Hideaki Sorachi
| Sorachi Hideaki | |
|---|---|
| Born |
May 25, 1979 Hokkaido, Japan |
| Nationality | Japanese |
| Occupation | Manga artist |
Hideaki Sorachi (空知 英秋 Sorachi Hideaki?, born May 25, 1979) is a Japanese manga artist best known for his work Gin Tama which has been written since December 8, 2003. The Gin Tama manga has sold 50 million units in Japan as of May 2016.
Sorachi became interested in manga during his childhood. However, during the 4th grade he showed his manga work to his father who immediately laughed at him, after which he abandoned his dream of being a manga artist. After graduating from college, he could not find a job and began drawing manga again to make money. He was able to live from his first work Dandelion, which was featured in the first volume of Gintama, along with a prologue from Sorachi calling it his first official work. When starting serialization the manga was unpopular and was close to being cancelled. Although Sorachi was pleased with the first tankōbon selling all of its copies, he later learned Shueisha was afraid of poor sales which resulted in the minimum printed. In order to increase its popularity, the author introduce new characters, the Shinsengumi, who felt memorable to his assistants. Sorachi had little hope on the manga's popularity, as he noted that people used to tell him the manga would not surpass the number of two tankōbon volumes. However, once the third volume was released, Sorachi found that he did not have "any fresh material to use." During the first year of the series, Sorachi believed that the source of the popularity of Gin Tama was partially connected to the Shinsengumi drama. While the drama ran during the first year of the series, when the manga was mostly shorter stories that established the characters and the world, he felt uncomfortable of making things related to the drama. By the second year and beyond, he became more daring in his stories and concepts, creating longer storylines that included more drama while keeping his sense of humor and satirization of modern Japan by way of his fictionalized past. Although Sorachi has already planned the series' ending, he is not sure when the manga is going to reach that point due to the characters requiring development to behave the way he wants.
Kenta Shinohara (author of Sket Dance) used to be his assistant, as well as Yōichi Amano (author of Akaboshi: Ibun Suikoden). Gintama and Sket Dance had a crossover chapter in Weekly Shōnen Jump which was the 349th for Gintama and the 180th for Sket Dance.
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