The story of Kingdom is a fictional adaptation of the Chinese history period known as the Warring States period, which ended in 221 BC when Ying Zheng, king of Qin, succeeded in conquering the other states and unifying China.
Several of the characters are based on historical figures. Many times characters will take the names of people in history, and other times they will have completely different names. Oftentimes this is a result of Japanese Kanji borrowing from Chinese characters, meaning that some Chinese names have no equivalent characters in Kanji. For example, Ou Ki's, the name is a slightly altered version of Wang Yi, because the last character of his name, does not exist in Kanji.
Inoue became inspired to make Slam Dunk as he liked basketball since his high school years. After Inoue started Slam Dunk, he was surprised when he began receiving letters from readers that said they started playing the sport due to the manga. His editor even told him "basketball was a taboo in this world." Due to these letters, Inoue decided he wanted to draw better basketball games in the series. With the series, Inoue wanted to demonstrate the feelings from some athletes such as their thoughts when they win, lose or improve at their sport. When he started making Vagabond, he noted that when he was doing Slam Dunk he had a simpler perspective on life as he focused more in victories and success.
With the series, Inoue wants the readers to feel achievements as well as love for the sport. Thinking that his success as a manga artist being largely due to basketball, Inoue organized a Slam Dunk Scholarship for Japanese students as he wanted to give back to the sport by increasing its popularity in Japan. However, when asked about the response from readers to basketball, Inoue commented that although Slam Dunk is technically a basketball manga, its story could have been done with other sports such as football. He also added that the artwork for the manga was very typical and mangalike in comparison to his newer works such as Real. His experiences with basketball also influenced the story from Slam Dunk: as a youth Inoue started playing basketball to be popular with the girls, but later became interested with the sport in and of itself. This was mirrored in the character of Hanamichi Sakuragi, who starts playing basketball to be popular with the girl he likes, to later become truly fond of the game.
Grand Blue, Guranburu, known as Grand Blue Dreaming in English) is a Japanese manga series written by Kenji Inoue and illustrated by Kimitake Yoshioka. It has been serialized in Kodansha's seinen manga magazine good! Afternoon since April 2014 and has been collected in seventeen tankÅbon volumes as of September 2021. The manga is published digitally in English by Kodansha USA under the Kodansha Comics imprint. An anime television series adaptation by Zero-G aired from July to September 2018 in the Animeism programming block on MBS. A live-action film adaptation was released in August 2020.
Asano announced the manga a year after finishing Solanin. Encouraged by its success, Asano said he was done with "feel-good stories". Despite initial opposition from his editor and publisher, he went through with the manga. Tokie Komuro, the Editor-in-Chief of Monthly Sunday Gene-X, who is a supporter of Asano said that the only reason Asano was able to serialize the manga was because of his good track record and reputation from his earlier works.
When he initially planned the story, Asano wanted to chronicle Punpun's growth spanning ten years over seven volumes. The first half was supposed to be a romance, and the second half when Punpun and Aiko go on the run similar to a road movie. The manga grew to thirteen volumes because Asano wanted to focus on the art and because many characters developed their own side stories. Asano purposely emphasized elements of the first half like its silliness to increase the shock of the second half. With every dark turn in the manga, sales dropped, which Asano regretted because his readers were being alienated. He also saw his readers as an enemy when he received criticism, which led him to react harshly and cause more backlash. The manga also served as an outlet for Asano's doubts and fears, such as the fear that he might be a victim or perpetrator of murder.
After reading about the concept of the Philosopher's Stone, Arakawa became attracted to the idea of her characters using alchemy in the manga. She started reading books about alchemy, which she found complicated because some books contradict others. Arakawa was attracted more by the philosophical aspects than the practical ones. For the Equivalent Exchange concept, she was inspired by the work of her parents, who had a farm in Hokkaido and worked hard to earn the money to eat.
Arakawa wanted to integrate social problems into the story. Her research involved watching television news programs and talking to refugees, war veterans and former yakuza. Several plot elements, such as Pinako Rockbell caring for the Elric brothers after their mother dies, and the brothers helping people to understand the meaning of family, expand on these themes. When creating the fictional world of Fullmetal Alchemist, Arakawa was inspired after reading about the Industrial Revolution in Europe; she was amazed by differences in the culture, architecture, and clothes of the era and those of her own culture. She was especially interested in England during this period and incorporated these ideas into the manga. The series has a steampunk setting. The Ishbal region has similarities to the Middle East, with the plot anticipating elements of the Iraq War which later occurred in the real world.
Urasawa revealed that he pitched the idea of writing a manga about the medical field around 1986, but could tell his editor was not enjoying the idea. So he jokingly proposed a story about women's judo, and that lead to his first solo work Yawara! (1986 to 1993).
The original idea for Monster came from the 1960s American television series The Fugitive, which had a strong impact on Urasawa when he saw it at the age of eight. In the story, a doctor is wrongfully convicted of murder, but escapes and searches for the real killer while on the run from the police. He said that his editor was adamant that the series would not do well, and tried to stop him from creating it.
