In the past three years, the growth of the boys’ love genre has mirrored the growth of manga with an increase in publishers and steady expansion of its readership. One of the first boys’ love comics to take off was Satoru Kannagi’s Only the Ring Finger Knows (DMP), a heartfelt romance filled with anxiety and internal conflict about two high schoolers whose clear annoyance with each other is rivaled only by their growing mutual romantic interest. Kannagi originally wrote Only the Ring Finger Knows as a novel, which eventually progressed to a total of five volumes (also published by DMP), with Volume 1 adapted into comics form. PWCW spoke with Kannagi briefly at this year’s Anime Expo.
PW Comics Week: When did you start writing?
Satoru Kannagi: Ever since I was little I [wrote]. When I was in junior high, I started writing stories and giving them to friends. But I was about 20 years old when I started getting serious about it. In junior high, I was writing mysteries, not boys’ love. But now, I’m primarily a boys’ love writer.
PWCW: What was your introduction to boys’ love?
SK: It was late elementary school or early junior high. There were more shojo manga appearing [in stores and newsstands], and publishers were introducing more boys’ love titles. The first boys’ love manga I read was Kaze to Ki no Uta[Song of Wind and Trees] by Keiko Takemiya. When it came out, boys’ love was rare, but lots of people started talking about [this book], so that’s how I knew about it.
PWCW: Did you study creative writing in college?
SK: I wasn’t formally trained, I just loved to write. So that’s how I learned to do it. I did submit my work to a contest a couple of times, but when I started doing professional work—doujinshi, with friends—a publisher scouted me.
PWCW: So you broke into writing through manga?
SK: Yes, a friend did the art work and I provided the story. [A publisher saw] Kin Botan no Kyori[Distance of the Golden Buttons], a novel. It’s about a student who gets his hair stuck on the second button of another boy’s uniform. The other boy gives him the second button and that’s how the romance starts. Usually, if you love somebody, you give the second button (on your uniform) to the person that you love. Later on, they end up going to the same high school. My friend did the illustrations. The publisher released it later after I had begun writing professionally, and my friend did the illustrations for it again.
That publisher doesn’t exist anymore, but they did all sorts of books. At first they gave me an assignment to do two short stories. After that, I started writing novels. At that time, the boys’ love market was growing fast and big so they were starving for new artists, new writers. So I was very lucky.
PWCW: Does your friend who you did this comic with still do manga?
SK: Now she’s retired—she has a family so she’s not working much now.
PWCW: Why do you like writing boys’ love novels?
SK: One of my biggest motivations is the fan comments. They love the book, or they say that they would love to have a romance like one of the characters in my stories. They say, “I want to fall in love again.”
PWCW: What is the most challenging part of writing a boys’ love novel?
SK: For the “uke” character (often depicted as being feminine), the girls [readers] confuse that character with a girl—but he is a guy. So I can’t forget that the uke is a guy. That’s the most challenging part.
Writing about two guys, it feels like there’s more equal power to [the relationship]. I need to be careful that the uke character does not lose that power. I don’t want him to be too feminine when he talks, or in his actions—I can’t have him crying all the time. That’s not what fans want because they’re buying boys’ love novels. In most of my books, the uke character has a pretty strong mind. He’s not a weak guy.
PWCW: What is the difference between writing for comics and writing a novel?
SK: Only the Ring Finger Knows was a novel first, so I put more information into it, a lot of description. I think that particular artist [Hotaru Odagiri] had to work hard [to adapt it.]
For Rin! I only had to focus on the dialogue and the script. That made it much simpler. For manga I try to keep it as simple as possible—to leave room for the artist to get creative or have more room to explore.
