Motomi Kyousuke is definitely a guy. Even if you look at the author's notes and biography sections of the Dengeki Daisy manga, they all show a guy (a cartoon guy that represents him, anyway). So yeah, definitely a guy. He must have an adorable heart of gold to be able to write such a pure manga lol. <3 I think he brings lovely emotions to the main male character (Daisy), who is perverted but still pure. I think that's how many guys are when they're deeply in love... He also characterizes girls really well not as some sort of princess-ideal but girls that can be rude and strong and at the same time really soft and tender. I think it's great to have a male shoujo mangaka; there are unusual perspectives here.

Miyamoto Kano is a woman.

He is a man(?)
http://www.mangafox.com/manga/dengeki_daisy/v02/c005/4.ht ml
(because he has moustache)
http://www.mangafox.com/manga/dengeki_daisy/v03/c010/3.ht ml
(because he don't wears swimsuit bra)
http://www.mangafox.com/manga/dengeki_daisy/v04/c015/4.ht ml
(because he looks like a guy ...)

Last edited by SarutobiIchigo at 7:36 am, Oct 18 2009

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Incest♥Necrophilia♥Selfcest

its http://www.mangaupdates.com/authors.html?id=1027 he was asking about. so it appears yes its a guy

________________
I devour the five lands
and drain the three seas
Yet, only the sky is impossible to reach.
With this body lacking wings, hands, or legs,
I am the World Serpent.
My name is Jormungand
https://www.surveysavvy.com?id=4324012&action=join

He's not gay. He talked about his children a few times too. =P Just because people like things like "sports" if female or "cooking" because they are male does not make them change their sexual orientation.

Don't be so closed-minded. I don't see anyone going around calling Rumiko Takahashi "lesbian" because she writes almost all Shounen...

MOTOMI Kyousuke is actually a lady. Source: the Italian publishers for Motomi-sensei's books (Posocco is a trustworthy person and many from the forum know him IRL ) http://smo.forumfree.it/?t=27028259&st=15#entry258650142

Last edited by elianthos at 2:05 am, Mar 29 2010

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Motomi Kyousuke is DA (WO)MAN ;D
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=14467&p ost=382161

So Motomi Kyosuke is a lady, who pretends to be a male, but many people who don't know about this think she's a lady anyway? And this talk about moustache was to mislead readers?

@Hanae: basically, yes ? Many consider her female by default because she draws shoujo (shoujo= done by chicks for other chicks), but in reality a mangaka can draw shoujo, shounen, seinen, josei... regardless of his/her gender. (Some of my fav titles, like Full Metal Alchemist, Emma, Kekkaishi... are drawn by females but are shounen or seinen. Not to speak of TAKAHASHI Rumiko already mentioned in this thread. The reverse may be less common, but still happens (even if the only name my brain is popping out atm is TEZUKA Osamu )).
Well, Motomi-sensei wouldn't be the first female author choosing a male pseudonym anyway. GEORGE Asakura is another example.
Also, Japan has a tradition of females acting as males. And even in Western cultures a bit of gender boundaries pushing , especially among artists, is no news.
Anyway, back to our Motomi-sensei. According to 'Pos' up there (I'm roughly translating and summarizing his answers in the page I linked in the post above), she's a very open-minded person and is not interested/doesn't care about traditional gender labels and definitions, so to speak.
The moustache thing: it goes well with her male pen-name and makes it more believable, doesn't it? It could even be real, although exaggerated: femme-moustache does exists and can be more common than you would believe, especially if your hair and body hair is dark. Furthermore, the contrast can be dramatic on fair skin complexions, to the point of either having to wax it or to bleach it .
In conclusion, while I like the idea of a male mangaka churning out good shoujos, I really admire the lady for being able to think outside (above? beyond?) of her gender, be it XY chromosomes or shoujo clichès/characterization. And in the end it's the quality of the work that counts.


Last edited by elianthos at 9:18 am, Mar 29 2010

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Motomi Kyousuke is DA (WO)MAN ;D
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=14467&p ost=382161

I remember the picture above the author's note about the moustache and I really hate my imagination now

Well, if the information about Motomi Kyousuke being a female is true and isn't an early April Fools' Day joke or something, I'll feel a bit... deceived, I think.

