Kenji Tsuruta isn't out for the fame or fortune. If he was, he just might be a mite more productive... But what the creator of the warm and whimsical Spirit of Wonder likes doing best is trying to capture on paper a world that's unfolding quitely inside his own head, and if it taes him half a year or more to turn out one single story, that's fine by him. It's also fine by readers in Japan, who eagerly await the next, unprediclable appearance of his short-tempered, spunky heroine Miss China and her two irresponsible boarders, the eccentric genius professor and his long-suffering assistant Jim. They may not always pay their rent to please China, including carving a birthday greeting into the very surface of the moon.

Studio Proteus: At first glance, it's a classic cast of characters - the man scientist, the handsome young swain, the beautiful damsel. Except that the damsel is a Chinese martial arts expert with an attitude.

Tsuruta: I've always had this longing for the world of 1950s American SF - "sci-fi" really. It's sort of my own style of nostalgia. It's not as if I was always reading. I actually was the kind of kid who didn't read much at all. But I did like Heinlein, his early work. It was translated into Japanese when I was growing up in special, simplified texts for children, and that's what left a lasting impression on me.

SP: The professor keeps coming up with these crazy machines, but they work.

Tsuruta: I've always been attracted to things that are totally off the wall. I guess you could say that, since I really don't know that much about science, I was able to make that kind of leap. Back before the big-bang theory or talk of black holes, people would have thought you were crazy to suggest there was a giant black hole at the center of the galaxy eating stars. That's the sort of old "sci-fi" feel that I've tried to recreate.

SP: How do you come up with a story?

Tsuruta: Well, at the first stage I spend a lot of time reading, a lot of time just wandering around, suddenly hopping on trains and taking trips. And while all that's going on, I'm working a bit on the manuscript, a little bit here and there. And then, all at once I'll get a clear image in my mind, and I'm totally into the work. In the end, you have to lock yourself up and draw. But that gestation time can be very long. and it's important for me to like what I've done. I'm not much of a businessman.

SP: How did you arrive at your style?

Tsuruta: I'm not sure I really did. One day it was just sort of there. I have an image in my head that I want to draw. The image is very clear, and I try to do a life drawing of it. Except that it's not really there. I started drawing comics when I was twenty. For three years I did nothing but draw. When I came out of it, the style was there. Originally, I'd wanted to be a photographer. In college I chose an engineering track...optical science. I thought I should know how a camera worked if I was going to use one to take pictures. But in the end, I decided I didn't have a photographer's eye. And when I was searching for something else to, I stumbled across a really fine manga, Sabertooth Tiger by Yukinobu Hoshino^*. And, I thought, I'd like to try this.
^*(available in English from Viz as Saber Cat)

SP: Hoshino writes really hard SF.

Tsuruta: Yes. Somehow what I'd read when I was little and what I had drawn as a kid came together. After three years, I started publishing in fan magazines, and I went to work as an assistant for various cartoonists. Eventually I did the short story that became my debut work. I took the train from Tokyo down to the ocean at Odawara. The line went through all these rice paddies, and I thought to myself, wouldn't it be interesting if there was a train tracking running through the ocean. And that's how I came up with that story, which is all about a world where the land is sinking slowly into the sea. I wanted to write a story where I could use that image. So, I spin my stories out based on pitures that I still haven't drawn, and sometimes the story turns out not to have a place for tha image that started it.

SP: So what was the image for Miss China in Spirit of Wonder?

Tsuruta: The firts idea was for a sort of scientific Sherlock Holmes, a private investigator who would use science to solve all the cases. He was going to have a secretary who always wore Chinese dresses. The story was going to be set in England, and I'd heard there was a London Chinatown. But that's not how it turned out. At the time, I wasn't making any money, and I couldn't pay my rent. I gave my landlord a lot of trouble. And somehow the secretary character turned into a landlord character, who's always trying to get the professor and Jim to pay their rent.

SP: The Spirit of Wonder: Miss China's Ring video^* already has a quite a few followers in the United States. Are you concerned that the readers will already have an image of China based on the OVA?
^* (available from AnimEigo)

Tsuruta: Actually, I'm not worried about that. When you work on manga yourself, you get too close to your own characters. You can't see the forest for the trees. When I saw the video for the first time, I thought, yes, that's right. That's how they really would look from the outside. Now I sort of wished I could have directed it myself. It was almost too true to the original; I'd have liked a second chance to fix my mistakes!

SP: A lot goes unsaid in Spirit of wonder.

Tsuruta: I try not to let the words take chargee. japanese manga readers rely too much on the words; they just flip through, reading the balloons and following the plot. I want people to look at the art. I've tried to make a comic where you have to read the art in order to understand the story. The pictures are a code for deciphering the story. It's all there in my head, but I don't think it's necessary to put everything down on paper.

SP: Who are your influences?

Tsuruta: I feel very influenced by Tetsuya Chiba. The style is different, of course, but I used to read and reread his work. I feel like it's a part of me. When I go back and read old comics, I feel recharged. When I read contemporary comics, I feel competitive. Instead of enjoying them, I'm always thinking, "I would have done it this way" or "I'd do this part differently." But with the older the comics, the more they're something I used to love reding when I was little, the more positive my attitude. I think, yes, I want to create something like this myself.

SP: In the China stories, the professor's rooms are a total mess. Let me guess -

Tsuruta: They're like mine. My place is awful. When I moved, the movers said I had three times as much stuff as most people would have in the same space. Mostly it's books.

Nonoguchi: (Tsuruta's editor) Actually, you can't see the floor from the front door of his work room to his desk. There's a sort of path there. Like an animal trail in the woods.

SP: How long do you spend on a story?

Tsuruta: Half a year? Maybe more. I draw and erase, draw and erase. When I'm drawing, my psychological state is like this spiral. I have the image in my mind that I want, and I circle around and around it, getting a little closer every time. I don't have any assistants. This ones I had alll went on and became full-time cartoonists in their own right.

SP: I heard you've made your own CD-ROM.

Tsuruta: Yes. It has all my cover art, book illustrations, and other non-manga work. There's also a 40-second clip from the "Spirit of Wonder" animation. I like to try my hand at lots of different things. Manga take a long time to write; you're locked up there with your work. Well, when I'm in there, locked into drawing a comic, I starts wishing I could be doing something else. This was a good chance to try it. I produced it and directed it, just me and the programmer. It's totally different from making manga, as different from writing a novel and making a movie. In the future, I'd like to be able to do both.

SP: What would you like to do next?

Tsuruta: Actually, I've always wanted to do a baseball comic. But there's a lot of "Spirit of Wonder" left in me yet.