He is one of the most famous mangakas in the world. The Japanese Hajime Isayama, at the origin of the manga The attack of the Titans (Where Shingeki no Kyojin, SNK) visits France for the first time this Thursday to give a master class during the 50th edition of the Angoulême International Comic Strip Festival.
“An honor”, according to the 36-year-old author, who for the occasion returned, before the microphone of France Inter, to the genesis of his successful manga, whose 34th and last volume was presented in June 2021. .
Despite the popularity of The attack of the Titanswhich has sold more than 110 million copies worldwide and has been adapted into anime since 2012, Hajime Isayama says that when he began in 2009, he was far from imagining the impact his work would have:
“When I started writing, I was 80% expecting it to stop in the middle. I never imagined that I could make a living writing manga,” she says.
“Humans are scarier than animals”
The attack of the Titans tells the story of a medieval city, entrenched behind a wall, prey to the attack of gigantic humanoid beings, the Titans, who have been trying to devour them for centuries. For their survival, some inhabitants try to fight against them, at the initiative of Eren Jäger, an orphan who wants to avenge the death of his mother.
If this manga was born almost 15 years ago, Hajime Isayama remembers precisely when he imagined the scenario. At that time a server at an Internet cafe in the Ikebukuro district of Tokyo, the author explains that he was attacked by a drunk customer.
“There are customers who could be very upset and I was like, ‘What’s going to happen when they come back?’ If there is a tiger in a city and we lock ourselves in a house with a key, the tiger cannot follow us, ”she specifies.
And to add: “But a human being can open the door and have a knife in his hands. This is where I told myself that the human being is scarier than an animal, than a tiger”.
Eren “reflects a bad part of me”
For inspiration, the author explains that he was also inspired by his childhood, spent in Ōyama, a small town in the Japanese countryside, and by the dark side of his personality, to create the main character Eren Jäger.
“My hometown was surrounded by mountains and it was really like an island on earth. We had no contact with other people and growing up in this environment impacted me a lot,” he confesses.
“I believe that human beings are made by making mistakes, so I thought that a completely perfect and good hero would not be interesting. He is a character that reflects a bad part of me. And the whole story is aimed at killing that bad part”, said. adds.
In June 2021, Hajime Isayama put an end to almost 15 years of work by publishing the 34th and final volume of his saga. If you ensure that a sequence of the attack of the Titans “it’s impossible” because the work is “totally finished”, he says he has another rather amazing project to do: building a sauna with his own hands.
Source: BFM TV
