The Manga Version

It was another afternoon at Itsuki’s place, the host goofing around in his apartment with Haruto and Nayuta a few days after his birthday party, when Kenjiro Toki stepped in for a visit.

“…What brings you here today?” Itsuki furtively asked. Toki responded by taking a sheaf of clipped-together paper out of a bag with the publisher logo on it and placing it on the kotatsu table.

“…What’s that?”

“Some samples from the artists we’re considering to handle the All About manga version.”

“…! Manga version…!”

Haruto and Nayuta murmured their “ooooh”s of curious interest, and their attention turned toward the sample sheets as Itsuki’s own eyes widened.

The process of “comicalization,” a made-up English-language term, was straightforward: Take a novel and make it into a manga. It was common for popular novels to receive this treatment as part of the adaptation blitz; many recent ones (including The “Hentai Prince” and the Stony Cat, The Sacred Blacksmith, and Ranobe-bu [“Light Novel Club”]) were high-quality productions in their own right, and some adaptations had even sold better than the original novels. You also saw cases like Haganai where the comic version not only scored high with Japanese audiences but proved a hit overseas as well, thanks to Itachi’s manga illustrations striking a chord with American comics culture. Over there, Haganai was better known for its manga than the novels or anime. It showed that the comicalization process held an important role in the international manga scene, much more than just another cash-in to please fans of the original story.

The publisher Itsuki and his friends contributed to had a monthly manga magazine called Comic Gifted, the home for serialized comic versions of Haruto Fuwa’s Chevalier and other popular in-house novel series. Itsuki’s own titles were all popular enough to merit manga projects as well, but the timing and other issues hadn’t quite all come together for them yet. With the anime project underway, though, a manga version was the perfect way to push the brand even more.

So Toki and the Gifted editorial staff wrote up a list of candidates to handle the comic, having each of them design the characters’ visual look and draw up a few sample scenes. That’s what was in the stack of paper on the table.

“I e-mailed all this to Hoshiimo, and he already replied to me. You, him, and the editorial team need to agree on an artist, and then the manga will kick off.”

“Hoshiimo” was the illustrator for the All About novels, an artist well known for his masterful depictions of the naked body. He lived far away enough that Itsuki never met him in person, but he was great at keeping a decent work schedule, he always stuck to his deadlines, and his quality was consistent, which made his talents widely sought after in the business.

“Hmm…”

Itsuki nervously picked up the sheets and unclipped them.

“We’ve narrowed it down to four candidates,” Toki explained as Itsuki began peering at the samples. “The first one’s put up a lot of Web manga on his personal site, and he’s gonna have a book of it published soon. He’s popular enough that it’d create a lot of buzz you both can benefit from.”

His character designs seemed a little oversimplified to Itsuki compared to the original novel illustrations, but the energy in the sample scenes attracted his attention. For story sections where the protagonist was doing all kinds of silly nonsense for the sake of his sister, it was perfect.

“Can we look, too?” Haruto asked.

“Oh, yeah, you and Kani have been reading All About, too, haven’t you?”

“Uh-huh!” Nayuta triumphantly bragged. “I’ve read everything Itsuki has ever written! Trust me, I’m the biggest fan of his original work in the universe!”

“Well,” Toki said, “feel free to provide your feedback as fans, then.”

Haruto and Nayuta peeked at the sheets from behind Itsuki.

“Hmm… Kinda phoning it in with the designs, don’t you think?”

“I like the composition, though. It oughtta work fine for the manga, wouldn’t it? If the women aren’t cute enough, though, I’m not sure that’s gonna work for a romantic comedy.”

It sounded like Nayuta and Haruto shared Itsuki’s impressions.

“It’s not bad, but let’s treat it as a backup,” he said as he put Candidate One’s pages on the tabletop.

“Okay. The next one is a popular contributor to art sites. He follows Hoshiimo online, and out of all the candidates, his style’s closest to the original art.”

“Oh…”

“That is pretty good art.”

“Yeah. Totally Hoshiimo. Cute girls, too.”

“As a manga, though, it’s kind of hard to read,” Itsuki said.

Nayuta and Haruto murmured their agreement. Drawing each panel of the manga in the exact style of the original novel illustrations was fine and all, but the panels didn’t flow well, and it didn’t feel like there was any energy behind the character’s actions.

“He really is a good artist, though…”

“Maybe it could work if you had someone else storyboard the panels, then he did the finished art. You know, like with Kure-nai?”

“Yeah…”

To the back burner he went.

“Number three’s a new guy who won a manga rookie competition. He’s already had a one-off story published in Gifted, and the reader feedback was pretty good.”

“Oh…?”

“Huh?”

“Hmmm?”

They looked at the candidate’s character designs as they listened to Toki, and what they saw made all of them voice their confusion at once. The hair, eyes, and other primary characteristics were all there, but the designs had been remixed to the point that you wouldn’t believe it was All About unless you were told so. But let go of your preconceptions, and they were unique, attractive, and had even more appeal than Hoshiimo’s own designs. The sample manga pages gave the same impression—bold in design and structure, but easy to read and well thought out. Simply look at one page, and something in you said “Well, this manga looks kinda neat.”

