Quote:
Originally Posted by Ookla The Mok
Hm. Well, that's news to me. That page doesn't say anything about it other than the female gif, so I'd be interested to see the other articles you mention.
Arakawa did work as an assistant to the Guu mangaka, who is a female using a male pseudonym. Arakawa's cow avatar looks male to me, but cows are female...
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Yep and it's pretty well known that the females in Japan sometimes have the nicknames of "Ushi" (Cow), you don't find guys being called Ushi. But mangaseek is an accurate database.
A lot of the articles were in the blogs of Japanese viewers. Lots of them have expired by now :( But the general gist of them all were expressing shock that Arakawa-sensei is a woman. Note that the revelation of this (an award ceremony where Arakawa-sensei appeared in person, 小学館漫画賞 ) is supposedly in Early Apr 2004. In other words, it is a fairly recent revelation.
There's this one in a bbs which is the one that alerted me.
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荒川弘先生が女性だったなんて…!!
周囲より10日ほど情報が遅いまいんこです。
吃驚小波。
いやはやびっくりしました。
様々な固定観念から、荒川氏が男性と思って疑いませんでした。
本名は「荒川弘○」なんだとか。
弘子か弘美でしょうか。
確かに「弘」って名前は男性的ですが、同じく小学館漫画賞を受賞した篠塚氏も名前は「ひろむ」 ですしね。
描いている作品と、漢字とひらがなの差はありますが。
そんなわけで荒川先生の写真はっけーん!
http://www.ciao.shogakukan.co.jp/milmo/news/news.html
…それこそ篠塚氏のことについてですが。
集合写真の前列左端の黒スーツが荒川先生。
審査員の先生方も、授賞式当日になって初めて荒川先生が女性だと知ったんだとか。
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Besides the statement, the above link leads to another anime news page whose mangaka was honoured in that award as well. Arakawa was supposed to have received an award also. In the photo of a gathering (the bottom left of the 6 photos), the woman in a black suit in the front row leftmost is supposed to be Arakawa-sensei herself.
On Amazon Japan, a reviewer ( http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/...048535-1642678 ) says
Quote:
Originally Posted by sekizono
ハガレンこと鋼の錬金術師の原作本のイラスト集です。
ガンガンの初期連載の頃から(読みきり漫画数本含む)この
荒川女史(弘という名で誤解されがちですが、原作者は女性です)
の絵はキャラがみんな独特の世界観の中で生き生きと描かれていました。
漫画も連載当初から人気でしたがアニメ化で更に過熱した様です。
が、やはり原点は漫画版です。
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So pretty much, the Japanese audience are already getting aware of her gender.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ookla The Mok
Things like this have always bugged me personally. If someone is using a male pseudonym, and you are talking about the pseudonymous persona and not necessarily the real person, what's wrong with using the male pronoun? What's wrong with calling James Tiptree, Jr. "him" instead of "her," especially since Alice Sheldon went through great pains to keep her real identity a secret for many years?
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Well supposedly the fact is she is using a male pseudonym because the editor felt she won't make it big using her female name. So it's still her writing as a woman to the audience. So it would be more truthful and appropriate to address the mangaka as a she.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ookla The Mok
This also begs the question, how many shoujo mangaka out there are men using female pseudonyms? I would be surprised if the number is zero. I do know that some romance novels in the US (which all have female author bylines) are written by men using pseudonyms.
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Its likely they would never come out openly revealing that unless they are handsome guys in real life. Girls want their idols realised, not destroyed. You should have seen the reaction of some of the fangirls on the bbs's when they realised Arakawa is a 'she'. Some accepted girl power. Some just went disappointed because they cannot father the child of the FMA creater :twitch:
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