There’s a lot that goes into working on a manga, and while today’s interview doesn’t cover every aspect, you can learn a little bit about the localization process with long-time editor and letterer Abigail Blackman! Over the phone we talked about working while COVID-19 is still ongoing, getting into designing manga covers over this past year, and how she got involved with UDON’s hopefully eventual release of Moyoco Anno’s Sugar Sugar Rune…years ago.
TheOASG: All right, so what year are you on in working in the manga industry?
Abigail Blackman: Oh *laughs* I think it’s…I think it’s year 13. I started in January 2008, so yeah, it’s been a second!
What titles have you been working on recently?
As far as new stuff, the new Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Wraith Arc, is one of the recent ones, but we’re already onto January 2022. So I got some returning favorites such as Delicious in Dungeon and Hakumei & Mikochi. New Solo Leveling of course. It’s gonna be a full start for next year.
Already planning for next year, that’s just how it is in this industry huh?
Yeah. You kind of get used to the holiday rush back in the spring, getting books out that’ll be ready for November and December. We get a little bit of a break, and then it’s onto 2022.
Is there a particular title coming out this year that you’re working on and you’d like for people to look out for?
I tend to like the smaller and niche titles. So Heterogenia Linguistico is one I really love working on as an English major and fan of language. The Pixiv artbook, Visions 2021__Illustrators, I really enjoyed working on that. It features just a wide variety of artists and I found it to be really inspiring and encouraging that people are still creating during this time. It’s been kind of weird.
Speaking of on during this time and kind of weird…yeah, a lot has changed since COVID-19 has taken hold of everyone’s life over this past year. How have things changed for you over this time period?
I feel like I was really fortunate. As a freelancer the transition — there wasn’t one. I already work from home, and it was sort of surreal to be like your day doesn’t really change but all of the people you work with are like, “We don’t know what we’re going to do, we’re still trying to figure stuff out.” Bookstores are closing, printers are closing, what does that mean? So it was kind of weird.
I’m very grateful that I was able to kind of stick to it, but not much changed for me. Most of the publishers seemed to kind of go, “Well, these books will come out eventually, so we’re just going to kind of stick to the schedule that we had planned for and keep going with it.” Yen dropped a bunch of artbooks into the end of last year — Spice & Wolf, Sekiro, Overlord — so I got to work on some of those.
So yeah I was really grateful that publishing, despite the uncertainty, kind of went well. We’ll just have to trust that when things get back to normal these books will come out. It’s still been weird now, people are still working from home and that means the communication is more challenging. Most retail seems to be open but it’s been a shift in seeing how many books are coming out and publishers seem to be doing ok.
You mention the uncertainty last year. There certainly was a period where publishers were like, what do we do with these titles? We have to push stuff back.
Yeah.
Like are people going to stop buying books anymore? What’s going to happen to the manga? Is any of it going to sell? Well as it turned out, about two or three months later people started to buy manga and light novels at the same time. Now we’re in a manga boom! And also a manga shortage! What are your thoughts on the current manga boom/manga shortage situation?
Yeah, it’s frustrating. And I feel it’s not even restricted to our industry — there’s not enough people to drive trucks or do deliveries, printers might be at reduced capacity. So it’s hard and I feel the frustration of fans. It’s already a part of your personal thing you’re really excited about and it’s so close to being accessible and you just can’t quite get it. So I totally understand that.
But I am encouraged that the market seems to be so healthy and that people are excited about books. The variety that’s been published right now is really exciting to see. Part of me wondered if we would see what’s kind of happened with film where people have gone now to stream it. So I wondered, does this mean this is finally the big digital push and will it affect those who read online and who reads print material? So part of me is kind of excited that as someone who prefers reading a print book, it stinks that you have to wait for a truck to deliver it but at the same time I’m glad you want a physical media. I’m glad you want to collect that and put it on your shelf and go back to it. So we’ve all heard, just be patient, things will normalize eventually…whenever…but we’ll get there!
It seems publishers have been pretty communicative about stuff that’s gone out of print and will be reprinted, it’s just a prioritizing game right now.
I would say some, not all publishers, are doing what you mentioned.
Uh-oh!
*laughs* I do want to say, it’s interesting. You would’ve thought digital sales would’ve rose more over this time period–
Yeah!
And technically eBook sales did break a record, like NPD Bookscan had a panel that across the board eBooks sales went up so you figure it went up for manga. But not by a significant amount. It’s just more people are buying stuff in print.
And I think too, if I brought the first 20 volumes of something, do I want my first experience with volume 21 to be on my screen or do I want the book? Like I’m invested now, I bought 20 volumes in print, I want volume 21 in print too. So I think there’s probably some of that. And it’s great. I remember back in the day when I worked at Yen, digital was still pretty young and it was hard to get — there was a lot of challenges of getting art to look good on screens and making it available. So I am glad digital is available to people in that way, so when you have situations where you can’t get to a bookstore or there is a shipping issue, it’s still available if you really can’t wait for the next volume. But I’m pleased to see print support.
From your perspective, what have you seen as the biggest challenge publishers have faced during this pandemic period?