Never been too keen on April Fool's jokes unless it's on and from people I'm on friendly terms IRL.
And about the reactions to the mangaka's gender: judging from the content of the manga alone, I agree with Tartufo at the top of the page where she says Motomi's manga must be the result of a heart of gold , so at the very least I wouldn't ascribe the choice of a male pen name to a ill-intentioned trick. Maybe it's just a literary convention, maybe it's something more serious and personal and unless she spells it out for us it'll be forever open to speculation. My speculation is: it's an invite to judge the work by itself ad to think outside the box/labels of any kind.
Hence rather than deceiving in a bad way, I find the male penname an amusing and stimulating choice instead: I mean, just reading the comments made so far, it's a very interesting insight about what we perceive and expect from an author and how the reception of his/her work can change according to what we know or don't know about the person (also because, on a larger scale, it's linked to what our idea of what 'female' and 'male' entail ). And with this I put my wannabe... anthropologist? hat off XD.

Last edited by elianthos at 4:56 am, Apr 1 2010

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Motomi Kyousuke is DA (WO)MAN ;D
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=14467&p ost=382161

O.o;; Someone said they met HIM in real life and got an autograph from HIM. Making Motomi Kyousuke male, not female. Would a mangaka really go that far to disguise their gender that they would send out a random male person to autograph? Seems far fetched. In addition, your link seems to be in Italian and is not from a widely known source, such as Anime News Network.

The Italian publisher‘s forum is not a reliable source Posocco seems like a random person to me, if you know them in person or not. It would be more reliable to have someone from the management of the company themselves, where they say something like, I met them in person and dealt with them in person. Like Stuart Levy of Tokyopop, the CEO met Takeuchi-sensei and has pictures of her with him so he can verify, yes, she is female.

I shall quote:

So Photo proof please. I'm more likely to believe a source that has seen the mangaka than one that says they saw something in a website we can't read from some source we don't know and then gets the profile locked by an admin when they can't cough up solid proof.

I'll have the admin remove the lock, because I dispute it's a reliable source.

Want to get verification? http://yaplog.jp/yuriruy/archive/2019 has an autograph. I have enough Japanese to translate, "Is Motomi Kyousuke a man or a woman?" ^_^ Want to give it a shot? The comments indicate that they met the person. "Motomi-san was truly a lovely person."

Last edited by goldshep at 3:03 pm, May 1 2010

a)*headdesk* My source is as reliable - or as unreliable, as you seem to imply none too gently in my case, shaking head emoticon included - as the one you quoted in your post. Cristian Posocco happens to be the 'direttore editoriale' (tl: his role concerns selecting/picking the titles to be licensed and contacting the Japanese publishers, both via mail, phone and in person for fixing the deal/contracts ) for the publishing house licensing Motomi's manga in Italy. http://www.flashbook-edizioni.it/pages.asp?ipag=2 <--- The paragraph about his role and qualification is halfway in the page, I'm quoting it in italics. He's up there with the top management figures. Feel free to run whatever online translator engine you wish on it: FLASHBOOK si avvale di personale altamente competente e specializzato.
Il direttore editoriale, Cristian Posocco, vanta una laurea in lingua e cultura giapponese, e ha collaborato regolarmente dal 1997 in poi con svariate riviste specializzate in fumetto e animazione, tra le quali eMotion (di cui è cofondatore), Mangagiornale, Man-Ga, Kamikaze. Nel Gennaio 2006 è stato pubblicato il suo primo libro, MangArt, in cui viene trattato l’utilizzo di un linguaggio visivo e simbolico nel fumetto giapponese.

c) I've summarized and translated both the post I linked and the relevant replies in that thread, in the comment right after after the one you quoted.
I'm c&p it again in case you missed it Anyway, back to our Motomi-sensei. According to 'Pos' up there (I'm roughly translating and summarizing his answers in the page I linked in the post above), she's a very open-minded person and is not interested/doesn't care about traditional gender labels and definitions, so to speak.


