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insanenekoIn my fruitless search for the evil-Pafu-issue-that-has-decided-to-hide-from-me that resulted in the previous best rankings post, I came across an issue from 2004 with Ouran running smack down the middle of the cover in very large text. I put it aside for further browsing at a later point. When I did finally take a look the feature was not all that interesting. It was (in my mind) an intro type of thing with a one page interview that didn't say much. Though...the character intros were interesting because they did an analysis of each character based on horoscopes and blood types. Typical Japanese obsession with those types of things. XD BUT the interview mentioned a previous interview from the 2003 rankings issue. I had that one in a separate pile already so I whipped it out.
Turns out Ouran started off as a one-shot, with the possibility for serialization if the reception was good enough. It won the one-shot award in 2002, which is why the Hatori-sensei was interviewed that year. Now that was a good interview with lots of those back-of-house type tidbits I enjoy learning about. When Hatori-sensei was first formulating the story/characters, Haruhi was supposed to be a guy. She (Hatori Bisco is a woman, right?) wanted to do an all-guy type of thing, and thought that having one girl would be a difficult proposition. Her editor had also brought that idea up but at that point she was adamantly against it. She felt that a female character in such a situation would have to be quite a character to be loved by readers. But the moment she thought of Haruhi's father and Haruhi's personality she was sold on having a female character. I'm glad she held out against her editor and went with her instincts. If Haruhi wasn't Haruhi I wonder if I'd like the series...
Ouran came into being when Hatori-sensei's editor asked if she wouldn't want to do a work that featured lots of boys. Hatori-sensei confesses that she had secretly wanted to a school club with a silly flavor to it ever since seeing the movie "Waterboys." I've never seen the movie, but from what I've heard about it I couldn't help but laugh that she was sort of inspired by it. XD
The characters were created in this order: Haruhi --> Tamaki --> the twins --> Honey --> Mori --> Kyouya. She didn't come up with any other characters as possible substitutes for the original seven.
I love how perfunctory the naming of the characters was/is. She had that commoner's perception that a rich person's last name was either long or noble sounding. She claims that Tamaki just looked like "Suoh Tamaki" when she sketched him. "Hitachiin" came from the place name "Hitachi." She wanted to use the nickname "Honey" so came up with "Haninozuka," same with "Mori" and "Morinozuka." Ohtori she pulled from a dictionary. Guest character names are pulled from the dictionary and/or place names.
One aspect of portraying a rich kids' school was that even as she wanted to draw rich people and their lives in such a way that made people vehemently deny such things were possible, she had to keep some sort of feeling of reality to ground it.
Hatori-sensei has a vague idea for the end of the series (or did at the time of the interview), but added that it might change because she wanted to respond to reader wishes and comments.
After that the interview got into more personal topics that frankly don't interest me at all. I wonder if she did more interviews after the two I discovered? I'd think so, especially since it has been animated. Hmmm....While having tons of back issues can be bad in regards to storage space, it's also really nice to be able to dig through and find stuff that didn't interest me at the time but now I want to know more about. XD
Speaking of the anime, I have episodes 25 and 26 on my computer but have been hesitating to watch them. I can't believe it's ending. I can't say for certain since I haven't seen to the end, but what an amazingly well done adaptation this has been. ^^
Turns out Ouran started off as a one-shot, with the possibility for serialization if the reception was good enough. It won the one-shot award in 2002, which is why the Hatori-sensei was interviewed that year. Now that was a good interview with lots of those back-of-house type tidbits I enjoy learning about. When Hatori-sensei was first formulating the story/characters, Haruhi was supposed to be a guy. She (Hatori Bisco is a woman, right?) wanted to do an all-guy type of thing, and thought that having one girl would be a difficult proposition. Her editor had also brought that idea up but at that point she was adamantly against it. She felt that a female character in such a situation would have to be quite a character to be loved by readers. But the moment she thought of Haruhi's father and Haruhi's personality she was sold on having a female character. I'm glad she held out against her editor and went with her instincts. If Haruhi wasn't Haruhi I wonder if I'd like the series...
Ouran came into being when Hatori-sensei's editor asked if she wouldn't want to do a work that featured lots of boys. Hatori-sensei confesses that she had secretly wanted to a school club with a silly flavor to it ever since seeing the movie "Waterboys." I've never seen the movie, but from what I've heard about it I couldn't help but laugh that she was sort of inspired by it. XD
The characters were created in this order: Haruhi --> Tamaki --> the twins --> Honey --> Mori --> Kyouya. She didn't come up with any other characters as possible substitutes for the original seven.
I love how perfunctory the naming of the characters was/is. She had that commoner's perception that a rich person's last name was either long or noble sounding. She claims that Tamaki just looked like "Suoh Tamaki" when she sketched him. "Hitachiin" came from the place name "Hitachi." She wanted to use the nickname "Honey" so came up with "Haninozuka," same with "Mori" and "Morinozuka." Ohtori she pulled from a dictionary. Guest character names are pulled from the dictionary and/or place names.
One aspect of portraying a rich kids' school was that even as she wanted to draw rich people and their lives in such a way that made people vehemently deny such things were possible, she had to keep some sort of feeling of reality to ground it.
Hatori-sensei has a vague idea for the end of the series (or did at the time of the interview), but added that it might change because she wanted to respond to reader wishes and comments.
After that the interview got into more personal topics that frankly don't interest me at all. I wonder if she did more interviews after the two I discovered? I'd think so, especially since it has been animated. Hmmm....While having tons of back issues can be bad in regards to storage space, it's also really nice to be able to dig through and find stuff that didn't interest me at the time but now I want to know more about. XD
Speaking of the anime, I have episodes 25 and 26 on my computer but have been hesitating to watch them. I can't believe it's ending. I can't say for certain since I haven't seen to the end, but what an amazingly well done adaptation this has been. ^^