Gosho Aoyama

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

History

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.

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.

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 where 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. Gosho bough 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 where strict 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 a 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.

Drawing style

Gosho Aoyama drawing style drastically over the years as being a manga artist. His drawing style could be compared back then as "being a Shōjo type" or "not fitted for a Shōnen Magazine". Aoyama's art back then was somehow what sloppy or little bit messy but managed to keep up with his will of art. It is known that Gosho probably drawn his former series in loose lines, while later he stated that he is using long lines to make his art fine.

Aoyama stated that he uses realistic animals, locations, trees and cars. He got them from books which he copies them over and later drawn it himself which it looks more realistic. Gosho Aoyama's coloring art is also great. It is unknown how he's coloring his characters in the manga, but it is known how he colors them in when he is creating characters from real life. He uses short lines to color in and evenly when he is creating a poster for a new film from his series. Standard in Gosho Aoyama's drawing is the ears of the characters and the eyes, which is colored blue with a black pupil and in the mid a shining horizontal line and most popular the nose of each character which only the underside of the nose is seen instead of the whole only by adults the line has been seen. Gosho Aoyama also did the character designs of the popular children anime series Hamtaro.

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

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

• 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.
• Gosho Aoyama personal status:
  • Gosho Aoyama's blood type is B.
  • Gosho Aoyama's height is 1.74 cm.
  • Gosho Aoyama's favorite phrase is Bārō (バーロー; Literally meaning "Stupid").
  • Gosho Aoyama hates beans and raisins and is a big fan of the Giants and curry rice.
• Aoyama uses 05, .1, and .8 pens when he is about to ink his series.
• Gosho Aoyama has friends that works by the police which he can gather information about the daily life at the policy department, evenly got inspectors and detectives as friends. His brother is a doctor, which cases that contains medical affairs in the series, the information he got from his brother.

See also

• Staff