After the Rain and Kowloon Generic Romance Manga Artist Jun Mayuzuki

Jun Mayuzuki is an acclaimed manga artist best known for the coming-of-age drama After the Rain. Her latest series, Kowloon Generic Romance, ranked third in Takarajimasha's This Manga is Amazing! ranking in 2021 and was also a prize winner of the Manga Taisho award that same year. In this interview with ANN, Mayuzuki shares her inspirations for Kowloon Generic Romance, the research that went into creating it, and her feelings about categorizing it as sci-fi.

You've been drawing serialized, published manga since 2013. How did you get into drawing manga, and how did you arrive at doing it professionally?

Jun Mayuzuki: I get asked about how I became a manga artist or how I got into manga a lot. My parents really loved manga, so we had a ton of manga in the house. I was just in the right environment for both reading and enjoying manga and for creating manga. Instead of getting angry at me for reading manga, my parents were like, “Oh, you're reading that? Well, then you should read this one too.” They'd keep recommending me different series. I've also loved drawing ever since I was small. You add that to the fact that I was in a household full of manga, and it was sort of an inevitable outcome.

Right around that time, my parents bought me my first edition of Ribon, which was a monthly magazine published by Shueisha. It was the first time I saw how manga is serialized, how it comes out in these magazines, and how you're able to follow the story week after week, or month after month in the case of Ribon. The fact that you could follow these stories over time was so exciting and fun, and that really led to me thinking I really want to become a manga artist. It's fine to think that you want to become something, but then the question is, how would you become that thing? That part is a mystery even to myself. I just had this vague notion that I want to become a manga artist, and therefore I can become a manga artist. I was just kind of sure that I could do it, and it worked out for me as I am a manga artist now.

What has changed about your approach to producing manga in the ten years you've been doing it professionally?

MAYUZUKI: I used to draw everything analog. I never used digital, but then COVID hit, and I changed to brushing up my manga with digital tools. Even now, if I really feel like I want to do it with pen and paper, then I will. When I was starting the serialization for Kowloon Generic Romance, I had this vague idea of possibly switching to digital or incorporating some digital tools. I decided to go with analog, but then COVID happened, and I bought all these expensive tools and equipment for digital work. Now I incorporate it, but I really only just use it for brushing up screentone. I still draw the basics by hand. All of the covers of Kowloon Generic Romance are drawn by hand - the line art, the colors, all of it. So basically, it's still mostly analog, with a little bit of digital sprinkled here and there.

You mentioned in a 2020 interview that you had been interested in the Kowloon Walled City from a young age, including playing the PlayStation game Kowloon's Gate. Can you expand on that interest and how it led you to create Kowloon Generic Romance?

MAYUZUKI: I actually started feeling attracted to the structural appeal of the walled city in my elementary school years. I saw movies, documentaries, and photo books, and I really liked the concept and structure. I had this feeling of “I really love Kowloon City” in my heart. That led to this desire of one day drawing a manga that's set in Kowloon. I had this desire for a long time, but I couldn't come up with a story that I thought would fit the setting. I kept my love for Kowloon deep inside of me and just figured that one day, I'll come up with a story that matches this. “It'll come to me.” And it did!

The photo books I bought in middle school make for great reference material now. With that said, it's not like I thought, “Oh, I want to do a story set in Kowloon, and therefore I'm going to do the story.” It was the other way around. I came up with the story, and I thought Kowloon would be a great setting for the story.

This goes back to something I mentioned in a previous interview about that editor who told me that my manga is like a diary. If After the Rain is about my past emotions, and all these things that I loved were thrown into that work, Kowloon Generic Romance is basically the present, with a little bit of the future. I would like to focus on the present: the thoughts and feelings that I'm having right now, what I love in this present moment, how I'm living my life in the present moment. This concept of time is a big theme in my works. In Kowloon Generic Romance, there's not much reference to the future yet, but we are focusing on the present. If After the Rain is for my past self, then Kowloon Generic Romance is for my current self. And that is the keyword in the concept. And, yeah, that's how basically Kowloon led to the creation of this manga series.

Apart from your previous interest, what sort of research into Kowloon Walled City and other related cultural subjects did you conduct prior to beginning work on Kowloon Generic Romance?

MAYUZUKI: So, Kowloon Walled City doesn't exist anymore. It was taken down. There's a limit to how many photo books or photos exist of it. I actually tried to research a different place called Chongqing, which has a similar vibe to Kowloon. We considered going there to do our research since that place still exists, but that was right before travel became impossible on a global level. I haven't been able to go to see the places in person, so I try to look for materials for any other locations around Hong Kong that might have a similar feel to them. If I see a photo book of something in Hong Kong that showcases the crowdedness or the liveliness of the place, I just buy it on the spot. Honestly, I really want to go to meet the locals, to know what they're feeling, what kind of meals they eat, what the smell of the city is like, etc. I feel like that's something you can't tell unless you actually go there. I try to look for different ways to get a hold of that information. I follow people on social media and try to get information from Japanese people who are living in Hong Kong. I will look at their social media feed, thinking, “Oh, that's how much this meal costs,” or “Oh, that's how they live their daily life.” Or I'll look at their photos for inspiration and as a reference. Of course, I can't copy their photos for my drawings. That would be a total no-no, but I do look at it.

