This interview from 2009 was originally posted on Manga Zenkan.com, with Chuya Koyama and Youhei Sadogashima. They discuss where he gets his ideas, his real life models for various names and characters, and what he hopes for the reader.

Chuya Koyama is the author of Space Brothers, a feel good manga about two brothers who follow their dreams of becoming astronauts. He was born in Kyoto in 1978, and his first work as a manga artist was “GGG“, which ran in the Morning Weekly magazine and received a prize at the 14th Manga Open competition. He followed that up with 劇団JET’S (Troupe JET’s), which took first prize at the same competition the following year. Space Brothers has been running in Morning Weekly since 2007.

Youhei Sadogashima has been working for Morning Weekly since 2002. He is affiliated with the editorial department, and has supervised the editing of works such as バガボンド (Vagabond) and ドラゴン桜 (Dragon Zakura). He is currently in charge of 宇宙兄弟 (Space Brothers) and 働きマン (Hataraki Man).

You can read the original interview here (Japanese): http://www.mangazenkan.com/special/53.html

– How was Space Brothers born?

Koyama: The managing editor was the one who first brought up space as a theme. While discussing what to write next after “Harujan” and “GGG”, he said “How about space?”

Sadogashima: The inspiration came from reading Makio Mukai’s “君について行こうー女房は宇宙を目指した”(As for you, let’s go – Your Wife Aimed for Space). Since Koyama is the type of manga artist who can handle a new, relatively unexplored genre, I thought space might be good. The research seemed like it’d be interesting to do too.

Koyama: When I started writing Space Brothers, the real world JAXA announced an astronaut selection test shortly after. I hadn’t known that there would be a selection at that time, so it randomly turned out to be perfect timing.

– From the first volume, there are tons of episodes that really leave an impression. Are they based on any personal experiences or anything?

Koyama: I based the scene about gathering sound with a microphone on a story I had originally heard from from a teacher at design school. I remember always hearing “That kid is really interesting” all the time. As for the part where Mutta and Hibito witness the UFO, I feel like I saw an UFO too around that time… ah, but saying that kind of thing so suddenly makes me seem weird.

Sadogashima: (laughs)

Koyama: It was one morning along the river, when I was living in Saitama. Of course I didn’t get that good a look at it… just enough to wonder “Did I just see something? Was that a UFO?” I think it was around the time we decided on the name “Space Brothers”, or just maybe a bit before. Anyway, I used my own experience for that episode. There are quite a few soccer jokes too, because I was playing soccer. As for the first volume, once the idea of “two boys see a UFO at the time of the Zidane headbutt” had been settled on, I fleshed out the other parts from there.

– Was it decided from the beginning that the brothers would take center stage?

Koyama: Reading Mukai’s book, I felt that the bond between husband and wife was really interesting. Then when I thought about how I would write it myself, the idea of brothers rather than spouses came to mind. I thought I’d like to write about the one into space, and the seeing him off… a younger brother going first and the older brother chasing after him… and their feelings about each other.

– And was it also always going to be about a younger brother being superior to an older brother?

Koyama: I thought it would be interesting as a story if it was the older brother chasing after the younger one. Doing so, it just happened that the younger brother, who was already a pilot, came out looking better in comparison.

– Why do they look completely different, even though they’re brothers?

Koyama: It’s natural to think that because they’re brothers they’d look the same, but manga characters with similar faces also are similar, I feel. I thought it’d be more of a contrast if I could draw them as brothers with not only different personalities, but also different airs about them.

– Is there a real life model for Mutta’s unique hairstyle?

Koyama: I often hear people say that TV personality Yo Oizumi must be the model, but that’s wrong actually. There was a flyer at my house for the rock band The Strokes when I was thinking about Mutta’s appearance, and the guitarist’s hair was really curly. While I was trying out some sketches imitating that hairstyle, I came to think that drawing an older brother with such curly hair might be funny too. Once I’d added Japanese features and made the hair black, he’d become Mutta.

– How did you pick their names?

Koyama: Just like Serika’s father, I put the way they sounded first, rather than choosing names that meant something. I chose Hibito’s (日々と) name first. Personally I felt that for some reason putting a “to” at the end made him seem cool. On the contrary, I felt like Mutta (六太), with something left out of the middle of his name*, was very uncool. A face like Takuya Kimuya wouldn’t be called “Mutta” right? And this goes for both characters, but I also chose names that I didn’t think were being used by other existing manga characters. For example, when there’s a character named “ Hanamichi”, then a lot of people imagine Hanamichi Sakuraki from Slam Dunk. I thought it’d be nice if the name “Mutta” someday came to have that effect.

(*The pronunciation of the name Mutta（ムッタ）has a glottal stop in the middle.)

– By the way, is Hibito’s hair color natural?

Koyama: Yeah, it’s natural. Compared to Mutta, it was easy to draw.

Sagodashima: Easier not to color it all in right? (laughs)

– The supporting characters are all unique too, but who is the most similar to yourself?

Koyama: Rather than any one person in particular, it’s more like all of them have some part of me in them. Yassan (Yasashi Furuya), who’s from Kyoto like myself, was easy to write. Like Yassan, I have an honest streak too sometimes… so I often do things like put my foot in my mouth.

Sagodashima: Like saying “sometimes” just there, that’s an example of being honest too. (laughs)

– Of all the characters, who’s your favorite?

Koyama: For main characters I like Mutta and Yassan. It was fun to write their parts, since I’m from Kansai too, birthplace of boke and tsukkomi. Of the recent characters, I thought Daniel Young came out pretty well. The three of them are all pretty strange, but weird characters are easy to write.

