No offense to Yu Aida but.....

The interview was posted on this forum, in the "Manga Scanlations and RAWs" section. The title of the article is "Interview with Yu Aida". Reid, the person who posted that translated article, said that the original interview was included with the Italian volumes of Gunslinger Girl.

Ok, I know its been a while since the tread started but I feel compelled to post on this topic.
1.) A lot of emerging artist start as with doujinshi before they are picked up by a published. It might seem strange to Western audience, but I guess it is similar to book authors first being published in a magazine or anthology before getting a book approved. Some examples of people/groups which started that way are CLAMP(authors of Chobits, Card Captor Sakura etc), Ken Akamatsu (Negima) and Kiyohiko Azuma (Azumanga Daioh) among many others.
2.) Artist majors need to eat too. And it is proven fact that sex sells.
A bit of anecdotal evidence, but knowing few people, who want to draw comics, for a living from the local university art department... Well, regardless of what their aspirations are, they are not adverse to taking commissions (under a different name). From what they tell me many of the orders are what you can find under /d on chan boards. The artist are not very proud but need the money to pay their bills.
3.) The age of consent in Italy is 14 (13 in Japan). The cyborgs are considered to be older then they appear outwardly.
4.) While the author had done his research, the work was intended for local audience thus some eastern tropes are invoked. In particular it is seen as a bad thing to die a virgin. In the doujin "Idle Talk" by Jewel Box published in 2000, the 'Etta ringer is servery wounded and have to take an extra shot of the "medicine". The point is their chances to get away are not so good and they have a case of "do it at least once before we die". Just like the double lover suicide traditions, it might seem strange, but in contest is considered very romantic.

Still, he could have found another way to make money if he is not proud of it... but what is in the past reamins in the past.
P.S. I love the new site look

Trying to defend the fact that Aida's first iteration of GSG was pornographic is really focusing on the wrong issue. There are plenty of famous mangaka that never do explicitly sexual material.

The real question is: "Can a story be both meaningful and sexual explicit?" Most people would concede that it can be but, this crosses a further line with making it sexually explicit in regards to a young girl. While by itself it doesn't look good, when combined with the other doujinshi featuring early GSG stories, a different overall picture starts to appear. Aida meant originally for the story to be more pulp fiction-y, telling the story of these girls under adverse circumstances trying to live and find happiness. You don't have to stretch the imagination to find out how sex would fit into this picture, and obviously it was taken out in the final manga to make it more palatable. You'd be lying to yourself to think that the h-scenes were put in there for purely artistic reasons, but I don't think it delegitimizes the message of the larger story that surrounds it.

Entropy wrote:Trying to defend the fact that Aida's first iteration of GSG was pornographic is really focusing on the wrong issue. There are plenty of famous mangaka that never do explicitly sexual material.

The real question is: "Can a story be both meaningful and sexual explicit?" Most people would concede that it can be but, this crosses a further line with making it sexually explicit in regards to a young girl. While by itself it doesn't look good, when combined with the other doujinshi featuring early GSG stories, a different overall picture starts to appear. Aida meant originally for the story to be more pulp fiction-y, telling the story of these girls under adverse circumstances trying to live and find happiness. You don't have to stretch the imagination to find out how sex would fit into this picture, and obviously it was taken out in the final manga to make it more palatable. You'd be lying to yourself to think that the h-scenes were put in there for purely artistic reasons, but I don't think it delegitimizes the message of the larger story that surrounds it.

Oh no, I soooooooooo hope my fav character, Lauro never did little deSica.
He would not be cool to me anymore. Oh well, there's always my second fav, Olga!
(I hope she didn't do anybody)

tremec6speed wrote:

Entropy wrote:Trying to defend the fact that Aida's first iteration of GSG was pornographic is really focusing on the wrong issue. There are plenty of famous mangaka that never do explicitly sexual material.