Since I can't go, given the state of the world, I draw from my experience in Taiwan since it's at least a place in Asia that has some similarities with Kowloon, such as having a lot of street stalls. I have a very strong policy that if I reference something from Taiwan, I make sure to say that in the manga. I don't want to mix up something from Taiwan with something from Hong Kong and just treat it like it's all the same. I do make that very, very clear. My big desire is to go and see how just the average person lives their life in Hong Kong. Otherwise, I just scour the internet and use what photo books I can find, but it's a pretty difficult process. I'm constantly worried that I might not be capturing the culture and atmosphere correctly since I've never seen it myself. It's always a huge relief to me when someone who's actually been to Hong Kong reads my work and tells me they felt the same atmosphere. It's a huge comfort every time I hear it.

You have a strong ability for plotting out virtually wordless sequences of panels in your storytelling. How do you approach conveying information in your stories without dialogue?

MAYUZUKI: One thing that's really important to me when I'm creating manga is to think about the tempo of the story. Not just the tempo inside the story but the rhythm of the real world if this manga was happening in real life. I think that a comfortable rhythm differs for each person, and this is the comfortable rhythm for me. I think it's very similar to rap. Rap music has this very steady rhythm. When I read manga, I can feel the rhythm that feels good to me. That's what I'm trying to incorporate into my storyboards. Sometimes, if I feel like a sequence is going too fast, I'll try to add a wordless panel in the middle to let the reader take a breath. It's like a pause in the music or a pause in the rhythm. From that point, we go fast, or we go slow, but there's like a set rhythm that I'm trying to keep with my sequences. I don't actually compose music myself, but I do try to draw my storyboards like I'm composing music. I think about the flow of the rhythm and the tempo of the storyline a lot. Obviously, not all readers are going to read my works at the same rhythm that I created it with, but I do think that anybody who has the same attraction towards this comfortable rhythm will find my works very attractive. Thinking about my work in terms of rhythm is just a habit for me now. That's why sometimes my works have panels that are very similar or come in sequential order. I'll have dialogue sequences and dialogue-less sequences. It's just a result of thinking about the rhythm of the work.

The art on Kowloon Generic Romance is incredibly detailed, especially the backgrounds. Do you have a specific process for conceiving and creating such lived-in-looking backgrounds like these?

MAYUZUKI: So, as far as Kowloon Generic Romance goes, I have this assistant named Mr. Tobise. Thankfully, he really likes drawing tiny details. I asked him to do the spread that shows up in Volume 1, Chapter 1, which is the same drawing that's used under the dust jacket of all the Japanese volumes of Kowloon Generic Romance. It's a very detailed cityscape of Kowloon. I was like, “I am so sorry, but this is what I want.” When I asked him to do it, I just felt so bad, but he was like, “Yeah, okay,” and just did it. If I was in his shoes, I would have quit working for me in two days. I really thought it was going to take him a whole day to do it, but he came back after a few hours. I was so surprised.

It's great that my assistant is really good at doing these tiny details, and he loves doing it. For Kowloon Generic Romance, there's so much of the inside of the city that gets depicted in the manga. According to Mr. Tobise, once you get the hang of it, it's really not that bad because there's a certain pattern to the way of things. For After the Rain, I did draw my own backgrounds, but it really took me a long time. I did have good assistants then too, but Mr. Tobise's doing most of the background work right now.

OKUMA-SAN (Jun Mayuzuki's editor): You know, you could do it. You have the ability and techniques to do it.

MAYUZUKI: Yeah, I could do it, but I don't really want to because it's going to take me a long time. For Mr. Tobise, it always seems to take less than I expect him to take. He's a really efficient worker. He's just a really, really competent assistant. I do obviously draw a lot of the work. There's a chapter title page with many Gene Terra plushies coming out of the door. I did draw all of that. I don't know how much hard work it is for Mr. Tobise, but he has said that he has a fun time doing it. He enjoys doing it.

Compared to After the Rain, which was very real-world based, Kowloon Generic Romance has more science-fiction and fantastical elements. How different was your approach to crafting a series like this after your previous one?

MAYUZUKI: Kowloon doesn't exist anymore, as previously mentioned, so it makes it difficult to draw it in today's world. I decided to make it a story about the not-so-distant future since I'm setting it in Kowloon, which is a place that no longer exists. There are some mysterious elements, such as people who aren't supposed to exist, yet they're alive in the story, but I don't think of my work as science fiction. I do think about the timeline of it, setting it in the near future.

SHUEISHA EDITORIAL STAFF: Maybe it's not "SF" like science-fiction. Maybe it's the way the manga artist Fujiko described "SF," which is ‘sukoshi fushigi’ in Japanese. So, "a little mysterious."

