Takahashi apparently has more boundless energy than any of her hot-blooded shonen manga stars.
Recently, we took a look at the shocking work schedule of Rumiko Takahashi, creator of such iconic manga as Inuyasha, Urusei Yatsura, and Ranma 1/2. The seemingly tireless artist said that when she’s drawing a new chapter, she typically pulls two all-nighters in a row, not finishing work until 9 a.m.
But hey, intense as those three days of drawing sessions may be, that means she’s got the other four days of the week off right? Not really, because Takahashi is both the artist and the author for her series, so she’s also responsible for crafting the story and writing the characters’ dialogue.
So the real question isn’t just what her drawing schedule is like, but what her whole work week is like. Thankfully, that’s what Takahashi posted in an update through her new Twitter account, where she details the entire timetable for producing a chapter.
[毎日19時アップ]高橋留美子先生Q＆Aその２（再掲載）
— 高橋留美子情報 (@rumicworld1010) June 2, 2021
「漫画を１話完成させるのに何日ほどかかるのでしょうか？」 pic.twitter.com/fYtnvQPr36
The ball starts rolling with a meeting with her current editor. After various chitchat and any merchandising topics they need to discuss, Takahashi lays out where the manga’s plot is going to go in its next chapter. The meeting usually takes about three to four hours. Next, Takahashi gets started on the “name,” as the manga industry calls preliminary storyboards. She says she can produce about six pages of the storyboard in a day…and that she starts at 11 p.m., and finishes work for the day at around 6 o’clock the next morning! Later that day, she has another brief meeting with her editor about the storyboard so progress so far, and the process repeats for three days until the name is finished.
That’s when the process of drawing the actual art for the chapter, as discussed at the beginning of this article, gets started. For a single page, Takahashi spends about 30 to 40 minutes penciling, and another 20 minutes inking the characters, for a total of about one hour drawing per page. That might sound like a very brisk pace, but remember, she’s spent the previous three days drawing a storyboard, so she’s already spent considerable time deciding on the layout and posing in advance.
Like many manga creators, Takahashi has a team of assistants supporting her, and once she’s done with character inking she hands the page off to one of them to handle the background and any other finishing touches. Sometimes, though, Takahashi is drawing at a pace so quick that she has nothing left to do, and at those times she joins in with the assistants, drawing backgrounds and applying screentone.
So in total, the process looks like this:
● Initial editorial meeting: 1 day
● Storyboarding: 3 days
● Art: 2.5 days
So even if she manages to make a full day’s worth of storyboard progress on the same day as the initial meeting with her editor, that’s still five and a half days, with five consecutive all-nighters!
And as a cheery on top for this Shonen Sunday-serialized madness, bear in mind that while some manga creators transition to a monthly schedule once they really hit it big, Takahashi has been producing weekly manga series almost non-stop since her 1978 debut, with only one year off from weeklies in that entire time.
Source: Twitter/@rumicworld1010
Top image: SoraNews24
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