Interview with Michiro Ueyama – Mangaka of From Bureaucrat to Villainess
What I’m writing here isn’t a word-for-word translation of the interview. I just jotted down some cool stuff about the manga and the mangaka that I got from reading the interview using MTL. Heads up: there’s a minor spoiler near the end!
• Akuyaku Reijo Tensei Ojisan (From Bureaucrat to Villainess) is a manga by Michiro Ueyama and it's still on going. It actually started as a short comic on Twitter, where it got 160k likes, which led to it being serialized pretty much right away.
• Ueyama said Kenzaburo’s "old man" personality comes from his own experiences and memories, but Kenzaburo isn’t based on him. He’s more like Ueyama’s idea of the "ideal uncle"
• Kenzaburo’s design is based on what men in their 50s looked like when Ueyama was a kid in the 1970s
• To figure out what stories younger readers might like, Ueyama checked out a bunch of Isekai manga—not just the "villainess" type
• A lot of Isekai stories he read had a pretty dark vibe. He thinks that’s because most Isekai stories are about being super overpowered or having cheat abilities, which gets repetitive after a while
• Ueyama became interested in "villainess" stories because of their polite tone and beautiful art styles. He felt they had "soothing" vibes that made it easy to get into the story
• Michiro Ueyama: "In manga aimed at younger audiences, older men are usually the bad guys—creepy (sexually harassing teenagers), bullying, or just plain awful. But as an older guy myself, I know plenty of decent older men out there. I wanted to show more of those kinds of respectable adults."
• SPOILER: Ueyama plans to give the story a happy ending. He feels it wouldn’t be right for Kenzaburo to die and leave his wife and daughter behind
• He also finds it hard to write revenge-type stories where characters get what’s coming to them. He thinks Tensei Ojisan is so well-liked because people are tired of seeing negativity in real life and don’t want to see it in their entertainment either
• Ueyama hopes that Tensei Ojisan can be enjoyed by people who don’t usually read Isekai or villainess stories and maybe even get them into the genre
• Some Isekai villainess stories with "healing" vibes recommended by Michiro Ueyama:
1. My Next Life as a Villainess
2. Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte
3. The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen: From Villainess to Savior
vaporwave
kianamaiart
tangentwithtanner
pixelskylines
stormborns
janainaart
areudirty
