Watase Seizo：A "dream collaboration" with Hiromi Matsuo: A short manga series will be serialized in a short period of time, depicting "Somewhere Not Here"

It has been revealed that manga artist Watase Seizo, who is celebrating his 50th year as an artist, and illustrator Matsuo Hiromi, who is popular for his retro-modern world, will collaborate. A short manga born from this "dream collaboration" between the two will begin a short, concentrated serialization in the December issue of the quarterly magazine "Illustration" (Genkosha), which goes on sale on October 18th. Watase will construct the story and create the storyboard, while Matsuo will be in charge of the illustrations.

Matsuo has declared himself to be a fan of Watase, and says he has been particularly influenced by one of Watase's representative works, "Na." Watase also saw Matsuo's work and was impressed by his beautiful retro worldview and sense of color based on a Japanese theme. The collaboration began when Matsuo contributed to "Chalk-Colored People Complete Edition," a reprint of Watase's works from the 1980s.

Watase said, "How wonderful it would be if the girls drawn by Matsuo appeared in the story world I created." Matsuo once wanted to be a manga artist, but he struggled with creating names and it took too long to draw one frame, so he decided to pursue illustration. He has always had a desire to create manga, and has even written short stories for his own books. For the collaborative manga, he used Watase's names as a base, matched them with his own worldview, and came up with characters to compose the screen.

The two came up with keywords for the story, and "Telephone box" was chosen. By deliberately including a telephone booth in this age of smartphones, Matsuo expresses a parallel world of "somewhere not here." Matsuo usually draws after meticulously researching materials based on the time period, but Watase suggested making the time period vague, which not only reduced the effort of finding materials but also brought out a new side of Matsuo. The full-color four-page format, like Watase's representative work "Heart Cocktail," leaves a pleasant aftertaste in the short episodes. Watase wrote the handwritten text in the speech bubbles.

Matsuo's solo exhibition "Memories of a Western-style building - Matsuo Hiromi x Former Ozaki Theodora House" is being held at the former Ozaki Theodora House (Setagaya Ward, Tokyo) until October 8th. Watase's solo exhibition "Celebrating 50 years of his career as an artist: Watase Seizo Exhibition - Heartful Kobe" will be held from October 2nd to 14th at the event hall on the 9th floor of the main building of Kobe Hankyu (Kobe City, Chuo Ward).