To celebrate the release of No. 5 by Taiyo Matsumoto for the iPad, (and the first-time ever release of the complete series in English), I asked comics retailer, Toronto Comic Arts Festival impresario and manga-fan extraordinaire Christopher Butcher to have a conversation (via email) with Matsumoto-sensei about No.5 and his career in manga. He kindly obliged, so to kick things off, here's Chris' intro to Matsumoto-sensei's work, and their discussion.

AN INTRODUCTION TO TAIYO MATSUMOTO

I first came across the work of Taiyo Matsumoto in PULP, VIZ Media's manga anthology magazine aimed at mature readers. A collection of gritty, sexy seinen manga titles (complete with newsstand distribution!), PULP introduced a lot of unique, surprising adult manga at a time when properties geared to kids and teens like Pokemon, Sailor Moon, and Dragon Ball ruled the roost.

Serialized in PULP a chapter at a time, Matsumoto's Black & White (Tekkon Kinkreet in the original Japanese) was unlike any manga I'd ever seen before. Loose, angular, aggressive, and unafraid to be downright ugly and brutal. I have to admit... I didn't like it very much at the time, as it was so far different than my other PULP favourites like Banana Fish and Strain. It wasn't until the first collected edition of Black & White was released in 1999 that I went back and gave the series another chance, and I'm so very glad I did.

While the brutality of Matsumoto's world was too shocking for me at first, interspersed with other, cleaner narratives — in its own collected edition it was perfect.

The trade paperback of Black & White allowed me to be fully immersed in the dense, twisting world of Matsumoto's 'Treasure Town.' The darkness, scratchiness, the insanity leaping off the page became de rigeur— normal — and that allowed me to see deeper into the story, into the ideas that he had so expertly woven into the work. It was only when I could come to Taiyo Matsumoto's manga on its own merits, in its own context, that I fell in love with it, and it is a love that has stayed with me ever since.

While Taiyo Matsumoto's creations have always been favourites amongst hardcore manga fans, the Japanese public 'discovered' Matsumoto-sensei through a film adaptation of one of his most endearing works, Ping Pong, a 5-volume series that expands on the fraternal themes of Black & White/Tekkon Kinkreet. The film adaptation of Ping Pong was a massive hit in Japan, spurring huge displays of his manga in bookstores across the country.

Matsumoto again came into the national — and then international — consciousness with the animated film adaptation of Tekkon Kinkreet, which cleaned up on the festival circuit taking many top awards in Japan and internationally. Both films (as well as a third based on his Blue Spring short story collection) are available in North America now, and I highly recommend them.

(Note: Ping Pong is available on DVD from New People/VIZ Pictures. Tekkon Kinkreet is available on DVD from Sony Pictures).

But as great as the films are, it is Matsumoto's manga that most captivates me. VIZ Media has also released Blue Spring, a collection of short stories inspired by Matsumoto's youth, Go Go Monster, an original graphic novel of 400+ pages (a true rarity in Japan!) detailing a Shining-esque haunting of two young boys at an aging elementary school, and the sci-fi superhero thriller No.5 (Number Five). While I count Go Go Monster and Blue Spring amongst my favourite manga, it's No.5 that has made my soul ache since its original release in 2002.

Like all manga fans, I have always wanted what I couldn't have, and the 8-volume* epic serial No.5 was discontinued in English immediately following its second volume. For roughly 10 years, I have agonized over the series, not knowing what happened to the characters I had just begun to know, not knowing where the insane world-spanning series would take me, and knowing that it would never be completed in English (due to poor sales, alas). My only options to complete the series were to improve my terrible French language skills (the series has been completely translated into French by publisher Dargaud) or learn Japanese from scratch — neither were terribly likely options.

Today, however, No.5 is newly, completely, finally available in English.

In a unique move, a brand new No.5 stand-alone app has been released for the iPad, where you can download a bilingual edition of the complete series of No.5 in Japanese and English. I am very pleased to report that the app is great, and more importantly the work itself is everything I wanted it to be and so much more. No.5 is even more sprawling, even more epic, and so completely different to what I thought it would be when I started that I'm happier than I had imagined having finished it.

Finishing a great manga series is very often bittersweet, the joy of completion mixed with the regret of something you love ending, and with no more to come. I'm quite happy to say that it was an incredibly fitting conclusion, and I'm looking forward to reading it again. And again.

Having finished No.5 I was granted a very special opportunity — to interview No.5 creator Taiyo Matsumoto about the work, and to share that interview with all of you. As you might be able to tell from the above, I've had questions in my head for Taiyo Matsumoto for more than 10 years, and I have had such a deep appreciation for his work that the opportunity was a little daunting.

Moreover, the iPad app version of No.5 comes with an excellent, very informative interview between Matsumoto and Hideki Egami, Editor of IKKI Comics Magazine (the monthly magazine that serialized No.5) and I didn't want to step on their toes.

(Note: The interview between Matsumoto and Egami is available as a special bonus that is "unlocked" with the purchase of all four volumes of No.5.)