Amin Abbas

Yutaka Abe is a veteran Japanese manga artist, who is known for “100% Tantei Monogatari” one shot manga volume with veteran Japanese manga Author Gosho Aoyama, creator of the Detective Conan series.

Abe told Arab News Japan he enjoys watching anime as a fan, but manga is directly related to his work, so he tends to view it more critically. But he said he still admired it.

“My favorite anime projects are Demon Slayer, Makoto Shinkai’s works, Mamoru Hosoda’s works, and Hayao Miyazaki’s works. My favorite manga series are Golden Kamuy, To Shimazaki in the Land of Peace, etc.,” he added.

Abe drew in kindergarten and started drawing with a pen when he was 10 years old. The manga that he drew when he was 10 years old was a baseball manga.

He began working on manga in 1979 for Hitomi and then at Nakayoshi (publishers of Sailor Moon, Goldfish Warning!, etc.) in 1981, before leaving in 1985 to create his own works.

During their time at Nihon University in the eighties, at the Ekoda Campus (Fine Arts, Nerima Ward), Abe was Gosho Aoyama’s senior and both were members of the local manga club, the Nekketsu Manga Konjo-kai. During this time, Aoyama assisted Abe in the creation of 100% Tantei Monogatari.

About the challenges that he faced during career in manga industry, Abe said: “Before my debut, my editor warned me about the way the story progressed, my psychological portrayal, etc. My most recent pinch was when I was drawing 340 pages for the second volume of the comic, and after drawing about 80 pages, I was asked to fit it into 170 pages. It was an impossible request.”

Abe has been working on the Detective Conan Special series and Detective Conan Movie The Comic Edition series alongside Denjiro Maru as well drawn illustrations for many Detective Conan novels.

“Thirty years ago, Aoyama asked me if there was anyone who could draw illustrations for Conan’s puzzles. I asked my assistant at the time and Aoyama’s university classmate, Maru Denjiro and I would supervise it and that’s how the project was started. When we started, he asked us to make it into a manga, and it’s been going on ever since,” Abe said.

“One memorable memory was the first two-part drawing I did when I was in the 4th and 5th grades of elementary school. It was an original work that I came up with together with Maru Denjiro and Kubota Kazuhiro. Next is “The Last Wizard of the Century,” the first comic adaptation of a movie, because I added an original episode that wasn’t in the movie,” he added.

Last year was the 30^th anniversary of the Detective Conan manga series since its initial release in 1994.

“When the original Conan series first started, Aoyama lived directly below the same apartment building. It seems like just the other day that I designed the clothes for Shinichi-kun and Ran-chan in the first episode of the series. It’s amazing that it’s been going on for 30 years! I’m truly honored,” Abe said.

Abe was of the Japanese artists who were invited to Animenia Abu Dhabi 2024 and he was very pleased to meet fans at the event: “It was my first time going to the UAE! I had been to Saudi Arabia the year before, but I was surprised at how different the atmosphere was. It was very interesting and stimulating to be able to experience a world I had only known from movies up close.”

Regarding his upcoming projects, Abe said: “This March and April, a comedy manga about a Middle Eastern prince who appears in Japan as a chibi character will be released. I think it will probably be in Japanese only.”