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It sucks to work on labor day. Luckily, I didn’t have to do TOO much work. But I’ve had a lot of different projects to work on lately, several short story ideas that Bikkuri and I have been trying to work on. Sometimes it’s hard to gather up all the inspiration needed to start a new story…The other day I started reading the newsest manga by the author of Yakitate Japan, Saijou no Meii. It’s a medical drama (?) manga, and..well, it just made me think about certain authors that decide to choose a very specific subject to base their story on (such and bread, or pediatric surgery)and the amount of intense, at times ridiculous amounts of research that goes into creating them. I find something really interesting..almost noble about it for some reason. I suck at writing stories, that’s why I have a writer. But just for fun, I was trying to figure out if my limited knowledge of the world lent itself to me being able to create a specialized series, like, what subjects do I actually know the most about? It turns out that besides manga itself(which doesn’t count) I know the most about forensic science, and animals. Sooo…yeah…I don’t think I wanna do a manga like that.

I’ve been eating pretty poorly lately…and as a result have had physical repercussions. So in the past week I’ve been trying really hard to change my diet a little, mainly by eating more fruits and veggies. Before I ate almost none..(I was a carbovore). Today I made some chunky gazpacho. And I thought…wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a guy named Chunky Gazpacho? He could easily be a bad Mexican stereotype character in some shonen manga. He’d fight with demon possessed maracas and say “Adios, Amigo! Buenas Noches!!” when he did his super attack.

I read Bakuman yesterday, the new series by Takeshi Obata and Tsugumi Ohba. It was pretty good…but sorta like…they might be trying to hard…. I dunno. At any rate, I’m pretty excited to see how it goes, and I hope it doesn’t end up getting canned because I think I might actually learn a thing or two from it!

This isn’t really related, but a dear friend of mine, of Paperninja.net, has set a shop to sell some of his delightful prints. They’re pretty cute…and look nice on a wall. (yes, I bought one..)

Thanks to S magazine I’ve been fortunate enough to have been introduced to the works of Ikuko Hatoyama. She does an original illustration for each issue that’s published and for the longest time I wondered who she was and what other illustrations she did.

Well, it turns out that she has quite a long history as a manga artist, and a really spectacular one at that. When I was in Japan I picked up some of her most recent works, including Shoe Maker and Micace. Her manga is not only beautiful and meticulously drawn, it’s also so complex in its story telling. A lot of it goes over my head, actually..haha… Although I’m still new to her work, it seems that she mostly writes short stories, and most of those take place in the early to mid 20th century. You can really tell that she put a lot of delicate care into making her manga and researching the themes, settings and even objects that appear in her short stories to an almost extreme degree. When I read her manga, it feels more like I’m reading a novel, or poetry. It’s a strange feeling for someone who mostly reads shonen and seinen stuff.

I found out that she also has had a website, @spangle, which has been up for some time. It’s definitely worth checking out. Here you can see her illustrations as well as photos of past exhibits. It’s obvious that she’s not only into crafts, but is almost obsessed with curious objects and toys. You can even buy or find links to places to buy specially made objects that pertain to some of her stories, or contain stories in the objects themselves, like doujinshi in curio form! Some of the items are even hand made. I would complain about how I need to make more money right here, but I think we’ve all had enough of that. So there you go, Ikuko Hatoyama in a nutshell, I hope that some of you will take a look at this wonderful artist as well!

Today I caught my self, for a brief moment, watching Soul Eater AND reading Soul Eater at the same time. I guess that’s a bad sign for me, huh?? Well, even if it’s kinda dumb I actually like there series quite a bit now, so I guess I’ll have to keep reading it.. I find it to be strangely inspirational..haha…Also, this is kinda old news, but I got vol. 1 & 2 of Cat Eyed Boy for my birthday and…wow! Really wow…Kazuo Umezu is so great. Everyone should read his stuff. I loveeee drifting classroom (sadly have only read 3 volumes of that one..) and I’m dying to read Makoto-kun. So yeah, for a while now, and since Comic Con, especially, I’ve been trying to build myself up mentally as much as I can by reading-reading-reading a lot of really different stuff and by going back and reading classics that I’ve known I’ve needed to read but never got around too. It’s been really inspirational..but it kinda makes my head spin.