Mine Yoshizaki Answers YOUR Questions For $4.50 a Month! (Keroro Fan Club Q&A Translations)
(Head down to the next bolded headline to skip the yappy preamble!)
Somehow I haven’t touched upon this at all since returning to the fandom, but a few years ago, we saw the opening of the Keroro Fan Club: an app available in Japan and Korea that hosts a mini social network and a variety of bonus content, such as exclusive merchandise, special collab illustrations, DVD cover genga, and more. It also lets members access every episode of the anime in one place and manga chapters on a rotating schedule. Keroro Fan Club has both a monthly and yearly subscription, but requires a Japanese or Korean address and contact info to join, so 99.8% of people outside those regions have no idea what its contents contain. But I have a Tenso account and am irresponsible with disposable income, so I joined the fan club!
…And I am probably going to make people upset with this, but my plan as of now is to not leak any images of the exclusive content. Basically I don’t want pics of the paywalled art spreading around online and causing the FC to either batten down the hatches or change how they distribute the content. Keroro isn't thaaaat huge of a fandom and stuff disseminates quickly, and I really do not want to fuck the whole thing up for the fans overseas. Not that I think anyone'd be acting in bad faith around here but containing things online once they're out there is very, very difficult, so I hope this is an understandable decision.
However! While image leaking tends to be a bit more serious than text, since those spread easier (especially across language boundaries) and doctoring an image takes effort, any goober can write up some text with plausible deniability! So I will be posting here text-only translations of another of the fan club’s features: Q&A with Mine Yoshizaki himself, who answers questions submitted by fans via the app's social media feed! There have been two rounds of questions answered so far and there will supposedly be a new one every month, so I’ll try to stay on top of it. Maybe.
With that being said, here’s the first two rounds of questions and answers. There’s been some quite interesting and funny stuff here so far, so I hope this enlightens you. (As I said, I will not be posting any images from the locked content on Fan Club, so you will have to take my word that I’m being truthful. If you know Japanese too and want to see the wording of a particular question/answer yourself, let me know!)
Q: How did you come up with the concept of Keroro Gunso?
A: Ever since I was in elementary school, I've always wanted to draw a really simple yet also complicated manga about strange creatures from some mysterious part of the world appearing before normal kids. And somewhere down the line, Keroro Gunso is what became of that idea. It sort of just came to me out of the blue one day, so I really don't know how to answer how I did it!
Q: Please tell us if there’s anything in particular to keep in mind about drawing Keronians, and tips and tricks!
A: Keronians are composed of very easy strokes, but I try not to make it too easy by paying attention to detail such as the way parts of their heads are angled and how I draw the fingers and toes. I've only just recently figured out how to draw their round eyes with a bit more ease. As for tips, I'd say imagine making the relatively simple shapes a little more three-dimensional.
Q: In one of the movies, there was a scene where Natsumi-chan gets lost in an amusement park on a rooftop. Was that based on the one in Tsuruya [Department Store]? I was taken there a few times as a kid, but I don't remember well whether or not there was a big ferris wheel. [TLN: As a reminder, Yoshizaki is from Kumamoto.]
A: Ah, sounds like you’re a local! When I was still in the planning phase before discussing with the movie staff, I knew I was going to base it on the Tsuruya and Iwataya Isetan rooftop parks I remember playing at as a child. As for the ferris wheel, there was a small one at Kumamoto Waterside Zoo* I threw in as well. But once I came together with the staff, it became a combination of things we all remembered about rooftops we'd been to.
*[For some reason I couldn’t find the exact location name he gave for this so this is sort of an approximation. Weird]
Q: Do you ever look at what's on the Fan Club app yourself?
A: I hear tidbits about it from my staff. It motivates me by helping to give me ideas, so in a way, I am checking it out indirectly. I'd like all of you in the Fan Club to have something to look forward to too!
Q: Mine Yoshizaki-sensei, are there any characters you feel really reflect your personality? And for characters who don't, are there any modeled off a particular person or who resemble someone close to you?
A: I don't think he reflects everything about me, but if I had to pick, it'd probably be Keroro. His personality is completely different, but when I write his typical dialogue and such, I recall conversations I've had with my wife.
