Takei’s Early Career – Butsu Zone Collector’s Edition Volume 2 Interview

With the new Butsu Zone Collector’s Edition, a new 3-hour interview was conducted with Hiroyuki Takei in June 2024 as additional new content. Portions of the interview were cut due to space and split across the 2 volumes and we have a summary of the first part of the interview here. The interview was conducted by Sekai, one of the editorial staff at Shogakukan Creative who published the book. In a previous 2-part interview with Quarterly S magazine, they detail some of the production of the Butsu Zone book and the future of the Shaman King manga. The interview with Hiroyuki Takei for this Butsu Zone Collector’s Edition likely happened around the same time.

The first volume of the Butsu Zone Collector’s Edition contains the following:

• Butsu Zone chapters 10-19 (including the color page with chapter 10)
• Additional Butsu Zone mini stories that have been published throughout the years
• The Death Zero oneshot
• The Itako No Anna oneshot
• Collection of Butsu Zone illustrations previously released in past editions of Butsu Zone and Shaman King manga
• Character summaries and illustrations from the 2007 Bunko edition of Butsu Zone
• A new 5 page interview with Hiroyuki Takei
• Various illustrations only used in promotional ads in Weekly Shonen Jump that have never been republished
• Various illustrations used in the Butsu Zone drama CDs
• Textless illustrations of the Butsu Zone manga Bunko and Remix volume covers
• New original color illustrations of Ashura, Jizo, and Bato

The interview included with the first volume focused on Hiroyuki Takei’s early childhood influences. That second part, which is included in this volume, focuses on Takei’s move to Tokyo and his time working as an assistant and then transitioning to his debut as a mangaka with the Butsu Zone manga serialization.

Below is some of the highlights from the interview, which is currently only published in Japanese:

• While Takei was still working part-time (age 20), he had his first child. This was the prompt for him to start looking for full-time work.
• The author of The Shape of Happiness (Shiawase No Katachi – しあわせのかたち), Tamakichi Sakura (桜玉吉), was looking for assistants and Takei applied in 1992.
• Tamakichi Sakura’s office for serializing The Shape of Happiness was an old Tokyo apartment building with strange incidents happening in the apartments around them.
• Takei worked as an assistant for about 6 months, and learned a lot from Tamakichi Sakura during that time.
• While being an assistant, he wrote a story with his friend who had a job at a game company and submitted to the Tezuka Award. It was a story that he claimed was a poor imitation of Hayao Miyazaki’s works, so he wasn’t surprised it failed afterwards.
• After submitting Itako No Anna for the Tezuka Award in 1994, he applied for a job at the game company his friend worked at. The president of the game company read the story and thought it would win, so he held off on hiring Takei to see if he won first.
• Takei was happy to win the Tezuka Award for Itako No Anna, since he was reading a lot of Osamu Tezuka’s works at the time and he now had an award named after him.
• When coming up with the idea for Itako No Anna, he used Mt. Osore as the setting since he wanted to keep his illustrations and themes unique to himself (rather than copy as he did with the previous submission). Typically when people think of itako, it was an old lady, so he thought it would be interesting to make it someone younger.
• While reading Osamu Tezuka’s works, he liked Message to Adolf (アドルフに告ぐ) the best. When he was younger he thought they were all outdated, but he then started to see the appeal.
• Takei also was reading manga by Leiji Matsumoto at the time too. His favorite was The Cockpit (ザ・コクピット) which had an influence on his later oneshot Death Zero.
• Takei also liked Otoko Oidon (男おいどん) by Leiji Matsumoto. But his younger brother, Hirofumi Takei, was a bigger Leiji Matsumoto fan so he gave him his copies.
• Takei was also an assistant to Kōji Kiriyama (桐山光侍) on Ninku (NINKU-忍空-) for about 6 hours. After winning the Tezuka Award, the Weekly Shonen Jump editorial department called him to help out to assist during this emergency. He was with about 10 other assistants who were working without any sleep.
• After he worked as an assistant on Ninku for 6 hours, the Jump editorial department offered him a longer job working for Nobuhiro Watsuki (和月 伸宏) on Rurouni Kenshin (るろうに剣心). He saw this more as a “training camp.”
• Watsuki’s office was only 2 side-streets away, so it was only a 2 or 3 minute walk. Everyone there was very talented and motivated so he would work there 4 to 5 days a week.
• After the work had been completed, the artists at Watsuki’s office would share what works they had completed in their personal time. They would also go on trips and shopping as a group.
• Eiichiro Oda would always say “I’m simply the best!” (僕が1番凄い). When Takei questioned him on that, Oda responded with “It wouldn’t be cool if you changed your attitude after becoming popular.” (売れてから態度変えたらカッコ悪い). Takei was impressed by this answer and saw this passion that helped bring these talented artists together.
• Takei liked the popular works in Jump like Dragonball (ドラゴンボール) and Kinnkuman (キン肉マン), but felt like he needed to go down a different path. He was studied the works from Yoshiharu Tsuge (つげ義春) at the time as well.
• Watsuki’s assistants were given time to create their own works, so Takei finished his Death Zero oneshot in about 7 days. It was hard work, and difficult since skeletons are an incomplete portion of the human design.
• In his 20s, Takei was a fan of Serge Gainsbourg, and the early designs and name, took inspiration from him for Senju in Butsu Zone. Senju later then took a more androgynous design over time.
• The original plot concept for Butsu Zone was that Buddhist entities were the enemy and Senju would defect from them. But when Takei was working on the designs of the more demonic enemies, he thought there would be some pushback on treating Buddha statues as enemies. Looking back at that time, Takei realized that his understanding of Buddhism at the time was being very shallow. However, now he thinks his original idea actually had some merit.
• Starting with the Butsu Zone oneshot, Takei didn’t want to relate an opponent as always being the “bad guy.” Depending on the situation, even Dainichi Nyorai (Senju), could be viewed as the enemy. He wished that he kept closer to that original idea at that time.
• Takei decided to change “Sachi” to “Sati” when she was introduced into Shaman King so he wouldn’t have to explain her backstory at that time. Then he based the names of Gandhara team using her as the central point.
• Takei took inspiration from Tezuka and Matsumoto who would reuse character designs across works, and thought it was a fun concept. He acknowledges that there are issues attempting to connect multiple series, but he think it can be a benefit to the fans of his series if they are well received.
• While Anna’s design was re-used in Shaman King, Takei didn’t think about connecting the series back to Butsu Zone until he created the Gandhara team. Using the timing of Sachi reaching enlightenment in 1999 when she was 30 would work well with the Shaman Fight in 2000.
• The interviewer questioned why Butsu Zone was set in 1975. Using the Earth’s population number that was described in the first volume, the interviewer thought the series was set in modern day in 1997. Takei for a long time thought he had set in the 1970s and had tried to make the setting match that. At the time he saw some parallels with Buddhism and the hippie culture of the 70s. The interviewer than noted that one of the calendars that were hung up did list a February 1970 date.
• While working on the weekly serialization for Butsu Zone, it was very difficult for Takei and more than he could handle.
• During the serialization he also had to do additional drawings for the “Story King” promotion. He thought that was terrible as well, since he would rather do things he wants to do instead of what he is told to do. But he also jokes that isn’t too different from what happens now. Ideally he would want to do things only based on what he wants to do.
• Takei was notified that Butsu Zone was being cancelled 5 chapters before the end. Even though he was exhausted, he wanted to keep his cool and worked hard right towards the end. When he was at the end of Shaman King in Weekly Shonen Jump, he felt like he was going to die both physically and mentally.
• As a closing comment, Takei is happy that people still love his work from 30 years ago and continue to follow him. The support of his readers is the motivation he has to continue drawing. When he was drawing for Weekly Shonen Jump, that was the strongest motivation for him. He looks forward to seeing the fans reaction to this Butsu Zone Collector’s Edition release. He hopes that fans will continue to read Shaman King and continue the story from Butsu Zone and get the answers they are looking for.

