a peculiar destiny in Italy: the first edition of the manga was interrupted after two volumes, the anime even after the first episode. Despite all these problems, the Italian fans are many and very warm. What do you feel about coming to know them in person during some convention or meeting, maybe during another one of your “study visits” in Italy?
A: It’d be an extraordinary pleasure! I’m a Japanese author who draws for the readers of his country: it makes me curious to know how my work would be welcomed in Italy, where it’s set, and it would be very nice to directly hear the opinions of my readers.
I: One last question: what could you tell us about the new anime of “Gunslinger Girl”?
A: In Japan, it will be aired on a local network starting January 7, and its title will be “Gunslinger Girl – Il Teatrino[6]”. It will be a TV adaption of the third through the fifth volumes, the ones where Pinocchio appears. The main difference compared with the first series is that for this one I’ll be in charge even of the screenplay and the general supervision. Also the entire staff and the production company have changed: the production has been entrusted to Artland studio and the director will be Hiroshi Ishidori. For the screenplay, I’ll be helped by a pro – Tatsuhiko Urahata.
It’s my first time working directly on the production of an anime and I hope that all the public will appreciate the outcome!
[1] I think it’s something like the club of “Genshiken”. I don’t know how to translate it though. The Italian translation is probably wrong anyway, but I think you get the idea.
[2] He drew “Bittersweet Fools”, an hentai game quite similar to Gunslinger Girl. It will be cited later anyway.
[3] I can’t even start to explain what a mess the Italian university system is. I suppose there is not something like what I translated here in Japan (and probably even USA and UK), but I can’t do better than this.
[4] The “red terrorism” is the left-wing terrorism. The “black terrorism” is the right-wing terrorism. I don’t know if it’s an universal concept so I’m pointing it out.
[5] “The Years of Lead” are an historical period between 1968 and the late ‘70s where there were a lot of terroristic attacks, especially by a left-wing autonomist movement called “Red Brigades”.
[6] Il Teatrino is the place where marionettes stand during a play.