After graduating from high school, I worked at an advertising agency as a designer. After I left, I spent a year doing nothing in particular. At age 23, I drew my first comic.
I'm always impressed with the work of animators. You have to be able to draw the scenes in between movements. I'm impressed with the way they can do that - I don't think I could.
Inside me, 'Dragon Ball' became a thing of the past, but later, I got upset at the live-action film, revised the script for the anime film, and complained about the quality of the TV anime. I guess, at some point, it became a work that I like so much that I can't leave it alone.
In manga, nothing actually moves, and you just have to draw the poses in each panel, but in anime, you have to draw the movements between those poses.
What I regret most after becoming a cartoonist is having used my real name. At first, I figured there was no way I'd sell anyhow, so I didn't even consider using a pen name.
I was one of the more talented ones at the design firm I joined, so I conducted my work pretty shrewdly. Except I wasn't a morning person, so I was quite frequently late for work. On top of that, it was a fairly big company, they were fussy about the dress code, and I got chewed out quite often.
'Dragon Ball''s villains were easy to draw: Piccolo, Freeza, Majin Boo.
Back before I entered primary school, I liked to draw, even though I was a brat. I especially liked animals and vehicles, and I drew that sort of thing constantly.
Back when I watched 'Future Boy Conan,' I thought I might like to try my hand at animation, but now, not at all.
Basically with everything, I choose my criteria based on what can be easy. If I made the real world the setting, I'd have to draw looking at reference materials for stuff like buildings and vehicles. When you do that, people complain even if it's just a little bit off.
If you want to depict something exactly the way it is, it takes a tremendous amount of time. If you don't get the details right, the inaccuracies will accumulate somewhere.
I'm not very good at depicting the characters' psychology on the page.
I don't like music that much... I put on the TV. But I often play things like fast-tempo disco or Queen. I've liked those since way back when.
I'm an economic human without any likes or dislikes!
There's how, basically, Son Goku from 'Dragon Ball' doesn't fight for the sake of others but because he wants to fight against strong guys. So once 'Dragon Ball' got animated, at any rate, I've always been dissatisfied with the 'righteous hero'-type portrayal they gave him.
It was very easy to convince me to take on the job of character designer for 'Dragon Quest.'
Designing characters for 'Dragon Quest' is fun but difficult work.
In the beginning, I was planning to end 'Dragon Ball' when all seven Dragon Balls had been collected.
I really like the story of Bardock, Goku's father. It's quite dramatic and the kind of story I absolutely wouldn't draw if it were me. It was like watching a different kind of 'Dragon Ball' in a good way, so I thought it was nice.
I felt that working at an office from the early morning was impossible for me. Anyway, I wanted to be free from that lifestyle as soon as possible. I wanted to take it easy.
