Kiriko Nananan
Kiriko Nananan was a Japanese manga artist. She was known for her realistic work featuring understated artwork with a sense of detachment. In addition, she affiliated herself with the "La nouvelle manga" movement. Nananan died on December 25, 2024; her death was not announced until a year later.
Biography
Nananan was born on December 14, 1972, in the town of Yoshida in Nishikanbara District, Niigata. She had wanted to become a manga artist since she was five years old. She would copy manga for children, girls and adults, and adapt them into her own style. After pitching her manga to several publishers, Nananan's debut work Hole was published in the monthly magazine Garo in 1993. She drew Hole while studying at the. Three of her works have been made into live-action films: Blue, Strawberry Shortcakes, and Pumpkin and Mayonnaise. She portrayed Toko in the live-action film adaptation of Strawberry Shortcakes under the stage name Toko Iwase. Along with Ryo Fukawa, she also hosted the NHK Radio 1 program . At the 2008 Angoulême International Comics Festival, Nananan won the.She died on December 25, 2024, at the age of 52. announced her death the following year, at the request of Nananan and her family.
Style
Nananan said she was obsessed with seeing everything in-between the lines. She used the spaces in the panels and the backgrounds as characters to suggest feelings such as hope or emptiness. It is for this reason that, unlike most manga artists, she did not have assistants do the details for her, since the little details played an important role in her stories. She drew each panel so that it can be isolated, like a picture on a poster or a T-shirt, rather than drawing her manga as a series of boxes. She has stated that drawing one panel can sometimes take up to four hours, repeating the same picture dozens of times.Nananan said her stories and characters were only partially fictional, and believed they are all true-to-life. She based her characters' thinking on how she thinks, then linked everything together with fictional events. She felt she could not have writing assistants either since she was the only one who could tell her stories. Nananan cited the manga Pink by Kyoko Okazaki as an inspiration over her work.
Nananan was affiliated with "La nouvelle manga", a movement combining the aesthetics of Franco-Belgian comics and manga.