Interview: The Creators of the Ultraman Manga Talk Resurrecting a Legendary Hero

When did you first encounter Ultraman? As a TV show or a movie or a manga? How old were you at the time?
Shimizu: I was in kindergarten, maybe 4 or 5 years old. They showed the rebroadcast on TV of the original Ultraman series.
Shimoguchi: I actually don’t quite remember. I know I had a figure of Ultraman 7 as a kid, so I was very young, but I don’t have any recollections of watching it. I’m sure I have. I just don’t remember.
Your manga seems more serious than the original show. What sort of themes are you interested in exploring in this story?
Shimizu: Well, certainly we have touched on the parent-child relationship—
Shimoguchi: It also is related to the fact of who the protagonist is here. He’s a high school boy who wants to live an ordinary everyday life, but is unable to because he has these extraordinary powers. In the original TV series, the main character, which is now the father in this series, was already an adult. He had a job as a member of the SSSP, the Science Special Search Party, and a family. Thus, he had a built-in background story. Here the main character is a boy, and we wanted to him to be a realistic, three-dimensional individual too, so he has these internal struggles—the fact that he has these powers, how does he use them, is it OK to end up having to hurt or kill in the process?
Shimizu: We also wanted to portray the realistic life of a Japanese high school boy in Japan, but a high school kid who is told, “You have extraordinary powers. We want you to become Ultraman.” The immediate reaction wouldn’t be “Yay! Sign me up!” It actually would be “Oh my god! Should I? Should I not?” We definitely want to keep it realistic and relatable to the readers.
How did you change the story for modern readers?
Shimoguchi: Our impression of a lot of American hero comics is that the hero is usually an adult, has a real job, a day job, and is a hero on the side or at night or whatever, whereas in Japan the hero stories have much younger protagonists. In terms of having the high schooler as the main character, it’s a very comfortable, common concept in Japan, and it’s also relatable to the readership as well, who are that age range. We could also introduce topics like going through puberty and having all sorts of internal emotional struggles. We were told by the publisher that they wanted to tie it in to the original series, so that’s why we made the original main character, Hayata, into the father of the current protagonist, and we were able to have the parent-child interaction story element as well, so it’s a modern story that still fits within the emotional concept of manga in Japan.
What is your work process—how do you work together? In particular, I am interested in how you collaborate to produce the many action scenes in this manga.
Shimizu: I write the initial concept and flow, kind of almost like a storyboard—in manga terms it’s called a “name”—and in particular for an action scene I would do the original flow and a very rough storyboard concept and hand it to my colleague, and he would do the actual drawing and more specific details, and then we get together and edit and revise it and formulate the final draft that we submit for approval.
Shimoguchi: The battle scene “drafts” that I get from my colleague Shimizu-san are quite detailed, and it almost flows like an anime storyboard, literally, so most of my job is to then divide it into individual panels and do the page layout. It’s actually one of the hardest things to do, but it’s also fun and rewarding to be able to take what could be moving images and be able to relate that onto two-dimensional paper.
How did you come to be the creators of this manga—did you pitch the idea to your editor? Or did the editors come to you?
Shimizu: We were given the pitch from the publisher. It was not something that we brought to them.
Why did you want to do it?
Shimizu: Actually, we turned it down initially.
Why?
Shimizu: The main reason we turned it down initially is that we ourselves could not visualize in our minds how we would put Ultraman onto paper. It’s originally a 3-D, moving image property, so we would have to represent that in 2-D, on paper. We had no idea what kind of concept we would come up with.
What changed your mind?
Shimizu: While we were in the middle of all this debate about how we would do it, and would we even want to do it, we received a directive from the publisher that they wanted a sort of life-sized [as opposed to giant], suit-wearing, battling-alien-creatures type of thing and not a transformation. Part of the thing we struggled with initially was the initial transformation into Ultraman, but we were told no, no, no, it doesn’t have to be this gigantic larger-than-life character. The character can stay human-sized and just put on a suit and do battle—and that’s when we were like “Bingo!” We had it.
Also, we wondered that if we saw someone else doing it that maybe we would get frustrated or jealous at what we were seeing, so we wanted to do it ourselves.
What was your first comic? Did you draw comics for your own amusement when you were young?
Shimizu: The earliest I can remember I was probably in about second grade and it actually featured robots.
Shimoguchi: What I remember as a kid was doing Dragon Ball homages, copying Dragon Ball characters.
You both have been doing manga for a number of years now. What have you learned over that time? What do you know now that you didn’t when you began?
Shimizu: I would say for me, the thing I am most cognizant of is reader awareness, that I have become more and more aware of the reader and trying to cater what I want to draw but make it something the reader would appreciate, trying to make it something that the reader would want to see.
Shimoguchi: Ditto.
Do you work digitally or with pen and ink?
Shimizu: Up to Linebarrels, it was definitely strictly paper and ink, pencil, but for Ultraman it’s definitely a mix. The final “inking in” and all the effects and revisions are done digitally, but the storyboards are still hand drawn.
Shimoguchi: Once the initial draft is done but not yet filled in, we scan it and do all the backgrounds and screens and all that digitally, so it’s not 100 percent digital per se. Linebarrels was from start to finish all hand done.
What do you like to do when you are not writing and drawing manga?
Shimizu: I like watching movies, and also I like building plastic models, so that’s what I do in what little spare time I have.
Shimoguchi: I actually like watching TV dramas, but I usually have it on running in the background while I’m drawing, so when I take a break, I’ll look up and watch it for a while and then go back to work.
Is this your first visit to the U.S.? What do you think about it?
Shimizu: First time.
Shimoguchi: First time.
Shimizu: It’s been a dream of mine to come to Comic-Con, so I’m overwhelmed. I’m having so much fun.
Shimoguchi: I am so unbelievably happy, because most of the time I’m sitting at home checking on the internet about movie announcements and upcoming information, but I’m here at Comic-Con, where they are making these announcements and showing premieres, getting live-time information about things I normally have to look up on the internet.
Do you have any advice for aspiring manga creators?
Shimizu: I’m assuming if they want to draw manga that they love manga and not just love manga but love drawing, so my advice would be to keep doing what you like and keep retaining that passion, to not give up.
Shimoguchi: I guess the main thing that I want potential aspiring manga creators to know is that it’s actually a lot more difficult, a lot tougher field than they probably imagine, and yet the more you do it, not so much the easier it gets but it’s very rewarding, so I don’t want them to give up but to know that it’s definitely not an easy path.
Ultraman, Vol. 1 is available August 18.