Q: What do the Keronians smell like? [Yes this is real]
A: Natsumi-chan and the other humans don't make any remarks about how they smell, so I imagine they don't really smell like anything weird. They smell a bit like outer space, I guess?
Q: You've written that Kururu was a major in the Keron Army at a pretty young age. Around how old was he when he joined the military, and how long did he spend as a major?
A: Kururu's past is still a secret! [WHY WOULD YOU TEASE ME LIKE THIS]
Q: What does Garuru think of Giroro?
A: I'm pretty sure he really cares about him! But in his own Garuru-like way, which means not in an average way.
Q: Which member of the Keroro Platoon would you like to be roommates with?!
A: Keroro for sure! Oh, but Kururu would be a good pick too, though...
Q: Why is the character Mutsumi Houjou (623) in the manga called Saburo in the anime?
A: This was a creative decision by the anime staff. I think they wanted to separate "the regular 623 Natsumi-chan sees around town" and "the celebrity artist 623 Natsumi-chan idolizes" to make things easier to understand. [popped off when I saw he actually answered this one I was really hoping he would lmao]
Q: Each member of the main cast has a different way of calling Keroro (Fuyuki: "Sergeant," Natusmi: "Stupid Frog," Mama-dono: "Kero-chan," Giroro: "Keroro" or just "you,*" Tamama: "Mr. Sergeant," Kururu: "Captain," Dororo: "Captain-dono" or "Keroro-kun"). Is this intentional or a coincidence?
*[the Japanese here says kisama which is a very coarse second-person pronoun, basically only used in fiction—Giroro usually says it toward Keroro with a "Why you little!!" sort of tone]
A: You could call it a coincidence, but it's more like I just chose based on what it seemed like each character would say and ended up with this without looking at the whole picture. This ended up giving the anime staff a real headache to deal with. I'm so sorry!
Q: When coming up with each story for Keroro Gunso in the drafting/storyboarding phase, how do you combine stories based on modern topics with carefully inserted parodies?
A: Much like your average reader, I bump into everyday occurrences and follow current trends, and that's how I look for themes to base chapters around, but sometimes I don't find anything in particular. I don't think of the parodies ahead of time—while I'm drawing the chapter, I'll think something like, "Huh, this situation reminds me of something I've seen before," and then if I dig deeply enough, I might find the right parody that applies.
Q: I would like to see your take on Tamama's adult form.
A: I've actually drawn it several times, but it still looks a little off-putting, so I'm going to practice a bit more! [randomly big reveal for this lol]
Q: When you first started creating Keroro, did you imagine it would stay this popular for so long?
A: Back then, I thought pretty casually that I'd be fine if it got just barely popular enough to keep going for a while. But thanks to everyone's support, here I am all this time later still able to draw away happily. I'm incredibly grateful to everyone who continues to prop up Keroro.
Q: Out of the many woman & girl characters that appear in Keroro Gunso, which is the one you like the most?
A: This wasn’t always the case, but Aki ended up being made a lot younger, so you can look at her and think "she’s cute!" based on the same criteria as Natsumi and the others. I can’t choose a favorite, but I like Viper Momi-chan because she always has a bit of a mysterious underdog vibe.
Q: Lance Corporal Dororo is an emo edgelord, right?
[Admittedly I took some translation liberties here so if you're scratching your head a bit, the Japanese was calling him a kojirase (low self-esteem) chuunibyou]
Q: After the Keroro we see in the pilot one-shot, Keroro Gunso, which Keroro Platoon member's design did you think of next? I'm really curious!
A: I didn't know for sure if it would get serialized back when it was just a one-shot, but I'd already drawn the rough designs for all five from the start.
And that's everything we have for now! If this next month follows the pattern of the last couple, the third round of answers should be coming like next week as of the date this post goes up. There's some questions in the feed I'm really curious to know the answers to, like how Keronians get their symbols and if the Keroron Ball Arc will ever come back (I have a feeling he's not likely to answer the latter but we'll see lmao). How do you all feel about what we've learned so far?
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