In this episode, Deb Aoki reflects on a childhood immersed in manga and anime and how this experience, combined with her journalism background, amplifies her visual storytelling skills.

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Running Order

• Intro
• Welcome
• Who is Deb Aoki?
• Origin Story
• Deb's current work
• Sponsor: Concepts
• Tips
• Tools
• Where to find Deb Aoki
• Outro

## Links
Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Deb's Website
• Deb On BlueSky
• Deb on LinkedIn
• Deb on Twitter
• Mangasplaining on Twitter
• Tangible UX
• Example of Picture books Deb did with Juniper Networks
• Manga Class for this Semester
• Mangasplaining Podcast
• Mangasplaining Substack Newsletter
• Okinawa - Mangasplaining Graphic Novel

Tools

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Jetpen Zebra Mild Liner highlighter Pens
• Jetpen Frixion Erasable markers
• Pigma Micron Pens
• Neuland Markers
• Sharpie Markers
• Muji Traveler's Notebook
• The Sketchnote Ideabook
• Moleskine Notebook
• Dotted or Blank sheet Notebooks by the Stack
• Maido Stationery
• [Maido-in-a-box] https://usa.kinokuniya.com/featured-stationery-maido-in-a-box
• Sekaido Art Supply in Tokyo
• LOFT
• Tokyu Hands
• Traveler's Factory Shop for Stationery and Travel Goods
• Traveler's Notebooks
• Traveler’s Factory Online Shop
• Traveler's Factory Shop Locations in Japan

Tips

1. Think of drawing as a form of alphabet and writing system versus an artistic system.
2. You don't need to learn how to draw everything in the world. Just the stuff in your world.
3. Be visual with fun, low-stakes things.

Credits

• Producer: Alec Pulianas
• Shownotes and transcripts: Esther Odoro
• Theme music: Jon Schiedermayer

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Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike, and I'm here with Deb Aoki. Deb, it's so good to have you on the show.

Deb Aoki: Oh, thank you, Mike. It's good to see you.

MR: You too. Deb and I have been kind of bouncing into each other on the interwebs for a while, and eventually, we met each other in Paris of all places. Good place to meet somebody. At the International Sketch Note camp in Paris in 2019, which I was thinking about that, today. That's pre-pandemic. So that was like—

DA: Yes.

MR: - the world before. The before times. So really different.

DA: That's true.

MR: - mindset and everything a little bit. But anyway, so Deb is just a multi-talented person, and we're gonna talk with her about who she is and her journey and sort of get some lessons from her as well and chitchat about all kinds of stuff, I'm sure. So let's start out, Deb, tell us who you are, what you do, and then how did you get here. What's your origin story from when you were a little girl to this moment?

DA: Oh, gosh. That's interesting. Well, I think the best place to start is I'm originally from Hawaii. I grew up—I'm a third-generation Japanese-American, so I was surrounded by Japanese culture, but I kind of don't speak Japanese fluently. I can read and speak some.

MR: Okay.

DA: But, you know, the nice thing about it, about growing up in Hawaii, I was surrounded by things like manga and anime much earlier than a lot of other people. And so, the nice part about that is that as a young girl, I got to read a lot of comics for girls from Japan.

MR: Oh.

DA: And in all those comics, it would kind of give you this sense of, "Oh, this is the comic artist you love, and here's how to draw like her, or you can be a comic artist too." So I got a lot of great tips from that. And, you know, like, it fueled this dream of becoming an illustrator or comic artist from a young age. And when I've compared notes with other peers at the same time for American comics, comics for girls were going away or almost faded out.

So I was really lucky in that, you know, my love of comics came that way and was sustained that way. So I've always loved to draw, but, you know, comics part is the part where you know, sometimes you draw for yourself, but with comics, I found out early on you're telling stories and you share those stories with your friends and they're like, "Oh, I wanna see more. I wanna see more."

MR: Mm-hmm. So you keep making more.

DA: Yeah. So it's kind of fun. It's a good way for people who normally don't, you know, to talk about themselves be able to kind of put themselves out there.

MR: So I wanna break in for a minute and assume maybe there's somebody who's never heard of Manga or anime. Maybe they've heard them, they're not exactly sure. Like, what are they and are they the same thing? Are they different? And give us sort of a baseline to that.

And then probably, I guess the last thing is obviously comic culture, manga, anime culture in Japan is very different than any kind of culture in the U.S. In a lot of ways in the U.S., comics are seen for little kids, and they're dismissed. Where I think in Japan, they're revered and it's kind of an art form, right? So talk a little bit about that too.

DA: Oh, well, the simplest way to put it is manga is the comics, like, you know, the paper page, you know, panels and word balloons. And anime is the animated version, like the cartoons.

MR: Got it. Okay. That's easy to remember.

DA: Yeah. And so, you know, a lot of times a lot of the anime is based on the original manga stories, but there's also anime that is original, like the Miyazaki works are all original stories created just for that.

MR: I see.

DA: So there's no manga that came before it with pretty—yeah. In general. So, but I guess the way to think about it is one of my agent friends in Japan explained that the movie industry, the entertainment industry in Japan is not as big and well-funded as it is in, you know, the U.S. So their best storytelling talent goes into manga.

MR: Really.

DA: The editors the writers, the artists. And manga artists compared to, say American comic creators like a lot of who work for the big companies. And the big companies here, they work for hire. Meaning if you draw Superman's story, you get paid per page. And that's kind of it.

MR: I see.

DA: You know, that's someone else's character. You get to play in that playground, but you didn't create that playground and you don't own that playground.

MR: Yeah, I know, for sure.

DA: Whereas in manga, what they encourage is every creator comes up with their own characters and story and world, and they just run with it. From beginning to end, vo