Thank you for purchasing the 23rd volume! About the haunted spa hotel saga… Strange things have happened to me since I started drawing it. My editor started thinking about a curse, and I was laughing under my breath saying. “Imbecile! People who are afraid of curses can’t draw manga, because mangaka kill a lot of people in their work. If any ghosts appeared, I’d use them as assistants, and even have them paint all the parts completely black!” Then, just as I was about to start preparing the boards, I suddenly came down with a fever of 39 and a bout of diarrhea that was not inconsiderable: I was secreting poop like laser beams! So I didn’t know what to do, and then my assistant phoned me and said: “I’ve got a fever. I don’t want to harm you, so please allow me to take time off work. I said, “By any chance… do you have laser beams?” He said, “Huh? You too?!” Then I phoned the other assistants and: “Excuse me, but I actually have laser beams…”. “Me too!” “Me too!” “Same here.” …in the Gintama studio, six out of seven people, including me, had laser beams, and they all got a fever the day before they started work! Don’t you think that’s great? Anyway, although we suffered, we managed that week, but we were trembling at the idea of a curse. After all, we had laser beams, which means… we all shit our pants! For six adults in their mid-twenties to poop their pants is an astronomical probability! That can’t happen. It happened to me twice… I barely made an effort to pee, and the laser beams went off. I was trying to resort to Mera*, and it was Merazoma**. It’s only natural that the MP becomes zero. I finished the boards with a zero MP. You can’t think of anything but a curse!
*First power level fire formula in Dragon Quest.
*Third power level fire formula in Dragon Quest.
So, consulting with each other, we concluded that Hideyoshi seems the most suspicious! Having drawn him as someone with poop-stained pants, ours were also soiled… or rather, we were the ones who soiled them. Anyway, listening to other people’s stories, I found out that someone was in danger of being run over by a tipper truck because of a flat tyre on his scooter, someone else had mysterious hives… In short, some pretty impressive episodes popped up, one after the other. So there was a lot of commotion, because everyone started saying that amulets had to be bought back. Since everyone in the studio started to lose their cool, I calmed my staff down, as well as myself, by saying: “Calm down! If you blame everything on the curse, you’ll never finish it! The curse is a kind of autosuggestion, so hang in there!”. I was actually scared… but I plucked up my courage and went to my desk. The fever still wasn’t going down, but I turned my life energy into MP. Then Editor Saito called me: “This is a big mess! I’ve been asking around, and it looks like Oiwa is the one to worry about, not Hideyoshi. This is no joke!” No one knows why he, who had no problems at all, became more afraid than anyone else and spread terrible rumours one after the other, causing panic in the studio. In the end he said, “Since I’m a bit scared, I’m going to get exorcised right away.” …
Hey, wait a minute! We should go. Nothing’s happened to you. You’re perfectly healthy. Your feet stink. Why are you going to get exorcised without bringing the author who’s drawing in spite of the fever? And what are you getting exorcised for? The smell of feet? He didn’t even wait for us to finish work, and he really went alone…
SORACHI’S Q&A: HANGING OUT WITH THE READERS 64
QUESTION FROM MR. DOYO, IBARAKI PROVINCE
Sensei! There’s one thing that’s close to my heart: in the original Japanese, Gin-san and his friends often use the word teme to refer to themselves. Why? Is there any reason?
ANSWER:
Teme is a deformation of temae. This word, temae, is also used to call the person in front of you with contempt, but it can also be used to show humility, as if to say “A modest guy like me” …
SORACHI’S Q&A: HANGING OUT WITH THE READERS
LETTER SENT BY MISS “I HATE CHOCOLATE, BUT I HAVE A SWEET TOOTH” (LEFT) AND PACHIMITTSU (RIGHT)
FOR THEM… I FEEL ONLY GRATITUDE!
That said, the special “We have all been cursed” ends here. Luckily for Saito, who went to be exorcised, the priest of a Shinto shrine said: “No problem! You have too much imagination!” So we stuck the amulet he brought us in the study, and the case of the curse was solved! Although I would have preferred Saito to be affected… too bad!
You too, don’t blame others by bringing up a bill just because something negative happened to you! And don’t forget to train your anal sphincter muscle!
See you in the next volume! Goodbye!
New topic: “Editor Saito be cursed”.
Yorozuya Shinigami 