The real question is: "Can a story be both meaningful and sexual explicit?" Most people would concede that it can be but, this crosses a further line with making it sexually explicit in regards to a young girl. While by itself it doesn't look good, when combined with the other doujinshi featuring early GSG stories, a different overall picture starts to appear. Aida meant originally for the story to be more pulp fiction-y, telling the story of these girls under adverse circumstances trying to live and find happiness. You don't have to stretch the imagination to find out how sex would fit into this picture, and obviously it was taken out in the final manga to make it more palatable. You'd be lying to yourself to think that the h-scenes were put in there for purely artistic reasons, but I don't think it delegitimizes the message of the larger story that surrounds it.

Oh no, I soooooooooo hope my fav character, Lauro never did little deSica.
He would not be cool to me anymore. Oh well, there's always my second fav, Olga!
(I hope she didn't do anybody)

As far as I remember (though I need the original works translated), I dont remember Luaro in the original series. Neither was Elsa. Funny though, Petrushka then was Elsa like, but with short black hair instead of Elsa's long pig tails. Everything then about Petrushka was Elsa, "doing her best for her handler" and yet still (physically, emotionally and mentally) abused by the bastard. Even her clothes was Elsa in style. I think that these two eventually became Elsa and Lauro, and Yu killed them because such abuse could not last forever.

ElfenMagix wrote:

tremec6speed wrote:

Entropy wrote:Trying to defend the fact that Aida's first iteration of GSG was pornographic is really focusing on the wrong issue. There are plenty of famous mangaka that never do explicitly sexual material.

The real question is: "Can a story be both meaningful and sexual explicit?" Most people would concede that it can be but, this crosses a further line with making it sexually explicit in regards to a young girl. While by itself it doesn't look good, when combined with the other doujinshi featuring early GSG stories, a different overall picture starts to appear. Aida meant originally for the story to be more pulp fiction-y, telling the story of these girls under adverse circumstances trying to live and find happiness. You don't have to stretch the imagination to find out how sex would fit into this picture, and obviously it was taken out in the final manga to make it more palatable. You'd be lying to yourself to think that the h-scenes were put in there for purely artistic reasons, but I don't think it delegitimizes the message of the larger story that surrounds it.

Oh no, I soooooooooo hope my fav character, Lauro never did little deSica.
He would not be cool to me anymore. Oh well, there's always my second fav, Olga!
(I hope she didn't do anybody)

As far as I remember (though I need the original works translated), I dont remember Luaro in the original series. Neither was Elsa. Funny though, Petrushka then was Elsa like, but with short black hair instead of Elsa's long pig tails. Everything then about Petrushka was Elsa, "doing her best for her handler" and yet still (physically, emotionally and mentally) abused by the bastard. Even her clothes was Elsa in style. I think that these two eventually became Elsa and Lauro, and Yu killed them because such abuse could not last forever.

interesting....

ElfenMagix wrote:Funny though, Petrushka then was Elsa like, but with short black hair instead of Elsa's long pig tails.

Petrushka had Claes' physical features in the original doujin.

I took part of a sentence from Liko and copy/paste it ("the doujin "Idle Talk" by Jewel Box") to search on Google with results that well, made me sad as clicking on some of the results showed 'Henrietta'? (not translated, don't know) doing some very unsavory scenes, such as going down on 'Jose'?

Not judging Mr. Aida or anything, just saying that after I've become acquainted with Jose and the others, it's kinda had to see them doing stuff like that, although being a big fan of the author, I am curious about his past works.
Anyway, after seeing that, all I can say is....
*
Hooray for fanfiction!!
There, I can make my characters do and be what and who I want them to.
Example: Lauro has a tidbit part in the manga and in the anime, there was so much more to be explored of him which I can bring to the table so to speak, in my own character Gunther, Lauro's younger brother.
He has all that I want in Mr. Aida's character, (similar looks. voice, somewhat unapproachable) but at the same time, I can inject all the qualities that I want as well! (without any hentai)
Gunther would never do Ayden.

The original version of Gunslinger Girl was a one shot lolicon doujinshi called "fratello". I apologize if someone already mentioned this I wasn't going to read every single post.

I believe it was Yu Ada's first amateur effort as a Manga artist to get published. I've only heard rumors of it and seen a screen shot of the cover which doesn't look too different from Gunslinger Girl in art design.