Canned Dogs

Koio Minato, most widely known as the character designer for the Star Ocean 2 game, has written on his website that the first book of his latest manga ALTO has a really low print run, but advices his fans that they don’t have to buy it anyway.

In his BBS, he says that he wants to quit working with Shounen Sirius. He explains that after he submitted the art early and having corrected the colours 4 times over for print, they had a miscommunication in the Kodansha offices which created very big printing miss when printing the cover for his manga, causing the colours to become bland and make the design look weird.

He feels betrayed because his manga was one of the bottom ranking in popularity for Shounen Sirius, and he had tried his best in correcting the art for the tankoubon release, but he gets shot in the back by his allies in the end.

He says that it is very hard to work with Shounen Sirius which his manga is currently serialized in. The magazine has not had an editor in chief around since it started in 2005, and they don’t even have a clear target market, which makes it really hard for him to draw as he doesn’t know what kind of readers he should be drawing for.

Here’s a screenshot of the post, as it has been deleted since.

Shounen Sirius is a monthly mag and it has a really low print run. There aren’t many people that read it, though it has managed to have a few semi-successful titles. Speaking of which, the title says Shounen but if you look in the magazine, the majority of the contents look more like stuff for 15~24 with manga like Yozakura Quartet and XBLADE.

Not related, but Koio Minato had released a Star Ocean 2 adult doujinshi, which was said to be the reason why he was removed from the team.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Manga. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.