Yesterday was the English debut of the fantasy light novel emeth: Island of Golems. With that came an opportunity to ask questions to the creators, Souki & Tora Tsukishima. The two brothers explain how they came up with the idea behind emeth, what it was like to revisit their work again, and their involvement in the currently airing Ingress: The Animation anime below.
TheOASG: Tell us a little about yourself, and what caught your attention first: anime, manga, novels, or video games? What attracted you to any of those mediums?
Souki: Novels, especially light novels.
The dawn of the light novel medium in Japan came when I was younger, and I read the masterpieces of the time thinking I wanted a job where I could write stories just like what I was reading.
A lot of light novels are about true-to-life boys and girls facing big ordeals and overcoming them. I was drawn to the thrill and dreamlike nature of the stories light novels tell that other genres don’t.
I loved games almost as much as novels, so I was thrilled to have my debut as a writer with Square Enix, a famous novel and game publisher.
Tora: I was drawn to manga and games as a child.
Games were especially appealing since I grew up as the NES swapped to the SNES, the age of technological advancement in games with exciting new titles coming out one after another, so I became engrossed in gaming.
As for manga, my entire family read manga, so it was about as close to home as you can get for me.
What was the moment or event that made you think about becoming a writer?
Souki: I had the vague idea I wanted to become a writer when I was a child, but it became a clear goal for me when I made friends with aspiring writers.
Those friends are emeth’s co-author and my younger brother, Tora Tsukishima, and my best friend of twenty years, writer Moyashi Himukai. I polished my skills as a writer together with them, and we all became authors in our own right. To this day, I’m constantly co-authoring works with Tora, and I often collaborate on jobs with Himukai.
Tora: I loved manga and games, and I used to give my older brother Souki advice on his stories during my high school days, but I honestly thought, “I’ll never make this my lifelong career.”
But when I dropped out of university without much thought at age twenty, Souki suggested, “Why don’t you try writing something?” So I wrote what I thought was a terrible piece, but it was a big hit with my brother. That series of events is what led directly to me becoming a writer.
Before touching upon emeth: Island of Golems, you’ve worked on books involving the Final Fantasy and Root Double franchises. Can you share what it’s like to work on an established franchise as opposed to creating something from scratch?
Souki: We introduce many original elements and plot points into our novelizations of established franchises too. We focus on implementing creative and imaginative ideas while paying the greatest respects to the original work, so that the readers can enjoy it as much as possible.
In that sense, perhaps it isn’t that different from creating a book from scratch. What’s most important either way is to create a story that entertains, surprises, and moves the reader to the utmost degree.
Tora: Generally speaking, the process isn’t all that different, since you only have to think of how to capitalize on what makes a story idea appealing above all else.
The main difference between a franchise and an original work is simply that the person who thought up the bones of the original story idea is different. That being the case, no matter how the original idea came about, your job as a writer is just to approach the core idea earnestly.
You are also involved in the Ingress the Animation anime. What’s your role regarding that anime? What do you hope people take away from checking it out?
Souki: As the scenario writer for Ingress the Animation, I was in charge of the script for every episode and general story editing (a position where you decide the structure of the entire story).
Naturally, I wasn’t the only person involved in creating it; I looked to the input of many great people, starting with my co-writer Tora Tsukishima, the producers, directors, and the original creators to invent the story.
Ingress the Animation also has an interesting aspect in that it’s a Japan-America Collaboration Anime, with staff from both Japan and America. I feel like we were able to create a story on a global scale by mixing the culture of two distinctly different countries.
Overcoming differences in culture and ideology to meet halfway and work together—that’s what will allow us to change the world for the better. This is one of the primary themes running throughout this anime.
Ingress the Animation will have a worldwide release very soon, so I hope everyone in the English-speaking world will come to enjoy it as well!
Tora: I was in charge of assisting with story editing and being the script doctor. A script doctor is a position where you tweak, improve, and fix up a scenario the scriptwriter (in this case, Souki) has already written.
It’s a relatively plain job, where you make sure the chronological order of events is all in order, or that the motives behind a character’s actions all make sense, but it’s also a fun job because the more you fix, the higher the quality the end product becomes.
What would you say has changed the most when it comes to writing today as opposed to when you got started?
Souki: I’ve become capable of enjoying the works written by people other than me far more than in the past!
The other thing that’s changed is how much I exercise… I used to do sports, but I haven’t revisited them ever since I began writing…!
Tora: Nothing major has changed. I wake up in the morning, eat, work, play fighting games, and the cycle repeats. I’m repeating days where I should’ve become better at something today than I was at it yesterday.
I should have grown as a writer, but I don’t really feel that strongly that I have yet. I would say the reason has to do with the fact I haven’t been writing much lately. I’m an author, Souki’s partner and his script doctor, but I’m also a normal office worker too.
