It was very easy to convince me to take on the job of character designer for 'Dragon Quest.'

I'm personally not terribly interested in designing wholesome characters, so I don't have many variations to offer.

It's a secret, but when I decided to apply to 'Shonen Magazine,' it was already past the deadline, so I had no choice but to go with 'Shonen Jump.' My motivation for becoming a cartoonist was... to put it bluntly, the ¥100,000 prize money.

I liked how 'Star Wars' felt both old and new. I even built a model of R2-D2, taking about two months mixing two kits to make one that looked just like the real thing. I'm the kind of person who gets really into it when I do something like that.

At one point, I had close to 100 birds.

I've always liked to draw.

Designing characters for 'Dragon Quest' is fun but difficult work.

With things like 'Dragon Ball,' in the case of fight scenes, I'd take the panel layout across two pages when the book is opened and alter it by angling them, and making them bigger or smaller, to give movement to the panels themselves.

It's a pain to draw different-looking humans.

Rather than deliberately trying to draw something, use something you yourself like and want to draw, and I think the characters that come out of that will really have their own individuality.