Hajime Isayama
biography

Hajime Isayama is the author of Attack on Titan - the most popular manga of recent times, which was adapted into the most popular anime of recent times.

Born in a rural area, he focused on drawing from early age, but it took him a lot of time to get noticed. The problem was mostly his unique style, which was a big gamble and, in the eyes of publishers, more of a liability than a posivite quality.

Contrary to majority of mangakas, Isayama didn't submit many different works in hopes that one of them will catch up, but instead focused on perfecting Attack on Titan. This has paid up in the long run, resulting in a balanced and mature manga.

Isayama was born on August 29, 1986 in Oyama (now merged with few other villages into the town of Hita), Oita Prefecture, Japan.

He grew up on a farm in a beautiful picturesque area (Oita is known for its beautiful landscapes). As a kid, he went to Daisen Elementary School.

At that time, he was already drawing ugly things. Not that his drawings were ugly per se, but the topics might be considered so. Since early age, Isayama enjoyed drawing creepy-looking creatures and he liked to make them big as well - a popular theme in Japan, the country that spawned Godzilla.

It's no surprise that he enjoyed that monster in his numerous incarnations (films, mangas, video games etc.) and also liked Mothra (another kaiju subject, a giant moth mostly known from Godzilla).

Big things impressed him, he liked the rush that one gets when he sees things multiple time bigger, especially in the context of confrontation and preferably trying to squash humans around them. Those early sympathies were clearly shaping up the blueprint for Attack on Titan.

As many Japanese kids, he was also interested in martial arts, but only as an observer. Years later he would buy a punching bag and start training on his own, but at the time he just mostly watched others sweat, preferably in combat sports tournaments.

That ever-present ugliness in his drawings quickly became an issue. Isayama was (and still is) a firm believer that everyone has his own unique style and should stick to it - even if something stands out as unattractive, at least it stands out!

In the beginning, he liked his style and didn't give it second thought, but as unfavorable opinions from people who had seen his efforts started piling up, he began questioning it. Double the effect, as he was very self-critical. The line between something ugly having a nice style and just being ugly is sometimes hard to notice and even such enormously talented painters as H. R. Giger had a fair amount of critics tearing them apart.

In a stark contrast to his fellow countryman and the author of Dragon Ball Akira Toriyama, who went through harsh beginnings by just drawing and not thinking when and if his mangas will gain traction, Isayama spent a lot of time in his youth doubting himself and worrying.

As he went to Hita Rinko Senior High School, he was sending his works to various contests, but to no avail. After finishing it, he took a course in manga design at Kyushu Designer Gakuin. He was aware that making a living by drawing manga is an extremely hard thing to pull off - the competition is enormous and there is only so much market to give space to the most creative and talented. His expectations were low then - just earn enough so he can not die of starvation and be able to pay the bills.

A lot of mangaka start with dojinshi (Japanese term for fanfiction). As opposed to the rest of the world, in Japan it actually is a way of living and since it attracts a somewhat similar fanbase, it's a good starting point to write dojinshi while trying to make it in the manga world.

Isayama was well-aware of it, but decided not to go this way because of its one limitation that he did not want to accept: fanfiction is by definition based on an existing franchise, but he wanted to have his own world and build his own characters from the ground up.

In one interview, Hajime admitted that he was tempted into breaking that rule once, tempted by an unspecified shooter with great characters, but awful graphics. In the end, he decided against it.

Before Isayama drew Attack on Titan, he started from one-shots with the same title. In 2006, he participated in Magazine Grand Prix contest. He received the Fine Work award and thus the manga was put on the map.

Empowered by the success, he decided to intensify his efforts to polish his product. He moved to Tokyo, got a part-time job at the internet cafe and worked on the manga in his free time.

At 22, Isayama was attempting to get into one of the top Japanese manga publication magazines - Weekly Shonen Jump, published by Shueisha. Unfortunately, they weren't interested at all.

Attack on Titan was a problem child from the start and besides the ugliness which isn't exactly marketable, the manga was brutal, touched serious topics and had a very unique atmosphere. In other words, it was a big gamble. In the industry that reads the market and then forcefully tries to apply corrections to their to-be publications to appeal to a mass audience, there was no place for acquired taste.

In the manga's shape and form, Shueisha would never do it. They told him that he has to make major changes to have a chance. Hajime didn't want to hear none of it. He was not willing to make compromises.

Doubts started tearing him apart and, fully aware of how incompatible his work is with expectations of publishers, and damaged by the never-ending stream of rejections, he came very close to quitting.

