Last year, the author of the popular romance manga Kaguya-sama: Love is War, Akasaka Aka, retired as a manga artist. This ended his seven-year-long career as a manga illustrator.
Now, another famous manga artist quoted Akasaka Aka and hinted that he would also love to stop drawing manga. During an interview, he said that writing stories seem more fun than drawing.

Tatsuki Fujimoto, the author of Chainsaw Man, was recently interviewed by the good people at Shueisha New Book Editorial Department. It was on commemorating the publication of “Studio Ghibli Story.”
The interview was one hour long. Most of the discussion involving this interview consisted of Fujimoto praising the direction skills of Hayao Miyazaki. But Fujimoto also hinted at retiring as a manga artist.
Here are some popular discussions held during the interview:
Tatsuki Fujimoto and Ghibli Movies
The interview started off with Fujimoto mentioning some of his favorite Ghibli movies, which included “Spirited Away” and “Princess Mononoke.”
He also mentioned that he liked some documentaries released by Studio Ghibli. This included “How Ponyo Was Born” (~12 hours), “Thank You, Mr. Lasseter” (~2 hours), and “How Princess Mononoke Was Born” (~6 hours).
Fujimoto shared his cinema experience of Spirited Away about how hardly any seats were available. He also said that he only remembers watching something beautiful as he was just a kid.
He ranked “Princess Mononoke” as his favorite Ghibli movie and said he watched it hundreds of times. The main reason for his affection for this movie is because of the main character Ashitaka.
According to Fujimoto, Ashitaka is a remarkable character with a mysterious vibe, making him appealing.

Ghibli Movies As a Manga
During the interview, Fujimoto wandered off into his world while talking about a scene of Ashitaka from Princess Mononoke. He talks about a scene in which the character grabs an arrow and throws it back and adds a comment that it would be drawn as a small panel in a manga.
Fujimoto later starts to rethink if it should be added as a double-page panel. He adds that he likes to discuss movies from the perspective of a manga series and in detail, as he enjoys doing so.

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Fujimoto’s Comments on Anime Directors
Fujimoto then breaks down the direction perspective of different directors. Hayao Miyazaki knows about different countries and has no trouble creating a fantasy world in different settings.
Whereas if we talk about directors like Shinkai Makoto, they only create fantasy settings in Japan as they can explain their stories best this way.
The purpose of starting this talk was that Fujimoto wanted to urge how unique these people are in their direction and that they cannot be duplicated in the future.

Fujimoto on Retiring as a Manga Artist
While discussing the latest release of Hayao Miyazaki’s film “The Boy and The Heron,” the discussion was about the creators having an official retirement, as Hayao Miyazaki got back from a decade-old hiatus to release this new film.
Fujimoto replied by mentioning Aka Akasaka, the author of Kaguya-sama: Love is War, who retired as a manga artist last year. He said that he would also love to do the same if possible.
Fujimoto shares his opinion that writing a story is more fun than drawing the whole story. Fujimoto prefers to write over illustrating and considers only drawing a narrow world for himself and his viewers.
Final Thoughts
So far, Tatsuki Fujimoto has provided art and story to all his manga series except the one-shot “Just Listen to the Song.”
So, it might be possible that Chainsaw Man might be the last illustrated project of Tatsuki Fujimoto. After that, we might only see him as a story writer, just like Aka Akasaka. But he would most definitely prevail, nonetheless.
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What are your thoughts on this? Do you think this is the right time for Tatsuki Fujimoto to retire as a manga artist? Let us know in the comments down below.
Source: Shueisha