But:

“…It’s just not All About, you know?”

They were already different characters at the design stage, and that applied even more in the sample manga. They didn’t even speak the same way. Itsuki and Toki gave each other confused grins over it.

“Well, you know, this guy definitely has talent. As long as you keep him on a short leash as the novelist, he oughtta do fine for you…”

“Hmm…”

Itsuki was at an impasse. As a manga, it was definitely eye-catching. If he went with this guy, the comic could wind up becoming even more popular than the novels. But would it really be a “manga version” at all or something completely different?

“Um,” said Nayuta, “even I can tell that this manga artist has a ton of talent, but do you think he really wants to adapt this series at all?”

“…”

The room fell silent for a few seconds before Toki spoke up.

“…I was told he wanted to debut his own series, but the Gifted edit team wants to start him with an adaptation project first so that he can get used to a regular production schedule.”

“Ahhh.” Itsuki scowled. “Well, if it results in a good manga, I don’t really care what editorial’s motivations are. But…I dunno, I’m not too sure this artist really likes All About that much.”

The biggest issue Itsuki and Nayuta sensed from the samples was that, to put it bluntly, there just wasn’t any love for the original. Instead, they saw an artist who clearly believed his own manga was God’s gift to the industry. And it was pretty amazing. If it were an original series, it’d have tremendous allure. But this was a manga adaptation. It was fine for him to polish his skills and pursue his own unique style—Itsuki didn’t even mind if the results didn’t replicate the original very much—but as an author overseeing an adaptation like this, you at least wanted to be sure the artist enjoyed his work.

“…To be honest,” a troubled-looking Toki said with a smile, “I agree. He oughtta have a chance at an original series. I’ll suggest that to his editor.”

Then Itsuki’s attention turned toward candidate number four—and the moment he saw the design for series protagonist Kazuma Akatsuki and his sister, Ichika, on the first page, his eyebrows arched up.

“Whoa…!”

Page two featured the Onizaki siblings, the two main supporting characters, alongside Shirogane the owl, the series’ comic-relief mascot. On the next page stood the main cast’s long-suffering teacher, their classmates, and the principal/vice-principal duo who served as antagonists.

Itsuki spent a lengthy amount of time sizing up each of their designs. Was it an exact duplicate of Hoshiimo’s illustrations? No. Candidate Two’s art was far, far closer. But while these designs reflected the artist’s own personal style, they perfectly encapsulated what stood out with each character, brilliantly reworking each one to make them truly the creator’s own.

He could feel his emotions rise as he turned the page to peek at the manga sample. There, before his eyes, he found the cast of All About come alive. This character totally runs like this when he’s in a hurry. This character tenses her body up like this when she’s shouting. This character contorts his face like this when something surprises him. When this character’s laughing, the rest of her body is doing this. Not only did this art faithfully recreate how Itsuki described the action in his books, even all the little details that he didn’t put into text seemed totally natural to him. They were all living, breathing people, each with their own unique look and personality quirks.

The little-sister characters in particular, Ichika Akatsuki and Yukiko Onizaki, practically jumped off the page. The backgrounds and minor characters were all done up in excellent quality, but even more effort had clearly been expended on the sisters, making it clear who were the most important people in the story. It shared more than a few things in common with Itsuki’s style, which devoted special care to how the girls were described in the novels.

“Wow…who is this…?”

Itsuki found himself blinking rapidly, feeling something warm welling up from behind his eyeballs. The emotion he felt ran deep. It was amazing to think that anyone besides Hoshiimo the illustrator could so flawlessly express the world of his story.

“Hohhh…”

“Wow, neat…”

As Nayuta and Haruto gawked at the sheets, Toki explained. “The fourth one is a college student who cold-called the manga edit team three or so months ago. She’s totally new—no work in the fandom, nothing published in other magazines. Apparently she’s into the little-sister theme, too, and she’s read all of Itsuki’s work, so the team brought up the idea of giving her the All About adaptation—but really, we had no idea she had this in her.”

“…I see. So is this editorial’s pick?”

“Yeah, this one. And Hoshiimo agreed with them, too.”

Itsuki cracked a soft smile. “Great. Well, I guess we’re all in agreement.”

“…I’m not so sure about having a college girl working on it, but no, I wouldn’t hesitate to leave All About in her hands.”

Haruto laughed at Nayuta’s sudden bout of haughtiness. “Good thing you found the right artist, though, huh? Seriously.”

And that was that.

She wrote under the pen name Kaiko Mikuniyama, a twenty-year- old college student and newbie manga artist who loved little-sister stories and clearly had vast wells of talent to tap. Having such an outstanding artist handle this manga filled Itsuki with delight—because at this point, he had no idea of the storm he was in for.