The interview added timeline of events, which included some topics of discussion that were cut from the volume 2 publication. The following is a rough translation of that timeline:

Below is some additional supplemental information not included in the interview.

• Prior to submitting to the Tezuka Award, he attempted to submit a story called Thunder of Judgement (裁きの雷) to a manga competition for Weekly Famitsu magazine. At the time he was an assistant to Tamakichi Sakura, where The Shape of Happiness was published in that same magazine. The story was written by EXIAD and drawn by Hiroyuki Takei. However the story couldn’t be submitted as it didn’t meet the publishing requirements in Weekly Famitsu based on it’s structure. The story was about two warring nations and a prisoner on a battleship who takes a decisive action. Tamakichi Sakura then encouraged Takei to create his own original story and aim for publishing in a Jump magazine.
• The title of the manga that Hiroyuki Takei first submitted to the Tezuka Award was called Dragdoll Group (ドラグドール団). This name was a combination of the words “Dragon” and “Doll”. This was a story about a pilot who controls a giant robot. However once in the robot the reader can’t see the main protagonist, and the robot doesn’t speak.
• The following is the portion of The Shape of Happiness comic where Takei (wearing the green helmet) is first introduced as a new assistant. The punchline is that Tamakichi Sakura is shocked that Takei already has a family (wife and child) waiting for him at home at the age of 20. This comic is available at the end of volume 3 (part 1) which can be purchased digitally from Bookwalker. Volume 3 (part 2) also contains some additional comics featuring Takei, including a reference to the holes in his mouth from the interview in Butsu Zone Collector’s Edition volume 1. The free preview shows that comic as the first one in this book.

• While Hiroyuki Takei worked as an assistant to Nobuhiro Watsuki, once he started his own full serializations in Weekly Shonen Jump he spent very little time with him. Most of the assistants at the time had also moved onto other works and any of the meet-ups at that time we limited. Even with later public comments, Takei framed them as things that happened in the past and only comments about those times when he worked there directly, further indicating a limited connection with Nobuhiro Watsuki. In 2018 Nobuhiro Watsuki was convicted and fined for possession of child porn, which was over 10 years since Takei had worked as an assistant. Additional information about this can be found on Anime News Network.

Butsu Zone Collector’s Edition volume 2 is available in both digital and print editions in Japan. You can purchase the digital volume without region restrictions from Bookwalker. A free preview of the volume is also available.