Animazement 2004 Guest Interviews & Con Report [Watase]

Interviewee Photo
  • Interview with: Yuu Watase
  • Interviewed by: Tsukasa on May 29th, 2004
  • Location: Animazement 2004: Durham, North Carolina
  • Publication Date: June 22nd, 2004
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Editor's note (04/10/08):

This interview was originally part of a single page that contained multiple interviews, and the author's convention experience merged between Q/A segments. We've moved to a new format where each person we interview gets their own page, and our experiences related to the interview appear above the interview transcript. A handful of very minor edits and omissions have been applied for clarity. We realize that some of these older pages will still look funny, but we believe that the consistency achieved makes up for that. At any rate, if you wish to view all of the pages that were originally part of the convention report, click here.

Another year has passed, and Animazement has come and gone once again. At Animazement 2004, I was given the opportunity to speak with another assortment of guests from Japan. Once again, I over-prepared, and was unable to ask all of my questions due to time constraints. However, with the aid of a translator, I was once again also able to ask many questions. Like last year, the interviews were organized in sessions, with a few guests at a time.

In the late afternoon [that Saturday], I sat down with the second press session's attendees: this year's guest of honor, Ms. Chika Sakamoto, and Ms. Yuu Watase. Ms. Sakamoto is, like Mr. Kamiya, one of the most recognized seiyuu in the industry, known for quite a few anime characters, including: Nuriko (Fushigi Yuugi), Yaten Kou (Sailor Moon/Stars), Mei (My Neighbor Totoro), Shun (Here is Greenwood), and Tendon Man (Anpan-man). Ms. Watase is a very well known manga artist, best known for Fushigi Yuugi, Ayashi no Ceres, and Alice 19th. I began with a question to Ms. Sakamoto.

Anime Dream:

It is said that every author has a character or characters based on themselves, which of your characters would you have to say best fits your own personality?

Yuu Watase:

I would say that each of my characters have parts of me in them, so you can't really dissolve two points and see one character, and the actual work itself is like my own alter ego, even though there would be figments of my own creativity. So it would be tougher to pinpoint it into one character. Although I would say it is difficult to incorporate parts of myself into villainous characters.

Anime Dream:

Have you ever had writer's block? And do you have any advice for aspiring authors on overcoming writer's block?

Yuu Watase:

There are times when I am completely stumped as to doing any work. And because of my love for manga, I suffer when I can't work on my most favorite line of work. That's when I need to distract myself by finding something else that's completely different from manga work. That's when I would want to engage in any activities such as trying to find a book that might be inspiring, or to go see a movie, so I would be able to be inspired and distracted at the same time.

Anime Dream:

It has become popular in recent years in America for comic artists to model their artistic style after many popular manga artists such as yourself. Do you think it is better for artists to model their style after a preëxisting popular art style or to explore their own talents and develop an entirely different unique style of their own?

Yuu Watase:

Well when you're a starting artist, before you're published, you may want to learn from the styles of your favorite styles, actually, that's something that a lot of artists are told to do. But I don't think that to mean that you should just do good copies or to imitate the style of your favorite artist. It means that you need to discern what's good about that artist, and then mentally digest it and make it your own. And in the beginning, you can start by approximating someone else's style, but if you are still like that after so many years, then that means you aren't making any progress as an artist, and you are supposed to establish your own style by that time, and most artists would establish their own style by then.