Well, there’s sort of the external stuff that we talked about earlier, that they have no control over as far as shipping and printing. There is a lot you can do remotely because editors are working independently on their own titles. There is a benefit to being in an office in a lot of ways since you can bounce off each other if there’s a tricky phrase or need an additional opinion, so that’s challenging to not have.
But I think publishers have done a really good job of stepping up social media and making sure people stay engaged and know what’s available. A lot of their challenges feel pretty similar to what everyone is dealing with right now. To me it feels like they must be managing to get people to spend any extra time in the absence of other activities to read more. But yeah, it’s been a time. I’ve been very busy throughout, there’s not really been a lull apart from when we came back from stores that were opening again. Now it’s “we’ve worked ahead because we kept working when things first shut down.” Now these books have come out and we got some time.
What’s the general process like for designing English covers for series? I know you’ve done a good amount for Kodansha recently.
So yeah, in January of last year I started working with their digital program. I’m going to be doing a couple for Square Enix as well. I’ve been really excited to move into that area. There’s a creative aspect of lettering and retouching but designing’s been fun.
Designing for manga in general can vary. Some aspects, like how the cover art is placed, are locked and you don’t have a lot of flexibility while in other areas you do. My process is looking at all the currently available covers for a title, and because of the way Japanese reads, that will often affect a title placement decision. For example, if the Japanese logo was done vertically and the art is never going to have room for a horizontal logo then you gotta figure out a logo that’ll stack. Just kind of evaluating the space beforehand is my first part of what shape do I need to end up with with the text. Sometimes the art lends itself to one specific direction and you’re just trying to mimic the feel of the Japanese logo originally. Sometimes you’re trying out a departure. Usually I try to do three or four options of logos and then run the best ones by the editor in charge to see what direction they’re thinking. And then we settle on this is where we’re going, do some extra tweaks if necessary and send it along for approval from the original Japanese publisher.
I’m pretty visual so a lot of the time I look at the cover, sit with it and just be thinking about it for a week before I actually get my hands on looking for fonts. When I do finally sit down, I chewed over the sort of look I want, I’m looking for specific kinds of fonts, or starting from scratch in some cases. There’s a few I’ve done that’s just my handwriting because I’m like, “forget it, I can’t find a font I like.”
For one of the Kodansha titles, Undead Girl Murder Farce, that was one that we did a total redesign on. That was one where I think I came up with six or seven different color options and directions because that one has totally different art from what was on the original.
That’s an interesting change.
Yeah, it’s a big departure. Think they wanted to make sure to capture that this is a supernatural in a period setting and that it came across.
What continues to be the biggest challenge when editing or lettering a manga?
I mean, editing hasn’t changed a ton. Translators are doing the same type of work and we’re doing the same types of edits on it. So I wouldn’t say the editing part has changed dramatically.
As far as lettering…I dunno, I feel like the longer — and especially for something like Solo Leveling for example — there’s always a few books that’s basically straight text, there’s no funny fonts. Maybe there’s a lot of sizing stuff but they’re pretty straightforward. Something like A Bride’s Story or Hakumei & Mikochi, it’s all pretty much the same font. And then you get something like Solo Leveling where I’m retouching computer screens all over the page and we’re swapping all the sound effects. So I think as new books come out there’s always some challenge depending on what it is.
As much you can say about it, you were a part of the Sugar Sugar Rune process — how did you get involved in it and what was that experience like?
It was so long ago. Like it was 2013 or 2014, I bumped into Erik Ko and John Shableski at Comic-Con after I’d started working freelance and they mentioned they were looking for someone to do a rewrite pass on the script. So that was my role for Sugar Sugar Rune, which I did for the next…year or so. And my role in it was they wanted to make sure, because Sugar Sugar Rune can skew a bit younger they wanted to make sure the writing was as clear as possible. There’s some really tiny bubbles in that series so also making sure from a lettering perspective that stuff would fit. Just tightening it up more than anything. The translation read really well.
What manga or light novels aside from what you’ve worked on has stuck out to you the most in 2021 and why?
I mean…this is where you find out how old my backlog is and how behind I am on things–
Uh-oh!
Yeah, I’m terrible. I’ll always buy books when they come out and then they sit in the pile–
*laughs* you think you’re the only one that does that too don’t you?
*heavy sigh and laughs* You just feel like you work in the industry and people are like, “you must know things!” and I’m like, “No don’t ask me anything, I don’t know!” When I used to work on Kodansha’s Diamond ads, I would always go, “Oh this is what’s coming out,” but now I have no clue. I did recently read Happy Kanako’s Killer Life out of the pile. It was silly and had echoes of Aggretsuko, which I very much enjoyed!
But broadly speaking, kind of what I mentioned before, I’m really excited by the number of books being published and the variety of books being published. Within the last year or two we’re seeing more titles that publishers might’ve been more careful about taking a risk on. There’s always going to be a market for more shōnen stuff but some of the more adult titles I’ve been more excited to see. And Japan has such a variety of material available. Korea has a variety of material available. I think that’s what I’m struck by when I scroll through the new releases. There’s a ton of books coming out, and there’s such a range that will appeal to people who are a little bit older and have been reading manga for a while. How many light novels that are coming out is insane. That I guess is the thing that always stands out to me, the variety feels like it’s increasing.