In one of the biggest pieces of Genshiken-related news to come out in a long time, author Kio Shimoku finally has a Twitter account, @kioshimoku1!
He’s genuinely new to the platform, as he seems to not even understand how to thread tweets. He also doesn’t really respond to fan tweets. Even so, it’s become a great place to learn things about the man that were previously unknown. But in recent years, he’s been willing to open up more (and has even done a couple interviews), and now he’s providing valuable creator insight and even a bit of personal history.
While I would love to translate everything, I don’t have the time for such a time-consuming endeavor. Instead, what I’m thinking of doing is just sharing some highlights from Kio’s account once a month or so.
Here’s one group of noteworthy tweets, as well as a summary below.
After having watched the Professional episode on Anno Hideaki, Kio reminisces about past Anno works, like Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind [where he was an animator] and Nadia: Secret of Blue Water. Aim for the Top! he couldn’t watch as it was coming out because it was an OVA, and his family only had Betamax, so he couldn’t rent tapes. Years later, after winning the Afternoon Four Seasons Award for manga while in college, he used his prize money to buy a VCR.
Kio believes he first heard of Nadia from the very first info about it in Animage, and thinks (but isn’t certain) that he knew Anno’s name at that point. Kio was all about Miyazaki Hayao’s anime at that time, and believed anime should be all about big adventures, so he recorded Nadia on Betamax every week. He certainly did notice the production issues that anime faced, though.
After trying to remember if he drew any Nadia fan works at the time, he remembers that one of his drawing submissions was actually published in Animage. [Note: I wonder if we could find his drawing…] He’s also pretty sure he drew some Nadia doujinshi, but can’t remember what it was about (other than it was not pornographic).
But then…
Kio is reminded by his Twitter followers that he not only drew a Nadia fan comic in 2012 as part of an anthology, but that he made the exact same response of having drawn doujin but having no recollection of the contents.
Finally, Kio drew this picture of Nadia in a plugsuit.
Speaking of drawings, it’s one of the best reasons to follow Kio on Twitter.
Sue vs. Hasegawa
Sue vs. Hasegawa aftermath
People have been saying she reminds them of Yajima from Genshiken, so Kio provided these notes.
Hasegawa Kozue, first-year Architecture and Construction major at Hashimoto Technical High School.
Ogiue! Kio practiced drawing Ogiue in an older style for the Twitter introduction image at the top of this post.
Kio Shimoku has a pet turtle.
Orihara and Shion
And that’s all for this time. Look forward to next month, maybe?