Fortune smiled at him in the end though and he found work at Kodansha - an owner of Magazine Grand Prix, where he had been awarded for his manga two years earlier.

The same year, Weekly Shonen was organizing another contest, as employees were celebrating the publication's 80th birthday. It was called Freshman Manga Award and Isayama took part in it with his work Heart Break One.

Soon, another proof that the bad streak is ending came, as the artist received Special Encouragement Award. One year later, another success came when his manga Orz was selected of a large pool of contestants. Editor of the publication liked his Attack on Titan one-shot and asked Isayama if he would like to redo it into a full length material. Hajime agreed. Finally, his chance has come!

Always full of doubts concerning the value of his work, he spent the next six months just arranging, combining concepts, thinking about the tiniest details to bring his unique world to life and make it competent and enchanting (albeit in a disturbing way, as it turned out).

These works were tricky to do, details had to be sparse and carefully selected. The artist chose to reveal the facts of AoT's set and setting very slowly. Probably everyone who read the manga, or saw the anime, was surprised how little is revealed at the end. The story is as contained and mysterious as the reality of living inside the walls with the threat right outside them breathing down their necks. What lies beyond it and who is responsible for it is so much unknown that even the wall itself remains a mystery.

Contrary to initial thoughts, Hajime had to work hard to make everything credible without spilling the beans.

After he felt the early background tasks are complete, Isayama started working on characters: who they are, what they do, what are their relations to each other, how much time gets devoted to each one (and also when do they get eaten!).

Everything had to be masterminded from the start, because publisher's rule was that the artist needs to know the ending in advance and develop with it in mind. Still, with all the hard work, Hajime confessed that less was thought out and planned than he would have liked.

Initially, the characters were especially underdeveloped. Eren, the main protagonist, was supposed to be physically weak, but the author couldn't conclude how strong he was supposed to be mentally.

Funnily enough, it was the screen version of Attack on Titan that inspired him to finally bring the dilema to an end - Tetsuro Araki's animations and Yuki Kaji voice acting helped him to imagine Eren better and conclude about his various attributes.

Another doubt in Isayama's head was about Eren's credibility. Would normal person act like that? Is he consistent with his behavior from scene to scene? The artist had many doubts. Anime affirmed him in the developmental directions he took and enabled him to continue working with a piece of mind.

The first volume came on September 9, 2009 in Bessatsu Shonen Magazine and became an instant hit with the audience. Even though his publisher knew that they have something good on their hands, they had no idea what's coming.

Attack on Titan has become the biggest thing in manga since Tsugumi Ohba's Death Note. It is so popular that the manga can be bought everywhere - in the first six years, 52 million copies were sold worldwide and it was translated to many languages. To capitalize on the popularity, hugely successful anime adaptation was released and on top of that there were numerous novels.

Such spinoff products are often of low quality, but in this case it's the opposite of that - fans praise them for providing extra context (Before the Fall light novel series starts 70 years before the manga's first volume), quality drawings and many other things, which make them a safe buy for anyone that enjoyed the manga/anime.

One Attack on Titan product that stands out from the rest are the video games. Mangas suffer from terrible video game adaptations - look no further than the Dragon Ball franchise which saw gazillion adaptations, with the best ones still being mediocre. Attack on Titan games so far are worse than that: they're horrendous.

Game studios often come back to popular adaptations as the interest is usually big despite flop releases, so there's always a chance one day a franchise-worthy game will come out, but it is slim.

In 2011, Isayama's manga received a Best Shonen award in Kodansha's annual Manga Award and also got multiple nominations in other contests. Not that the title needed them to verify itself as a quality product in the eyes of the audience.

The author was asked to participate in Attack on Titan public events in Taiwan and Singapore to help with promotion.

In 2014, he held one in his hometown as well. Despite its population reaching 70,000, the interest was huge and as many as 2,500 people showed up.

City mayor Keisuke Harada knew well that successful people born in an area are good to be utilized, especially that Hita is a popular tourist destination. The next day after the Hita public meeting, Isayama was asked to give a speech at Hita Civic Cultural Hall and later received the Tourism Friendship Ambassador title from Harada.

After the overwhelming success of the Attack on Titan franchise, Isayama remains doubtful about the quality of his work. In interviews, he frequently mentions that there are many extremely talented people making fantastic mangas and most of them never get the attention they deserve. Comparing AoT to some of those works, he sees it as sub-par and therefore considers himself more lucky than talented.

Majority of fans don't hold similar views of course, the reception is overwhelmingly positive.

Finally, it's good to know that Isayama already has detailed ideas about his next work, it looks like Attack on Titan is not going to be his only work.