Interview

This year, I was able to get an interview with the person who translated most of Tezuka's manga, Frederik L. Schodt.

I found out that Tezuka didn't start Mushi Production with only the intention of entering the animation industry, but also because he hated the experience of working with Toei and wanted to compete with them. Throughout his life, Tezuka was a very competitive person and would always strive to be the best. Even though Mushi Production collapsed, Tezuka continued with Tezuka Productions, which is still successful to this day. In fact, his standard was so high that he would often fail to meet deadlines, even though he was working almost all the time. His last words before he died of stomach cancer were "I'm begging you, let me work!" to the nurse.

Another interesting topic we covered was internet scanlations. There are many manga series in Japan that don't get translated, and the language barrier makes it difficult for non-Japanese speakers to access these. The solution that people developed was just for the fans themselves to scan, translate, and edit. Technically, this is a form of internet piracy, but it still remains popular and is one of the most commonly used ways for people to access a variety of manga. I am not recommending that people use scanlations (although I'm guilty of reading them myself sometimes).