Gosho Aoyama

Gosho Aoyama
Profile
Gender:	Male
Date of birth:	June 21, 1963
Place of birth:	Hokuei, Tottori Prefecture, Japan

Gosho Aoyama (青山 剛昌 ,Aoyama Gōshō), born Yoshimasa Aoyama (青山 剛昌 ,Aoyama Yoshimasa) on June 21, 1963 in Hokuei, Tottori Prefecture, Japan (formerly Daiei, Tottori Prefecture) is a Japanese manga artist. He is best known as the creator of the manga series Detective Conan (known in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom as Case Closed). He has also designed the human characters for the children's anime series, Hamtaro.

Background

Aoyama's home is located in front of the Daiei Town Plaza where his home owns a bike repair shop and a grocery store.

When Gosho Aoyama was in Grade 1 in elementary school, his painting of "Yukiai War" won a competition and was displayed at the Tottori Daimaru Department Store, which known is that Gosho Aoyama was a talented drawer evenly at a young age.

In his youth, Aoyama and his friends were more like the Detective Boys back then and describes himself as the Mitsuhiko type of his group. Gosho Aoyama was still drawing Nyarome (ニャロメ, Nyarome), a character that is created by Akatsuka Fujio, one of the creators of Doraemon. Aoyama bought his first manga named "Ore wa Teppei" (おれは鉄兵; Literally meaning "I am Teppei") by Tetsuya Chiba which he liked the manga series a lot, and thus made him to join the kendō club.

Aoyama had to read manga secretly because his parents were strict and told him that, "Nothing good can come out of reading manga" so during his junior high school years, he had to read manga secretly which makes Aoyama almost giving up his dream and decided to become an art teacher instead and enrolled in Nihon University College of Art. There, Aoyama joined the Manga Studies Club where he met the club's alumnus, manga artist Yutaka Abe. The start for Gosho Aoyama was when Abe asked Aoyama if he wanted to draw manga for real. In winter of 1986, Aoyama joined a comic contest for freshmen students. He won the contest, and it became a stepping-stone for his career as a manga artist and author, as well as a turning point for his life.

History

He was once married to voice actress Minami Takayama, the voice of his manga protagonists, Yaiba Kurogane (from Yaiba) and Conan Edogawa. They were married on May 5, 2005 but divorced on December 10, 2007.

Other works

• Magic Kaito (1987~present (sporadically))
• Yaiba (1988~1993)
• 3rd Base Fourth (1993)
• Gosho Aoyama's Collection of Short Stories
• Tell Me A Lie

Interviews and talk events

• コナンドリル オフィシャルブック (Conan Drill Official Book), published May 1, 2003
• 朝日新聞夕刊 (Asahi Evening Newspaper), published January 13, 2006
• Press conference in Erlangen, Germany on June 17, 2006
• 名探偵コナン＆金田一少年の事件簿01 (Detective Conan & Kindaichi Case Files #1), published April 10, 2008
• オトナファミ6月号 (Otona Fami or Adult Family June issue), published April 21, 2008
• 週刊少年サンデー17号 (Weekly Shonen Sunday #17), published March 27, 2009
• 少年サンデー1983 (Shonen Sunday 1983, a special issue commemorating Sunday's 50 years of publishing), published July 15, 2009
• オトナファミ6月号 (Otona Fami or Adult Family June issue), published April 20, 2010
• Masters of Manga, published July 6, 2010
• オトナファミ6月号 (Otona Fami or Adult Family June issue), published April 20, 2011
• ミステリマガジン6月号 (Mystery Magazine June issue), published April 25, 2011
• 日藝賞記念講演会講演 (Aoyama delivers a lecture at the Nichigei Award for Excellence Commemoration Event for receiving the award), held June 24, 2012
• 青山剛昌先生と話そうDAY (Let's talk with Aoyama Gosho-sensei day), held January 3, 2012

Aoyama is also known to have answered questions given by the Shonen Sunday magazine in each issue.

Awards and recognition

• Honorable mention for a manga submitted to a magazine ih his fourth year of university.
• He won the Newcomer Award at Shounen Sunday with Wait a Minute.
• Nichigei Award for Excellence, earned April 8th, 2011 from his former university Nihon University College of Art. He gave a private lecture June 24th 2011 at the University's Ekoda Hall.

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Gosho Aoyama won two manga awards at his time as manga artist. Aoyama won the Shogakukan Manga Award in the category shōnen for Yaiba in 1992 and won the second time for Detective Conan in 2001.

His hometown Hokuei has done several machi okoshi (町おこし; Literally meaning "Town revitalization") projects in honor of his contribution as a manga artist and resident of the town. The first project was a Conan Bridge across the Yura River and the Conan bronze statues in various locations in the town, which both pay tribute to Gosho Aoyama's popular character from Detective Conan — Conan Edogawa. But here where also later bronze statues placed of Shinichi Kudo, Ran Mouri, the Detective Boys, and evenly tiling containing Conan Edogawa's face. On March 18, 2007, the Gosho Aoyama Manga Factory was open in the same town to celebrate Gosho Aoyama's career as a manga artist.

Trivia

• Gosho modeled Kaitou Kid off of himself. When he wrote Magic Kaito his Gosho was 1.74 m (~ 5'9") tall and weighed 58 kg (~ 128 lbs). Gosho's bloodtype is B. Gosho is also bad at ice-skating.
• Aoyama appears as a CSI member on a TV drama named 「相棒」 (Thief) on a New Years special episode, aired January 1, 2011. Reportedly, Aoyama was a fan of the show, and he gained the role when he once visited the set as requested to help the staff's research.
• Aoyama has two younger brothers, one who's an engineer and another who's a doctor. The engineer helps Aoyama with tricks related to cars, and the doctor helps Aoyama with medicine-related topics, like APTX. The doctor is also an anime otaku who advises Aoyama about which voice actor should voice whom.
• Gosho Aoyama's webpage has weekly updated picture called Sherry's soliloquy that features a comment by Haibara on the current chapters or recent Conan work.

See also

• Staff
• Gosho Aoyama Manga Factory

References

• Detective Conan Wikia