Main Feature: Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL / Creator's interview: Aya Shiroi, Japanese Animation Director
Main Feature: "Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL"
Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL, the latest in the popular Japanese TV series screened in more than 80 countries and regions of the world, was launched in April this year. The story started out as a manga by Kazuki Takahashi, was serialized in Shonen Jump from 1996, and a real card game was then developed on that basis. Various contests were organized and the boys, especially, loved it. Set in the near future, the story's hero, Yuma Tsukumo, is a first year junior high school boy who loves card duels with his friends but is not very good at them. He faces various challenges and rivals but will he ever master the game? The Yu-Gi-Oh! story is built around the old trading card games that started out as board games and the TV cartoon brings out all the excitement and tension of the genre. More than 22.5 billion Yu-Gi-Oh! cards have been sold so far around the world. We report on this new style of manga, animation and card game and introduce the highlights of Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL.
Creator's interview: Aya Shiroi, Japanese Animation Director
Japanese animation director Aya Shiroi had a work accepted at the 1995 Cinanima International Animation Festival in the Netherlands while still at the Tokyo University of the Arts and carried on doing animations for, children, TV commercials and music videos after graduation from the school. She produced a cartoon version of Yasushi Akimoto's "Zo no Senaka" in 2007, a novel about a 48-year-old office worker with a terminal lung cancer who has only 6 months to live. In her version, the story was transferred to a family of elephants and many older viewers loved it. We meet one of the most promising woman animators in Japan today.
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