I have ideas, but it really depends on the publisher’s feedback, so I’m not really sure I can predict what will come out next. So people came in expecting one thing and stuck around to see how it played out, realizing I was taking this very seriously. From what I’m hearing and the responses I have gotten from the general audience readers, they did want to go in thinking they were going to see something like a general audience version of campy gay media, only to discover it’s a very serious work. But on the other hand, because I am known as a gay artist, parts of the internet just went completely bonkers, like “Why is a pornographer doing a general audience manga in a youth magazine?” So that hubbub, not outcry, but just that talk, became very loud.

I am predominantly known by general audiences as a gay artist, so straight readers who had no idea went in assuming this would be another. But historically, gay media has been sort of a lesser form. As far as I know the publisher hasn’t received any sort of religious or morally-based sort of backlash. The response in Japan has been overwhelmingly positive and the reviews have been great. How is the book being received in Japan? Do you feel like your message is getting across? Meeting all these different kinds of people through TCAF made diversity possible in a way that would be a good back story for Ryoji to come to Canada and get married. In Europe most of the people who come are white, and there’s a smattering of black people and Asians, but primarily white folks, while here it’s black, Latino, First Nations, and white, and a lot of Asian people. At the event I do signings and events where-compared to Europe, which is another place I do a lot of signings-Canada is infinitely more diverse. But it’s not just that it raised an opportunity to create a Canadian character through TCAF. And it definitely helps that they speak English, which I read, so if I needed to research it on my own I could read the materials. I wanted there to be people there that I could get in touch with easily, friends who could help me if I needed research done locally. It had to be a place I had visited, so I had actually done some fieldwork. I knew it was going to be about same-sex marriage and marriage equality, so a place where that had passed, which Canada had. There were three criteria that needed to be met in this character. For one, that main character Mike would probably not be Canadian if I hadn’t visited the country. The influence of having come to this event and to Canada is definitely huge. How has the experience of being here in Canada, where attitudes are different, influenced the story? You’ve been coming to TCAF for the past couple of years.

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