How did the idea of emeth come about?
Souki: The idea for emeth originally came from a simple thought: “a boy living in the slums creates Golems from the scrap materials he collects.” I was living in the slums at the time myself, so I wanted to write a story that started from the same place.
That’s when Tora joined me in developing the story, and he came up with a crazy number of ideas to help me expand on it. I’m the one who started the story, but it’s his ideas that helped me complete it.
Tora: Souki came up with the initial idea for emeth, while I just suggested every idea I could think of from manga and games I had enjoyed up until that point that I thought would fit emeth.
Put simply, I learned the ideas by following others. Also, I really referenced Studio Ghibli’s movie Laputa: Castle in the Sky.
What were some of the challenges of creating emeth?
Souki: One of the challenges was to give multiple main characters their own point of views and to have them then interact and become entangled throughout the story, like what you typically see in foreign dramas, and incorporating that theme into a light novel format.
Another challenge was having the story develop in a dark and fast-paced fashion that you don’t typically see in light novels. I took on various elements in an attempt to make “a light novel like none before” in many senses.
Tora: All of it was a challenge. Until emeth, I had never written a novel, heck, I barely read them.
At the time, I was hooked on visual novel PC games (which are mostly reading), so I feel like it was more of a test to see what knowledge I had obtained from those games would be applicable to this novel.
When you learned this was the Grand Prize winner of the 3rd Square Enix Novels Award, where were you, how were you told, and what were you feeling afterwards?
Souki: I was told the news while I was in the bus terminal waiting room, waiting to board a long-distance bus.
It was a flustering situation since the bus was about to arrive in a few minutes, haha. But I was ecstatic about it! I immediately called my co-author Tora and shared the good news.
Tora: As Souki said, he called me and I received the news from him by phone while I was in my bedroom. I remember getting the chills for some reason, when I thought about how my own work made an impression on someone other than Souki and myself.
Right after, I went out to the bookstore in search of the manga magazine where the results were printed, but for whatever reason, no one had a copy left in stock, and strangely enough, the memory of struggling to find the magazine has stuck with me to this day.
Now this novel is being translated for an English audience in 2018. First off, when you heard this would be happening, what was your reaction?
Souki: It all started when I learned about Cross Infinite World and Charis Messier.
I learned there was an overseas publisher who publishes Japanese novels and was also convinced Charis was an expert on Japanese culture.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think they would actually publish my works!
Tora: I was actually informed after the fact. In that sense, I wasn’t involved in the initial process.
With that said, I’m extremely grateful to Charis for leading the translation project and to Souki for making it happen. At any rate, I ended up doing a little dance when Souki told me, “emeth is getting published in English.”
Even now, I feel that I will always be greatly indebted to them for all that they’ve done.
Then second off, how did it feel to look back at emeth all over again? Correct me if I’m wrong, but this came out in Japan in 2007.
Souki: We have written over 80 different stories in the 11 years since emeth’s Japanese version was published.
But emeth is packed full of so much of what we hold dear to us to this day. It’s the starting point for our journey into the world of writing and an incredibly important work to us.
Tora: I most likely would’ve never become a writer without emeth, and I doubt I would’ve walked the exciting life I have now, so as strange as it sounds, I’m very grateful to my and Souki’s past selves.
Being a writer is very difficult, but I’m pretty sure every job is difficult in its own way, so I’m terribly blessed and happy to be able to enjoy the job I do now.
It’s explained that there are some new scenes that had been added to the English release — was it something that you might have wanted to include originally or something you thought about years later?
Souki: They are definitely scenes I was able to write because of where I am at now.
I couldn’t write these scenes well at the time because of my lack of experience, making it only possible to add them now. It really helped me feel my growth as a writer.
Tora: At the time, I didn’t have as good of a grasp on the characters’ state of mind, so I wasn’t able to see what scenes were necessary and what was unnecessary.
It’s because I have grown as a writer that I was able to figure out what scenes were still necessary and what should be added.
Finally, what do you hope people who read emeth take away from it?
Souki: emeth is full of characters with broken pasts. From boys to girls to adults, each carry their own burdens.
I wrote the story to show how each of these characters faces their pain, musters their courage to overcome their agonizing past, and grows as a person for it. I would be overjoyed if their stories give the readers just as much courage too.
Tora: It’d be boring if all I said is that I feel the same as Souki, so I’ll add my own opinion as well.
If the reader perceives the story differently from how we expected, I think that would be pretty interesting in and of itself, so I would love to hear your thoughts on it online! Like if you’re unable to understand what is shown as a good deed as being one at all, or you can’t accept an outcome, and other things like that!