CONTACT WITH THE READERS: QUESTION CORNER 220
QUESTION FROM MR ATSU OF AOMORI PROVINCE
Hello, Sorachi sensei! In the interview with Mr. Onishi in volume 19, you said you were planning to draw the ninja saga, the one about the great war in Kabukicho and the one about Mutsu and Sakamoto, then an in-depth chapter about Otose and the story of Kagura’s older brother. Compared to the ideas you had at the time, did the episodes you made turn out as you imagined? I’d really like to know before the work is finished!
ANSWER:
Thank you for purchasing volume 66! I had completely forgotten about those speeches but thinking about it now I can say that I realized those chapters quite faithfully compared to the idea I had at the time. About Otose, I originally had a touching episode in mind where her (incredibly stupid) son came home after several years and caused a commotion, but then I thought the old woman wasn’t suited to having children, so I changed the plot to talk about her husband and placed that chapter within the Kabukicho War saga. A similar thing happened with the ninja saga: since Zenzou and Sacchan had a reputation for being unserious, I wanted to show readers another side of those characters, so I combined this saga with the saga of the Shogun’s assassination, a profoundly serious story I had worked out separately. Zenzou was supposed to die, but Sacchan worked harder than I imagined, so he survived. As for the saga of the assassination of the Shogun, I had been thinking about that for a long time, but knowing that once I started it, it would never be the same as before, I postponed as long as possible. From that moment on, even though I stated that the last story arc would start in this volume, I began to draw as if inside me this had already begun.
CONTACT WITH THE READERS: QUESTION CORNER 221
QUESTION FROM MR. KATSURA, KYOTO PROVINCE
Hello, Sorachi sensei. I decided to write to you because there is a matter that is very important to me. At the beginning of Gintama, Umibozu said that Kamui had his arm ripped off because of an old Yato custom of “killing one’s parents,” but there’s no mention of this in Volume 65… Tell me why!
ANSWER:
Kamui hadn’t yet declared “I’m going to kill my father now”, even though he has in fact always put this intention into practice. Since Umibozu isn’t the type to recount in detail such a painful fact from A to Z, he traced it all back to the old Yato custom of killing parents….
CONTACT WITH THE READERS: QUESTION CORNER 222
QUESTION FROM MR. “EVEN IF I APPLY MEREBU’S MAGIC FORMULAS ON MY FAMILY, EVEN THE DOG DOESN’T PAY ATTENTION TO ME.”
Sorachi sensei, good morning and congratulations on the live action version of Gintama! I wanted to ask you who is your favorite character in the teledrama Yusha Yoshihiko. Mine is Merebu. Please let me know!
ANSWER:
I follow Fukuda’s works, including Yusha Yoshihiko, for the sole purpose of seeing Mr. Jiro Sato in action. If I agreed to Fukuda shooting Gintama live action, it’s mainly so I could watch Jiro Sato do something ridiculous. That’s the harsh truth.
CONTACT WITH THE READERS: QUESTION CORNER 223
QUESTION FROM MISS “ELIZABETH IS LOVELY” OF HYOGO PROVINCE
Dear Sorachi sensei, are you familiar with the Osomatsu-san cartoon you’ve been hearing so much about lately? I like both it and Gintama, but I only recently found out that they have the same director, Yoichi Fujita! I’d love to know what you think, Sorachi sensei!
ANSWER:
I have to admit that my magnanimity has a limit, and it stops in front of the success of others, so instead of applauding I find myself thinking “How I wish Fujita would fail!”, and I don’t think this will change with the passing of time, if anything, in case he really does, I might find myself thinking “Well, but I liked that work!”.
CONTACT WITH THE READERS: QUESTION CORNER 224
QUESTION FROM MISS “CHERRY BLOSSOMS DRIVE ME CRAZY”.
I’m having a hard time fully understanding the story of Utsuro and the Altana. Could you please explain it to me in detail? I’m sorry, but I’m a little slow on the uptake.
ANSWER:
Altana is the life energy of a planet. On earth it is called the “dragon’s vein”. This energy flows underground like a river and the points from which it flows are called “dragon holes” or simply “holes”. According to Feng Shui, the ancient Chinese Taoist geomantic art, building a house over one of them brings much prosperity. In the world of Gintama, although nature benefits in terms of fertility, when humans absorb a large amount of Altana they experience mutations, i.e., deviations from the laws that govern living beings. Utsuro’s immortality and eternal youth are examples of this. For this very reason he has been persecuted and killed several times, but because he cannot die, he continues to suffer for a dizzyingly long time. In order to escape such suffering, he multiplied himself into numerous “personalities”, locking up his true self in the depths of his heart. These personalities continued to be harassed by men and began to perpetrate massacres in order to obtain revenge. To stop them, Shoyo, another personality, who later became the master of Gin-san and his companions, was born. However, Shoyo also clashed with human society and met a grim fate. So Utsuro, who couldn’t stand watching himself suffering from the secret of his heart any longer, decided to kill all his personalities, including Shoyo, in order to end the pain, causing a huge war that would wipe out planet Earth, and thus himself.
CONTACT WITH THE READERS: QUESTION CORNER 225
QUESTION FROM MISS HIJIRI ICHIHARA OF GIFU PROVINCE
Good morning, Sorachi sensei! I don’t quite understand what happened between the Tendoshu Clan and the Liberation Army. Could you explain it in a way that even someone with low intellectual capacity like me can understand?
ANSWER:
First, the Tendoshu clan is an organization officially known as the “Altana management society” that has exclusive control over this energy. If we compare this situation to our real life, it is as if the energy resources we rely on, such as oil and gas, were in the hands of a single entity. Having said that, the planets were under the control of the Tendoshu clan, but at one point Utsuro, one of its members, unleashed a sweeping loss of control of the Altana on his own initiative, causing the destruction of those planets. The survivors, unaware of how things really were, blamed the entire organisation for the disasters, so they decided to take back the Altana by force: “We can no longer allow the Tendoshu clan to do what it wants in our home!”. All the countries agreed on this, and so the Altana Liberation Army was formed, gathering the anti-Tendoshu forces scattered across the universe. The army destroyed the society’s headquarters in various places, scraping away their power and expanding their sphere of influence. Eventually it raided Earth, the true stronghold of the Tendoshu clan.
CONTACT WITH THE READERS: QUESTION CORNER 226
QUESTION FROM MR. “THREE MEALS, GINTAMA AND OTSUYA-SAN” FROM HIROSHIMA PROVINCE.
I have a question for you, sensei: how many assistants do you currently have? What do you usually talk about? I would be very curious to know what kind of assistants are in a work like Gintama! I really hope you’ll answer me!
ANSWER:
I have nine, six of whom are permanent in the studio, the others come in shifts. Our typical conversations include bad-mouthing the others and their works, as well as dirty jokes. Itani, the author of the manga Takuan To Batsu No Nichijo Enmacho, also serialized in Jump, also worked for me for several years, but then his friends told him with contempt, “Since you’ve been working for Sorachi, your personality has gotten worse!” My studio is a funny place, known for crippling people’s personalities rather than developing their skills. If you want to come and work for me, the door is open! That said, volume 66 by the undersigned Gorilla and his merry men ends here. Although the people who drew it have a perverse soul, I believe the readers are all good people, so I ask them to kindly buy the next volume as well.
New topic: “Fujita, next time you fail!”
Yorozuya Shinigami 