After Ashura's enjoyable show, I had a few more words with Shinji Schneider, an anime/manga standup comedian who had appeared as the opening act of the show group. He was cosplaying Fullmetal Alchemist's Armstrong during his performance, and whenever he had trouble with his text, Shinji Schneider went into a bodybuilder pose that, admittedly, raised almost as many laughs as his act. Some of his better jokes went into "what if the entire world was like Yu-Gi-Oh!," including the U.S. forces searching for illegal power cards in Iraq and not finding any.

The entire interview was held in English, and that's neither my nor their native language, so our grammar was probably a little clunky. Here's exactly how it went:

AA: I'm sure I'm not the first one to tell you this, but... welcome to Germany.

P&U: (big laughs) Domo arigato.

AA: I know you've been around here for quite a few years now. Since when have you been living in Germany?

P&U: For four years now.

AA: You're originally from Osaka. What brings you to such a faraway place as Germany?

P&U: How come? It's a long story. Nine years ago, we travelled around Asia, and we met a German traveller, and we became friends. And so this was our opportunity to get interested in Germany. So we learned German and we said, "oh, it's okay," and we got some German boyfriends, and so that's why. But we broke up, and blah blah blah, yet anyway, we wanted to go out of Japan, and we wanted to know other countries, so that's why we decided, "okay, we know German, so let's find a job." (laugh) We remembered yes, that we could draw manga. And we applied for that job, and we got that job, and now we're here.
..
AA: I don't know if this holds any water, but I've heard that Germany is supposed to be cool in Japan because it's considered something like the "land of educated people". Is this true?

P&U: Well, we have one prejudice over German people in Japan: that they're all supposed to be very serious. I'm not sure about educated, but we always thought that Germans would be very serious and strict, aside from the usual stereotypes with beer and lederhosen...

AA: Well, about "serious"... it's funny that Japanese would think about Germans as very serious people. Here in Germany, most Germans would say that the Japanese have a very serious and straight culture.

P&U: What we found out after four years in Germany is that the Germans are certainly not as serious as the Japanese.
..
AA: You're currently working at several manga projects, and your latest publication here in Germany is Tomoe, right? In a few words, what is Tomoe about?

P&U: It's about... well, 1,000 years ago, Tomoe was a real girl, she became a samurai, but in this time, the only samurai were men. And so we wanted to draw her as a woman who was also a mother, and she was also a wife. So we wanted to tell the story about her human life, how she would fight against other people, other warriors.

AA: So it's essentially a story about gender roles, too?

P&U: Mmm... yes, but that's just one of its themes; it's gonna be like a love story, but basically, it's about human life.

AA: I've read that you also work as manga teachers. In fact, you're going to have one special session here on Hanami 2006, the "Prin&Umi Sukebe Night."

P&U: (big laughs) Yeah, exactly! We wanted to do something special, for our... uh... project...

AA: The "Sexy Men Project."

P&U: Yeah! It's essentially an artbook, but not one of the usual for men, with naked girl and such. Everyone says, these are also for women, because it's all natural, but women like men, it's nothing for them. We make, err, create, something new for women, that's our motivation. And our progress would be here, in Germany.

AA: Yes, you've already published two volumes of "Sexy men from Germany", right?

P&U: Yes.

AA: Why Germany?

P&U: Because we got the offer from a German publisher, that's why.

AA: So German men are not sexier than others?

P&U: No. Well, yes. Maybe. (laugh)

Prin and Umi stayed both days to promote and sell their manga (and to sign a few hundred posters, manga and diaries) and certainly had enough to do, so I finally took my time to look around the entire place a little during the next few hours. Unfortunately, I got stuck at the video gaming room, which included a Dance Dance Revolution set. Guess how I spent the next few hours.

When I was finally done outstepping girls half my age on the dance mat, it was already evening, and I hadn’t even asked Ying Zhou Chen, the final manga-ka on my list, for an interview. Fortunately, she agreed to talk to me later, and I still had the chance to watch and listen to more of Tama's singing. He absolutely enchanted the audience with his act; his voice doesn't sound completely authentic, of course, but he has a knack for communicating passion with his singing. No CD releases yet, but hopes are high.

After the show, the shops closed, and Ying Zhou Chen was ready for the interview. We found a nice quiet place to talk in a nearby empty gym, I got out my question sheet and…

…well, we didn't have much of an interview, to be honest. Ying told me of her love for shonen-ai manga, especially Zetsuai, and that she chose to debut as a manga-ka with a shonen-ai manga for that reason. She was born and raised in Shanghai, China, and her first manga, Shanghai Passion, is set there, albeit in the 1930s. Ying wanted to tell people about her home town, but a contemporary setting wouldn't have allowed for so much drama, so she chose the most interesting time period she could find.

From her manga project and her personal likes and dislikes, we got to politics, life in general, living in Germany, Asian movies… what I had planned as a 10-minute interview turned into two hours of smalltalk. I turned off the tape after 15 minutes because I felt that our conversation turned more and more personal, revealing her feelings towards living in Germany ("my life lacks direction here," she mused) and her rather plain thoughts on paying the bills from drawing manga alone. According to her, there is maybe one manga-ka in Germany who can live off his work, and that's about it. Talk about starving artists.

In the end, we exchanged addresses and promised to share our collections of Asian movies, and I took a final photo of her. It turned out so crappy in the dim light that I decided to forget about it; the best pictures of Ying (and also her works) can be found on her homepage (bi-delicious.de) anyway, in the cosplay section. She's absolutely gorgeous, intelligent, good company, and she's definitely the nicest person I met during Hanami 2006.

On Day Two, not much new happened. I attended a few anime showings, including one of the new series Tactical Roar (which didn't leave me too impressed at yet another military show) and tried to get an interview with the Japanese vice-consul Kiryu Daisuke, who had come to Hanami 2006 to teach the ancient art of sushi cooking. Unfortunately, I had forgot to register for his lessons. When I wanted to talk to him afterwards, I found out that he had already left via the back door. There went my career as an international top journalist.

I spent a little more time at the video gaming room and honed my Donkey Kong skills before leaving for the final big event: the Gluttony Competition. A series of three eating contests was held, first devouring a crab-flavored crisp without the help of your hands, then extra-spicy wasabi gulping and finally, ramen speed eating. Surprisingly, a 5'5" tiny asian boy came up the winner, and was promptly surrounded by harem girls. Abba was right: the winner takes it all.

And guess what: just as Hanami 2006 was coming to a close, I finally found a cherry tree in full bloom. Hidden between the convention center and a nearby basketball court it stood, and I hadn't seen it until that moment. I took a few final photos of it, then I met with the Hanami staff a final time to give them my thanks and to promise to be back for their next convention. All in all, it was an enjoyable experience, and I'm looking forward to next year when, hopefully, the motto of "con meets festival" will work out better than in 2006. Taken as an anime convention, Hanami was a success. Taken as a cherry blossom festival, it was a little weak.

Return to Hanami 2006: Part I...