Katsura Masakazu (continued)

With Katsura's three manga works transformed into anime series, he expressed his thoughts on each one. With Wingman, Katsura admitted that he was new to anime. He experienced a lot of frustration when dealing with the director and staff but grew to accept it "as the way it was." DNA^2, much to his pleasure, was Katsura's first anime work that was his style. With Video Girl Ai, Katsura had many, many discussions with the staff. His ideas of how the anime should be differed from the director's but Katsura tended to yield. In spite of that, Katsura was still satisfied, to a point, with the anime Video Girl Ai. As far as the structure of his anime projects, Katsura stated that he liked long-term and short-term projects equally and couldn't pinpoint a preference over the OAV format, which has higher quality, or a TV series, which reaches a wider audience. When assaulted with questions about future and possible projects, Katsura was either very tight-lipped or flatly denied involvement. Currently, he has no plans whatsoever to continue either DNA^2 or VGAi, whether it be manga or anime. As far as he is concerned, both titles are complete. His latest manga, Shadowlady, has not been picked up to be animated but is something Katsura would be interested in. Katsura was very surprised when asked about his newest manga series just released in Japan, M, a single issue adult story. One future project that he's interested in producing is Zman, a spoof on the old Japanese TV series Ultraman. With the sudden infusion of computer graphics into anime these days, Katsura confessed his ignorance of computers. Having never owned a computer, he doesn't know how to use one but is very interested in incorporating it with the coloring of his anime projects. Internet? What internet? Again, Katsura admits to being totally illiterate to the internet. He is interested, though, in "surfing the 'net" and rest assured, he has the address for AMPlus. The one thing that completely surprised Katsura was that he even had a following here in the United States. None of his works have been brought over commercially and there aren't any plans to. So, to him, even being invited to the U.S. for an anime convention seemed slightly strange. "I can't understand what the appeal is to a U.S. audience about Japanese manga and anime." Katsura stated. Katsura turned the tables on the audience and asked them what exactly it was that made them anime fans: what is it about manga and anime that is so addicting? Several answers were tossed out but it seemed that none of them truly convinced Katsura of the answer to his question. The panels drew to a close and Katsura Masakazu was greeted by a round of applause as he exited. Although he may not understand why his works are popular with American audiences, they are. Katsura has parlayed a drive to become a manga artist into a successful career. Whatever future works he becomes involved with, it's no doubt that there will be a audience here eagerly awaiting them. -- Ken Cho