Gosho Aoyama

	Gosho Aoyama
	Profile
Gender:	Male
Date of birth:	June 21, 1963
Place of birth:	Hokuei, Tottori Prefecture, Japan
Position:	Mangaka ; Key animation

Gosho Aoyama (青山剛昌 ,Aoyama Gōshō^?, also spelled as Goshow Aoyama and Go-Show Aoyama^[1]), born Yoshimasa Aoyama (青山剛昌 ,Aoyama Yoshimasa^?) on June 21, 1963^[2] in Hokuei, Tottori Prefecture, Japan (formerly Daiei, Tottori Prefecture)^[3] 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.

Background

Gosho Aoyama had artistic leanings as a child. In his youth, Gosho was fond of drawing pictures and manga. He drew flip books other doodles into his textbooks.^[4] His father bought him his first manga in kindergarten.^[5] Apparently, Gosho wrote "I will become a manga artist in the future" in his elementary school's graduation anthology, but he didn't remember it.His parents scolded him when he drew manga.^[6]

In his childhood, Gosho was also a huge soccer and baseball fan.

Gosho studied manga since his college days, but he entered university thinking that he will become an art teacher someday. Gosho decided to become a manga artist in his fourth year of university when an older student Yutaka Abe, who was already a manga artist, asked Gosho if he wanted to try submitting a work. Gosho sent a work to a shounen magazine, and it received an honorable mention. When Gosho told his parents that he plans to become a manga artist after graduation, they opposed the decision because they thought it would be an unstable job, unlike an art teacher.^[7]

While he was in University he first lived in Ekoda, which is along the Seibu Ikebukuro Line, then in Senkawa. Gosho played a lot of Mahjong in university.^[8]

Before Gosho looked for a permanent job as a manga artist, he worked part-time jobs, one of which was drawing the background for Ponkikki. He was initially very poor, subsisting on meatless curry for five days straight. His family even sent him rice. When Gosho later considered a job at the magazine where he won an honorable mention, the editor kindly advised him "I personally like your art, but you'll probably be told to change your style sometime soon, so it'll be better for you if you went elsewhere." Eventually Gosho would submit to Shounen Sunday. He won the Newcomer Award at Shounen Sunday with Wait a Minute. Gosho worked for Shounen Sunday for a while, using his free time to play video games.^[9]

When he began working on the manuscript for Magic Kaito, the the editor-in-chief didn't care for it and offered to treat Gosho if Magic Kaito gets made into volumes and sells 100,000 copies. That number was quickly passed. After that, Gosho began publishing the profitable Yaiba in weekly Shounen Sunday. Financially and psychologically that stabilized Gosho's lifestyle.^[10]

After Gosho wrapped up Yaiba, his editors asked him to come up with a mystery manga, hoping to match the populrarity of Kindaichi. That prompted him to develop Detective Conan.^[11] Gosho claimed the plot for Detective Conan was planned in two weeks. At first he thought of doing a hardboiled series, but then changed to a more lighthearted idea where a teenage boy deages 10 years and goes back to first grade.^[12] With this plot in mind Gosho planned to include lots of love comedy centered around the shrunken protagonist and his teenage love interest.^[13] Gosho designed the characters quickly. Gosho deliberately broke from standard convention when designing Conan. Gosho gave Conan glasses with Clark Kent in mind as well as a long name. Gosho's editor-in-chief was worried the name Conan was too close to Future Boy Conan, and requested Gosho change Conan's name to Doyle.^[14] Gosho thought Detective Conan was only going to last 3 months.^[15]

History

Aoyama was once married to voice actress Minami Takayama, the voice of his manga protagonists, Yaiba Kurogane from Yaiba and Conan Edogawa. According to himself, it was Takayama who proposed via telephone, with a sentence of "So, will you marry me?"^[16]. They were married on May 5, 2005 but divorced on December 10, 2007.

Other manga works

HOLE (1986, short story)
MAIL RUNNER (1986, short story)
Mococo (1986, anthology)
WALK MAN (1986, short story)
Wait For Me (1986, short story)
100% Tantei Monogatari (1986-1987, assistance)
Nonchalant Lupin (1987, short story)
The Santa Claus of Summer (1987, short story)
Magic Kaito (1987~present sporadically)
Sunday 19 Show - The Wandering Red Butterfly (1988, short story)
Detective George's Mini-Mini Big Strategy (1988)
Play It Again (1988, short story)
Excalibur (1988, short story)
Yaiba (1988~1993)
3rd Base Fourth (1993)
Gosho Aoyama's Collection of Short Stories (1994, anthology, rerelased in 2011)
Tell Me A Lie
Detective Conan - Hanzawa the Criminal (2017~present): Original draft
Detective Conan - Zero's Tea Time (2018~present): Original draft cooperation
Detective Conan - Wild Police Story (2019~2020): Original story

Other works

SUPER Life Game (1994): Character design
Live A Live (1994): Bakumatsu period chapter character design

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^[17]
朝日新聞夕刊 (Asahi Evening Newspaper), published January 13, 2006^[18]^[19]
Press conference in Erlangen, Germany on June 17, 2006^[20]
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^[21]
オトナファミ6月号 (Otona Fami or Adult Family June issue), published April 21, 2008^[22]
週刊少年サンデー17号 (Weekly Shonen Sunday #17), published March 27, 2009^[23]
少年サンデー1983 (Shonen Sunday 1983, a special issue commemorating Sunday's 50 years of publishing), published July 15, 2009^[24]
オトナファミ6月号 (Otona Fami or Adult Family June issue), published April 20, 2010^[25]
Masters of Manga, published July 6, 2010^[26]
オトナファミ6月号 (Otona Fami or Adult Family June issue), published April 20, 2011^[27]
ミステリマガジン6月号 (Mystery Magazine June issue), published April 25, 2011^[28]
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^[29]
青山剛昌先生と話そうDAY (Let's talk with Aoyama Gosho-sensei day), held January 3, 2012^[30]

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 in his fourth year of university.^[31]
He won the Newcomer Award at Shounen Sunday with Wait a Minute.^[32]
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.^[33]

Trivia

Gosho modeled Kaitou Kid off of himself. When he wrote Magic Kaito, 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.^[34]
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.^[35]
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.^[17]
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.