This comic deals with some heavy themes and may be offensive to some readers. Discretion is advised. This comic is rated Web-14. Nudity: 3; Sexual content: 3; Violence:4; Language: 3. Scale is from 0-4.
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Okay. About my manga... where to begin... Maybe the beginning... but that's to obvious...
Hmm...
Okay, enough of that. Let's start with the title. Shinseki is Japanese for "relatives." There's a lot of stuff involving relatives in here, so i found it to be appropriate. The two main characters are relatives, and there are some more things to be discovered about various characters and their relatives. So, the title seemed appropriate.
My dream is to become a manga artist. However, upon making a few pages, I'm beginning to realize that it may be an unrealistic dream. But that's another story. I wanted to try out my manga-making skills, especially after I found a whole bunch of great tones at Xephyr's site (points to the links page.) And what good is making manga if I can't show it off? And where better a place to show it off than the internet?
I have many ideas for a manga. Why did I decide to write Shinseki as a webmanga? Quite frankly, it's really unoriginal. It's a lot like Marmalade Boy. People say that Kodocha is Marmalade Boy on crack. It isn't; Shinseki is. No, I'm kidding. We're both on crack. I'm just amateur-ically on crack. It also resembles Kodocha, Zettai Kareshi, and Gokusen in certain places. I didn't really intend for it to turn out like that. It's just that as I added more elements... I don't know. It just turned out that way. However, it's not so unoriginal that I could just abbandon the story. I've gotten to be really attached to the characters over the past year or so. I figure that if I didn't publish that one, people couldn't razz on me for copying MB. Well... I guess that's still a possibility, but it won't ruin my potential professional image if I write it now. :)
Uh, the school. The full, official, Japanese name of the school is Nagano-Ken Suzaka Kita Koutougakkou. But for the reading ease of the English-speaking audience, eveyone calls it Suzaka Kita, or Suzaka Kita High. It's in the city of Suzaka of the prefecture of Nagano. Why Nagano and not Tokyo? Tokyo is so overdone. I think that it's more highly revered a place than it needs to be. This is my little way of rebelling against the overly-praised city of Tokyo.
But why Nagano? Well... The first 4 regions on the island of Honshu (the largest island of Japan) are Tohoku, Kantou, Chubu and Kansai. Tohoku has a really weird dialect that nobody can understand, and while the comic is in English, I wanted to convey a true representation of each region. Kantou is the region in which Tokyo lies. Since I didn't my comic to take place in Tokyo, I didn't want to have people who were bound to the Tokyo dialect (which is comparable to the American Mid-Western accent,) as the Kantou people are. Kansai (also known as Kinki) is a pretty touchy place. Those who live in Tokyo dislike those from Kansai, and generally vice versa (though the Kansai people are more accepting of the Kantou people.) On top of that, their dialect is comparable to the American southern drawl. (Yes, this is why the American who comes from Missouri can only speak in Kansai dialect.) I didn't feel like illustrating that in the way I wrote my words. That leaves Chubu (actually, it leaves quite a few more southern regions, but I know less about them, so I feel uncomfortable writing about them.) Chubu is right between them, and Nagano is in Chubu. Though I didn't particularly want to write about Kansai, I have a soft spot in my heart for it, being that that's where I stayed when I went to Japan. So I preferred something in the middle, where people would be speaking both Kantou and Kansai dialects. I know this sounds weird and confusing. That's probably because I'm weird and confusing! XD It's more of a symbolic thing than anything.
Now that I've completely lost your interest in anything I was talking about, as well as this comic... Anywho, I know it sounds strange, or possibly stupid, but the whole reason I wrote this comic was because I drew the picture on the first page, and I thought it was awesome. I thought that I had to make this person into a character. From that came Ameko. Shortly after, the story developed.
I don't know what kinds of things you guys want to know about the comic, so I'm just gonna leave it here, and you can e-mail me any questions you have.
Shinseki and all realated artwork, characters and concepts are © 2004-2007 Chelsea R. Meininger. Any reproduction without the creator's permission is strictly prohibited.