An Interview with Yuki Wada Producer at Publisher Shogakukan

Date: 2025 September 06 10:24

Posted by Joe

After joining publishing powerhouse Shogakukan in 2001, Yuki Wada worked in the CoroCoro Comic editorial department and the Weekly Shonen Sunday editorial department before becoming editor-in-chief of manga app Manga One. He is currently a producer in the Universal Media Division and head of the XR Business Promotion Office, where he is involved in promoting new businesses such as NOVELOUS. We caught up with him over e-mail to find out what it's like being a veteran of the manga publishing industry.

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How did you get into the manga industry?

I think editing is a unique job, but in my case, my father was an editor, so it was a natural choice. However, I never thought about working in manga, and it was actually because I was assigned to the comics department at the company, which had nothing to do with my aspirations!

What was it like working at CoroCoro Comic?

It was a very meaningful job because it was for elementary school students. Being involved in BIG IP works like Pokémon is a good memory. In terms of work, rather than just manga, the link to reality through actual toys, games, and events was important, so I think I learned methods for creating trends.

What titles were you involved with?

I was involved in many works related to games and play for boys, such as Pokémon, Yugioh, and Mushi King.

What was it like working for Weekly Shonen Sunday?

Compared to working only with elementary school boys as readers, it required a multi-faceted interest and the need to create deeper human dramas. Also, CoroCoro Comic is a monthly magazine, but Sunday is a weekly magazine, so there was considerable deadline pressure to create the next story.

What titles were you involved with?

Soccer manga, and manga based on mobile games popular in Japan at the time.



Have you got any funny stories you can share with us?

There was a time when I mistakenly created too many pages for a manga. Of course, it wouldn't fit in the book as it was, so I was racking my brain, and miraculously, a colleague had mistakenly created too few pages, and they fit perfectly.

Has anything surprised you in the manga industry?

When I first started working, it was an analog world, and manga dialogue was actually pasted with glue onto the speech bubbles of paper manuscripts. It's unthinkable now that everything is digital... Of course, if I pasted the dialogue crookedly, it would be printed crookedly, so it was a job that required a lot of care.

You were involved with Frieren, can you tell us more about that?

I wasn't involved in the work itself. I proposed a project to the editorial department, and since it's a work with fans all over the world, I operated a metaverse aimed at fan communities and created games.

Are there any manga artists in particular that have stood out to you or surprised you in a particular way?

I consider myself a short sleeper, but Gosho Aoyama, the creator of Detective Conan, seems to be even more of a short sleeper. Even though he must be incredibly busy, he plays a lot of games... It's mysterious.

Can you tell us more about NOVELOUS?

It's an app where you can read novels of a genre popular in Japan called "light novels."

Why was it decided to release it now?

I was the editor-in-chief of an app called Manga ONE for a long time, and the department next to it was creating light novels. There are many major light novel works in Japan, but they were largely unknown overseas, even more so than manga, so I thought, "What a waste!" As the next challenge after Manga ONE, I wanted to do something other than manga and take on a cross-border challenge, which is how NOVELOUS came about.

There's often a lot of cross over with light novels. Often titles start off as a light novel, then get adapted into an anime / manga. Have you been involved much in that process?

When I was working on the Manga ONE app, I handled numerous manga adaptations of light novels. Anime is often decided through different routes, but I feel that when a text is visualized as a manga, it tends to connect more easily to anime.

How do you think western fans differ from Japanese fans?

Fundamentally, I don't think there are. In the past, there might have been an image that Americans preferred muscular characters and Japanese preferred younger faces. However, now the borders of content have largely disappeared, so I feel that people often feel the same way when watching the same works. There are many expressions of emotion and aesthetic sensibilities unique to Japan (such as transience, mono no aware, the beauty of scattering, bushido, etc.), which I thought would not be understood by people in other countries, but even those elements are now gaining understanding.

How do you think the manga industry in the US compares to the manga industry in Europe?

I don't think there's much difference. If anything, there are fewer people who behave critically towards works, and I feel there are more bright people who just like things without reason.

Where do you think the manga / light novel industry is heading?

I don't think a world will probably come where manga and anime become a common global culture, a common global language, but I think only manga and anime can become such a presence. Different languages, different cultures, bad relations, but they like the same manga! In that sense, I think it will become a culture for Earthlings. I say this with hope.

What titles are you excited about?

Given my position, it might take on a life of its own, so I'll keep it to myself.

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This interview as conducted over e-mail. Otaku News would like to thank Yuki Wada for giving such awesome answers to our questions and Shogakukan for giving us an opportunity for this interview. Don't forget to check out the NOVELOUS App for it's selection of light novels.

Source: Otaku News