A conversation between Katsuhiro Otomo and Takehiko Inoue

Men’s culture magazine Brutus did a special issue on Katsuhiro Otomo back in April 2012, when Otomo was doing his giant exhibition where he displayed the original handdrawn pictures of every page of Akira. (There was also talk about him starting a new series, but that has still yet to materialize, two and a half years since.) The Brutus special included a conversation between Otomo and fellow supertitan Takehiko Inoue, which has somehow gone untranslated into English… until now.

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Inoue: This is where they’re going to hold the exhibition?

Otomo: This is it. I thought it was too big at first, but I found that once you set everything up it’ll actually get pretty full. You never know until you actually try, I suppose.

Inoue: So if you’re doing this exhibit with Akira in its entirety, how many pages does that work out to?

Otomo: Should add up to be about 2300, I think.

Takehiko Inoue: The Vagabond hiatus interviews

In August 2010, Vagabond went on hiatus because of creator Takehiko Inoue’s physical health, but then remained on hiatus even after he recovered and continued working on his other ongoing series, Real. Vagabond remained untouched for over a year and a half, finally resuming in March 2012 with chapters on a monthly basis instead of the weekly or biweekly schedules the manga had been following before.

The following is an abridged version of one interviewer’s series of conversations with Inoue just before, and then during, that 19-month gap.