Worth a reported ¥500 billion every year, Japan's manga industry is a serious business. But not so for Saki Matsuzawa, a budding 12-year-old mangaka (comic book artist) who has created her own adorable interactive storybook, "Meron Pan no Ichi Nichi" (titled in English as "A Day of the Melon Bread"), with nary a glimpse of fevered ambition.
"I never intended to make or book or anything; it just happened naturally," Matsuzawa says after lunch at her publisher Yayoi Seto's beautiful Minami-Ashibara home. "I have a thick stack of character designs. I like drawing girls, and inventing characters. After I drew the 'Meron Pan' characters I realized that I needed a story to go with them, and it just came to me. I couldn't do it if I had to force it out."
"Meron Pan no Ichi Nichi" follows the daylong life of a sentient snack, from a ball of dough to the bakery shelf and beyond. Our hero is delighted to be alive and yet oddly keen to be eaten, and despairs as his brother breads are bought one by one while he languishes on the shelf. Will anyone buy Melon Bread before the day is out?