[Prince of Tennis] Jigoku no Misawa interviews Konomi Takeshi Highlights (Part 1/?)
Here's a summary of the first 12 minutes of Konomi's interview last October 5, 2021. He was interviewed by fellow mangaka Jigoku no Misawa, who also publishes manga in Jump SQ, like Konomi. (Konomi calls him his rival, lol.)
Apparently Jigoku no Misawa actually put Konomi in his manga before and Konomi learned about it afterwards, lol. Jigoku no Misawa has a lot of respect for Konomi because Tenipuri holds a lot of events in real life.
Konomi has always loved writing songs since he was a child. Started loving musicals around his high school/college days. During his middle school days, he started loving classical music thanks to his father's influence.
Jigoku no Misawa: Your father got you into classical music...?😂 Uh, are you like, Atobe?😂😂Are you in the same social status as him?😂
He was torn between pursuing music and manga back in college. He was considering getting a job related to musicals as he was submitting his manga to publishers, hoping that he could do both.
Konomi says he was scouted into becoming a mangaka. Apparently, there were people scouting on the streets for anyone interested in becoming a mangaka.😂There was an audition, and only 8 were accepted out of 4000 people. The president of the company was like, "You have good eyes."
Then when he submitted his manga, his manga was slated into debuting two weeks later.
At first, Konomi just submitted a "name"/rough draft of the manga, and the person-in-charge said he'll have his senior review it. That person made copies of his draft and showed it to the publishers, and the next time Konomi met him, he was informed that his manga was slated to debut, much to his surprise lol.
Jigoku no Misawa had to confirm if Konomi was telling the truth because everything he said sounds like a manga's plot haha, but Konomi insists that it's true.
Later on, Konomi also got involved with musicals.
Konomi: If you doggedly pursue your dreams, you can make them come true!
Jigoku no Misawa: Uh, no, we won't.😂😂Your experience won't necessarily work for everyone else.😂
Konomi: 😂😂
First, Tenipuri started releasing character songs. Then, when Konomi talked about releasing an album...
Konomi: Ryoma told me he wanted to debut with me.
Jigoku no Misawa: ???
Konomi: Ryoma's VA--
Jigoku no Misawa: Oh. Right, right.
Konomi: --Minagawa Junko said that to me, and I was like, "I see."
Jigoku no Misawa: "I see"??? That's all you have to say to that?
Konomi: I got her call while I was jogging, and went, "Oh, sure."
Jigoku no Misawa: You'd agree just like that???
Konomi wanted people to know about Tenipuri, so he tried different things to promote it.
Then he wanted to hold events for the fans, but the advertisers and Shueisha won't allow it. He had to figure out where to pull money for it himself. So he decided to release his own song, and they would hold events for that song's promotion. To please the fans, he would write songs about tennis.
The publishers reluctantly agreed to the event since it's Konomi's own CD event.😂The money from the CD sales was used to hold the event.
For the event, he also made designs for 200 character pin badges. Apparently, they didn't allow him to use images from the animanga and it really pissed him off since those are his works. So he had to draw 200 new images.