The Anime Blog - We Go Beyond Anime!

I had the pleasure of meeting Trigun and Gungrave creator Yasuhiro Nightow during Anime Central 2007. I participated in a round table discussion with Mr. Nightow and character designer Noriyuki Zinguji, who has worked on Trigun, sCRYED and Hellsing. Both guests were very pleasant, thoughtful and provided very detailed answers to the questions that we asked.

Mr. Nightow has worked in a variety of creative fields. When he’s not working on the Trigun Maximum manga (which continues Vash’s story), he’s either designing action figures, working on games or assisting with anime production.

I asked Mr. Nightow if there was a drastically different way he works between the manga and videogame world. He said that one of the main differences is that for videogames (specifically Gungrave), he approached the design of the characters from the back first. His reason for doing things this way were due to the fact that in the Gungrave game, you’re playing as Beyond the Grave, so the player would see over his shoulder. Then he began working on the backgrounds and environments. When asked if there was anything he would change about the game, he said “No”.

Inspiration for Trigun was a mixture of ideas that Mr. Nightow had bubbling around in his head. He liked the contrast between cybertech and western, but the main concept of Vash stems from his desire to tell a story of a character with a strong sense of virtue. Some of the themes he wanted to explore included ideas on life and anti-violence. Some of those concepts have darkened over the years, but his ideas are constantly changing, so a lot of those original ideas show up from time to time.

His favorite ‘western’ (and possibly some inspiration for Trigun) is ‘Wild Wild West’. Or ‘The Wild Bunch’.

He is very inspired when he sees people cosplay as his characters. He once asked a cosplayer why they would go though so much trouble to make a costume for such a complex character design. The fan told him that his work is so inspiring, he had to make it work. So Mr. Nightow is a big fan of people who cosplayer as characters from his creations.

A few questions were asked about some of the ‘non work-related’ things he does. Some of Mr. Nightow’s favorite videogames are God of War and Tomb Raider (for Playstation).

Mr. Nightow would like to tell aspiring artists to “draw every day - practice/practice/practice!” He also said that “no one ever becomes a manga artist without first creating their own manga!”

Overall it was really great to meet such talented creators from Japan. I really appreciate both of their work and am greatful that they took the time out of their day to answer questions.