Thank you for purchasing Gintama-kun no Ayumi. This year is the tenth anniversary of the series, and this is the third book. There are quite a few new characters that have appeared, but no matter how many hundreds of characters I create or how many years I work on them, I still can’t seem to get the hang of creating them. It’s often said that a character is like a child you’ve given birth to, or your alter ego, and it’s true that when you first create a character, it’s like that. You’re the one who understands the character the best, because you’re the one who created it, but once you throw the character into the frame, the character doesn’t belong to the artist anymore.
A single unintentional gag can change a character’s personality, or a new aspect can emerge when a character interacts with another character, and before you know it, the character is made up of parts I didn’t calculate, and is completely unexpected. The more I move the character, the more it slips out of my hands and forms a personality separate from my personal one, which I thought I understood best, but which I find hard to understand and manipulate. After ten years of this, it’s hard to tell whether I’m manipulating them or they’re manipulating me.
As a writer, I don’t feel so bad about it, whether it’s okay or not. It’s because I feel it’s the same as when a child is separated from his parents and becomes a different person depending on his environment. And the fact that they don’t listen to a punk mangaka like me anymore, is proof that they’re growing up, so they’re not just manga characters anymore, they’ve become my sidekicks, and I need them to be my golden goose. However, they can only live on paper or in people’s heads.
If they should ever come into your head via manga, I’d appreciate it if they could be a friend, if not a sidekick. They’re noisy, but they’re not bad guys, and they’ll shut up if you buy them merchandise.
Yorozuya Shinigami 