The Japanese medical industry was strongly influenced by the professional practices in Germany, thus it seemed natural to the author to set Monster in Germany. Post-war Germany was chosen so that the neo-Nazi movement could be included in the story. When he started the semimonthly Monster at the end of 1994, Urasawa was already writing Happy! weekly and continued to serialize both at the same time. When Happy! ended in 1999, he began the weekly 20th Century Boys. Writing both Monster and 20th Century Boys at the same time caused him to be briefly hospitalized for exhaustion.
Takehiko Inoue started Vagabond having wondered what the character was like when he read Musashi. Having come off of drawing a sports manga, he wanted to create a series about more basic concepts, such as "life and death, the human condition, etc." Rather than portray Musashi's later life in his "enlightened state", which has been written about often, the author chose to depict the lesser known "young man reaching that point of enlightenment when he comes from a place of being so like an animal." In 2009, he stated that he made his weekly deadline thanks to only having to draw the people, with his five assistants drawing the backgrounds.
In April 2009, Inoue told Nishinippon Shimbun that he suspected Vagabond would be ending "within one or two years." Claiming that he did not know how it would end, but that it had entered its final stages. In January 2010, he confirmed it would be ending within the year. However, in September during a hiatus due to health concerns, Inoue announced that the ending had been delayed until 2011. Inoue posted an update on his website in December 2010, stating that Vagabond would not return until he regained "enthusiasm" for the series.
After eighteen-months, Vagabond returned to Morning as a monthly series in March 2012. The manga went on what was supposed to be a four-month hiatus in February 2014, with the reason stated being for Inoue to work on research. However, it was not until January 2015 that the series resumed. The series is currently on an extended hiatus since May 21, 2015, being its 327th chapter, "The Man named Tadaoki", the latest chapter.
Eiichiro Oda's interest in pirates began in his childhood, watching the animated series Vicky the Viking, which inspired him to want to draw a manga series about pirates. The reading of pirate biographies influenced Oda to incorporate the characteristics of real-life pirates into many of the characters in One Piece; for example, the character Marshall D. Teach is based on and named after the historical pirate Edward "Blackbeard" Teach. Apart from the history of piracy, Oda's biggest influence is Akira Toriyama and his series Dragon Ball, which is one of his favorite manga. He was also inspired by The Wizard of Oz, claiming not to endure stories where the reward of adventure is the adventure itself, opting for a story where travel is important, but even more important is the goal.
While working as an assistant to Nobuhiro Watsuki, Oda began writing One Piece in 1996. It started as two one-shot stories entitled Romance Dawn which would later be used as the title for One Piece's first chapter and volume. They both featured the character of Luffy, and included elements that would appear later in the main series. The first of these short stories was published in August 1996 in Akamaru Jump and later in One Piece Red. The second was published in the 41st issue of Weekly Shonen Jump in 1996, and reprinted in 1998 in Oda's short story collection, Wanted!. In an interview with TBS, Takanori Asada, the original editor of One Piece, revealed that the manga was rejected by Weekly Shonen Jump three times before Shueisha agreed to publish the series.
Steel Ball Run was written and illustrated by Hirohiko Araki, and was originally serialized in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine from January 19 to October 16, 2004. It was later moved to Shueisha's monthly seinen magazine Ultra Jump on March 19, 2005, and ran until April 19, 2011. Araki found that the new, monthly schedule with longer chapters suited him better, as he was not as restricted in what he could draw and no longer had to write stories with momentum building up excitement for the next week's chapter, and had more flexibility to draw at his own pace. Araki described the manga's theme as "seeking for satisfaction". Like with other parts of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Araki also used "an affirmation that humanity is wonderful" as a theme, which he explained as a description for humanity's ability to grow and overcome hardships through one's strength and spirit, portrayed through people succeeding in fights through their own actions, without relying on machines or gods.
Because the series follows a race across America, Araki had to split his research into three trips: one from the West Coast to the deserts, one from the Great Plains to the Mississippi River and Chicago, and one to New York. He said that it would have been impossible to get an understanding for the vast scale without having gone there personally, describing the scenery of the midwest as endless and unchanging. The feeling of distance made him think that if an enemy had approached, the open landscape would have meant that he could not have escaped due to a lack of places to hide, an experience he found useful when drawing the manga.
While briefly working as an assistant to George Morikawa at 18, Miura had already planned some ideas for Berserk's development, having a dark warrior with a gigantic sword illustrated in his portfolio who would be the first conception of Guts. Miura submitted manuscripts to a shonen manga magazine for about four years before working for Hakusensha. However, he felt that he was not capable enough for it and they were also not interested in publishing science fiction or fantasy works. In 1988, while working with Buronson on a manga titled King of Wolves, Miura published a prototype of Berserk in Hakusensha's Gekkan ComiComi. This 48-page prototype placed 2nd at the 7th ComiComi's Manga-School prize. He later submitted his work to a magazine that, at the time, "was on the verge of going under", and he was switched around between several editors before meeting his first editor. The serialization of Berserk began in Hakusensha's Monthly Animal House in 1989. Miura commented that he landed the serial as soon as he made his debut, so he never had the opportunity to receive much criticism from editors.