– Speaking of older characters there’s Ojii, who grasped Mutta’s potential right away. Was his name chosen to match the sound of “Ojii san*”?

(*Ojii means grandfather, or can be used to refer to any older male person. Daniel Young from the previous paragraph is referred to as Ojii too.)

Koyama: Yes. Also, his wife’s name is “Obaa*”. Their names haven’t come up in the story, but in the drafts we show the editors, we use “Ojii” and “Obaa”.

(*Obaa means grandmother, or an older female person.)

– Are there any characters who are modeled on real people?

Koyama: The name of the boss who Mutta headbutted in volume one (Matera) comes from soccer player Marco Materazzi. Then the name of Nasuda, the board chairman of JAXA, was taken from “NASDA”, the name of JAXA’s preceding organization. Independent of the name, the same character was physically modeled on Makio Mukai, who let us interview him for research purposes. We made him a character without asking, but when he saw the books in the end, it seems like he was happy.

Sagodashima: Mukai called Weekly Morning’s editing department directly. “If you’re going to keep drawing me poorly, go ahead”, he told us. (laughs)

– Is there any model in particular for the heroine Serika?

Koyama: Not really, but she is my type. I like women somewhere between cute and beautiful.

Sagodashima: That’s true.

Koyama: I try to remember not to write her as just an imaginary woman, by adding some of my own disposition to her character. I worry that if she’s purely made up, she’ll become a “woman by a man” type of character. Serika’s fundamental personality won’t change in the future, but I do want to write in more feminine traits, and parts that make her more interesting as a person.

– I hope her cute tendency to overeat will always be there.

Koyama: That won’t change (laughs).

– All of Space Brothers gives the impression that it’s incredibly real. How was the research? Was it tough?

Koyama: The tasks that came up during the astronaut screening were half real, from research, and half ones I thought up myself. I also incorporated real tasks that real astronauts do during training as problems on the qualification tests. I got to hear a lot of stories from the astronauts while we were eating together, and I’ll be using some of those episodes in future volumes.

Sagodashima: As a result of the research, we’ve been happy to get lots of reactions like “It’s so real!”, and “They really get it!” from people who work in space development.

– You even go as far as dealing with some negative aspects like selection pressure and astronaut accidents.

Koyama: Space is a world where not only dreams, but also death exist side by side. I want to write it in such a way that I make my characters who are aiming to become astronauts aware of those points. They need to be prepared too. I’m trying to write a manga with a reality that’s enjoyable for adults as well as children.

– When did you really decide to become a manga artist?

Koyama: I’d always thought it’d be great if I could get used to it, but I decided once and for all after my first work “GGG” won an award. After that, I quit the design company I’d been working at for awhile, and started as an assistant at Koshinoriyou’s (Ns’あおい – Nurse Blue) office. While working there, he took care of me for about eight months while I wrote the manuscript for ハルジャン (Harujan), and finally got it serialized.

– Your pen name (小山 宙哉 – Koyama Chuya) stands out for having the character for space in it (宙ーchuu). Did you always want to write a manga about space?

Koyama: That’s my real name. My father named me, but he didn’t have any special interest in space. I’ve heard that character means “time” somehow. He was a copywriter, so I think he must have been deliberate in his choice of characters.

– What were your sports and hobbies as a child?

Koyama: I played baseball a little in elementary school, and started soccer in junior high. In high school the sports field was small, so there was no soccer club. Instead, my friends and I got together and made our own. As for manga, I can’t say I was especially crazy about it, but I did read things like Dragonball and Slam Dunk in Weekly Jump. I think I was influenced by Akira Toriyama, and Takehiko Inoue, as well as Taiyo Matsumono, Makoto Kobayashi, and Hideki Arai.

– Have you been drawing since you were a kid?

Koyama: I drew a lot. In elementary and junior high school, my dream was to be a soccer player or a manga artist (laughs). My high school was a fine arts school, so my friends and I would draw pictures of our teachers, and make them into small mangas as long as a page or two. I continued on to design school, and then to work at a design company. Even if I couldn’t become a manga artist, I wanted to do some kind of work that involved drawing pictures, such as illustration, or web design.

– What makes you glad you wrote Space Brothers?

Koyama: I’m happy that people who had no interest in space, got interested after reading Space Brothers. I’m really glad when I hear from people who started to read publications about space that they normally wouldn’t have, after taking an interest in Space Brother’s characters and stories. Otherwise, I also like it when I hear about parents reading it to their kids. Morning Weekly’s image is that it’s is aimed at male salarymen, but I want it to be read by a wide audience, especially elementary school kids.

– Finally, do you have anything you want to say to everyone reading this website?

Koyama: When I write manga, I don’t really have a particular message in mind I’m trying to communicate to everyone. First, I focus on the feeling of “fun”, and make that the core of my work. So, I hope everyone can enjoy the manga like I do, and come to feel more interested in space. All my manga shares a common ideal: that after reading, the reader will be facing forward, looking into the future. Now, while I’m working hard writing Space Brothers, what I truly want to pass along to all of my readers are good feelings.

Sagodashima: All the characters in Space Brothers express their personality in even the smallest greeting. For example, there are scenes where Mutta gives a stretched out response, saying “whhaaat?”. Really, he only uses it with Hibito when he’s relaxed, from when he’s a child right through adulthood. So, when the chapters are gathered into the volumes, it’s fun to notice things like that and realize that “ahh these two guys get along really well”. It’s a different experience from reading the chapters separately in the monthly magazines. Only Koyama puts such little touches in at every turn, looking ahead to when the chapters will be published together as volumes. Manga Zenkan Dot Com carries all of them, so I hope you’ll enjoy the development of Mutta and his friends along with Koyama’s attention to detail.