MAYUZUKI: don't know. I don't feel like I was intending it to be like that. I definitely don't intend it to be science fiction. I've heard feedback from readers who read it as science fiction, and they enjoy it as science-fiction. I think if my readers want to analyze it from a sci-fi standpoint, then that's fine. I'm not going to stop them, but personally, I'm not interested in science fiction. I do think that whether you set a story in the past, say, in the Sengoku Era, or if you decide to start a story in the future, the important thing is what kind of people live there? What kind of lifestyle are they leading? What kind of changes are they undergoing? What kind of growth are they undergoing? What are they obtaining throughout their lives? I feel like that's the important part of the story, and that's the part that I want to draw as a manga artist. If Kowloon still existed today, I might not have set it in the near future, but I would have still drawn the same story.

In terms of genre, where my works fit in has always been sort of a debate. Before I started serialization, I was doing these one-shots, and there will always be this question, “Where does this fit?” I kept experiencing this phenomenon of putting a story in a shojo manga magazine, and then I would get comments that it belongs in a seinen magazine. I published After the Rain in a seinen magazine for young men, but then I would get comments that it belongs in a shojo magazine because it's more romantic. Different readers seem to have different perspectives of my works, and that gives them different opinions about where my works fit in. I'm trying really hard right now to not obsess over where my work fits in. It's quite clear that maybe it's not up to me. I would prefer it if the publishers just take it and put it in a place where they feel like it would be easiest for readers to understand. As far as calling Kowloon Generic Romance sci-fi goes, that's not my intention. Sci-fi has its own fan base. If I were to say it's a sci-fi romance, I feel like the fans of science fiction are going to complain because it doesn't actually fit the mold of science fiction. So, we always say that it's a mystery, or what they call ‘suspense’ in Japanese - a genre of mystery that focuses on building tension and anticipation and having these mysterious components. Obviously, people are free to consider it whichever genre, but I don't want the science fiction police to come after me. There are also people who police me about the Kowloon-ness of my work, so there are police everywhere. It's really like mystery suspense, close to the genre of horror in Japanese literature called 'Kaidan,' which is when scary things happen in a very realistic setting.

Your works regularly focus on older characters, like both the leads of Kowloon Generic Romance and Masami in After the Rain. Can you describe any reasons for your interest in following these kinds of characters?

MAYUZUKI: I decided on having a woman in her 30s early on, and I feel like the reason might be because of my tendency to draw manga like I write diaries. In After the Rain, we had this teenage character, and it's not fun to do the same thing over again, so the characters in Kowloon Generic Romance are in their 30s.

If we look at Akira being 17 in After the Rain, then the next progressive step after that would have been to draw someone in their 20s, but I wanted to go further. It came at a time when there were no older adult female characters being prominently featured in young magazines. I thought having someone in their 30s is a good character setting for my next work, and 32 is just an age that I like. I like the sound of it. I like 32. It might seem kind of random, but I wanted to draw an adult woman. It's not actually Reiko who fits that bill. It's Kujirai B. She's the one that I really felt like I wanted to draw.

OKUMA-SAN: Mayuzuki-sensei is really good at showing the appeal of older characters, both men and women. It might be because she's just really good at observing them in that positive light and then putting that in her works.

MAYUZUKI: Yeah, maybe that is what it is. I do feel like older people just have more attractiveness to them. If I had to summarize the reason for having these older characters in my works in one word, it's my personal preference.

After the Rain and Kowloon Generic Romance are both stories of romance in some way. Has romance always been a favorite storytelling convention of yours? If you were to do a non-romantic story next, what do you think it would be?

MAYUZUKI: It's not that I especially love romance as a genre or as a material. As far as I'm concerned, there are not many romantic elements in After the Rain from my perspective, which is why I tried to pour that into Kowloon Generic Romance. I put it in the title as well - 'Generic Romance.' It's not like it's my favorite thing that I have special, strong feelings about.

Kowloon Generic Romance has been running since late 2019 for, as of this writing, a total of eight volumes. What are your hopes for the series as it continues and for the readers to get out of it as they keep following it?

MAYUZUKI: We were hoping to get it done in around 10 volumes, but I think it's going to take about 12 or 13 volumes. I don't want to extend the story or squish it down. I want to draw what I want to draw at the moment, but I do think that 10 volumes is a nice length. It's an easy length for people to pick up the series after it's finished, which is what we were aiming for. To my readers, I want to say that I know that this story is more complicated than my other previous works, and I know that some people are looking at it as a sci-fi story. However, the focus is more about how the characters live their lives, what kind of food are they eating, what kind of emotions are they feeling, what kinds of changes are they undergoing, etc. That's something that I've been trying to incorporate into my works ever since I was doing one-shots and short stories. I understand that some people might have fun with mysteries that are sort of scattered in this series, and if they want to have fun with it, that's fine. To any readers who are following along and getting a bit confused by the plot or feeling they can't keep up, I want you to really focus on the characters and follow the characters on their journey, because I think that is what's going to keep the story fun and interesting. If any of you are keeping up with Kowloon Generic Romance and following along, I would really appreciate it if you can keep up with me until the end of the series. Thank you.