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Saiyuki started as a doujinshi written by Kazuya Minnekura. The name Kazuya is male name but she is woman. All of those doujinshi which she published were serialized in commercial magazines. There are action scenes in most of her works. She is fussy about depiction of bale body, friendship and relationship. Since Minekura loves smoking, smokers often appear in her comics (tobacco she likes is CABIN super mild). In her comics, there are many violent scenes and grotesque scenes such as blood. Characters often say bleu jokes. She uses many screen tones such as shadow of mouth.
Saiyuki is in a parody of Chinese novel Saiyuki (Journey to the West) which is one of the four great classical novels in China. She likes Saiyuki since she watched TV drama and when she watched “Doraemon: Nobita’s Parallel “Journey to the West”, she decided to write a parody by herself.
When she writes comics, she makes a whole image of story from the image of song and singer she likes. She said the image of Saiyuki is music of B’z, especially their song “Run”. Therefore, there are some subtitles of comics and amine which is the same as songs of B’z.
Saiyuki was serialized in “monthly GFantasy” from ENIX Corporation (current SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.) and then “Monthly Comic Zero Sum” and “special edition WARD” from Ichijinsya Inc. Because chief editor of GFantasy, Yousuke Sugizno established a new company Ichijinsya with flagship comic artist including Minakura.
This is a very long series which was started serialized in commercial magazine in 1997 and currently, Minekura write a novel “Saiyuki CROSS ROADERS” at Zero Sum Online, Saiyuki Ibun is serialized in WARD and Saiyuki RELOAD BLAST is serialized in Zero Sum. When she discussed about the development of the story with an editor, the editor said “How long will you continue? The length of the journey of original Saiyuki is 14 years.” Therefore, it is already longer than the original journey. She said one year has passed at “act. 13.5 anniversary?” in third volume of Saiyuki RELOAD. She makes this a topic by let a character saying “I fell as if I travel 6 years.”
I subscribed both GFantasy and Zero Sum from when Saiyuki started serialized and Saiyuki only event was the first dojin event I went. Therefore, I am emotionally involved with Saiyuki. My friends were the big fan of Saiyuki and they went doujin events often. They taught me, I should bring croquis note to doujin events. You can ask your favorite doujin writers to draw a character you like. At the time, the character a writer drawn for me was Goku with long hair