I'd say one thing only: if Posocco didn't delve into the nitty gritty details of mustache and vag vs penis and didn't post photos or whatnot is probably also for a form of privacy towards the author. Not every author wishes for his/her image to be widely available to the public in fact. Naoko Takeuchi, bless her and Sailor Moon, is quite an exception.
There are a few clues it in the thread replies, so I'm going to translate verbatim all of these, for your peace of mind, ok? Even if I'm afraid nothing but a DNA test on Motomi would convince you of Posocco's good faith and reliability...
b)Motomi's gender and sex (chromosomes vs perceived identity )could not be mirroring each other even XD (and that could explain why in the fateful sig session some peple say Motomi is male-->because looks like one, possibly ); frankly as long as I Posocco says she's female I'll believe him, regardless of what the actual genes are. Because the man in question has earned his reputation in my country and towards the Japanese publishers he deals with. He would not reply so assuredly on the matter as he did, without checking the truth of the statement first.

Now, comment-by-comment tl from the Italian forum . I'm a native Italian speaker, but I'm afraid you'll have to believe me about the native part on my word only.

http://smo.forumfree.it/?t=27028259&st=15#entry258650142 Posocco:
'Actually she's a woman signing under a male pseudonym '
http://smo.forumfree.it/?t=27028259&st=15#entry258697087 Dianika [Spanish manga blogger and site/forum collaborator]:
(after the quote from the post here above) 'Really? How do you know that? can't make sense of a woman'choice to sign her shoujo manga under a male penname'
http://smo.forumfree.it/?t=27028259&st=15#entry258710975 Koori [former site mod]
'Dianika, Posocco is the direttore editoriale (=person choosing the titles to publish and dealing with the Japanese, see explanation near the top of my present comment) of Flashbook publishing house, I do believe he has privileged access to info channels .
But it's true, usually are the male mangakas the one choosing a female penname instead. This woman [Motomi] is a white fly []'.
http://smo.forumfree.it/?t=27028259&st=15#entry258715371 Dianika (after quoting Koori)
'I'm from Spain, I don't know Italian publishers [as in 'the pro in the publishing field'] ... But still... a shoujo female author with a male penname? I keep missing the logic of it...'
http://smo.forumfree.it/?t=27028259&st=15#entry258760617 Posocco:
'But it wouldn't be the first time it [female author, male penname]happens, you know? Do you have in mind George Asakura, for instance? There are more of such examples too , but I can't remember other names right now *sweatdrops*
Anyway, [Motomi], so to speak, seems not to be interested to personal genders ( I mean, about a person being male or female) . Let's say she's a 'modern' [open-minded]person ^^!
http://smo.forumfree.it/?t=27028259&st=15#entry258852737 Tsuku-chan [site mod] (after quoting Posocco's first reply) Ah, thank you Cristian for the explanation (for the uncovered mystery in fact XD)...

(then she quotes Dianika's second comment) Uh, don't worry, Dianika! If Posocco says a thing is so, we can trust him. He's an authority in the field. (...) <-- [skipped some parts ere because unrelated to Motomi] Now I only miss to read the final of Beast Master *dancing emoticon*

http://smo.forumfree.it/?t=27028259&st=15#entry258872264 Posocco (after quoting Tsuku-chan's sentence about him being a trustworthy authority in the field) :
'Well, it's not as everyone is the Word of God because he's in the industry ^^; , everyone could tell BS and make mistakes if he doesn't check sources and infos first. It's of the utmost importance to check your sources and data before intervening; that's my rule ^^ '

/END OF TL. Hope you had fun reading and found it informative enough.
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It's in your right to do so. Just try not to imply ill-faith or a sort of condescending disapproval because we have different sources providing different info, please.

Provided it's the real autograph, the person is more reliable than the official publishers and that Motomi's RL looks are not androginous nor seemingly masculine to a casual observer meeting her, sure, go ahead.


One last thing: have a bit more faith in this site admins XD

Last edited by elianthos at 4:31 pm, May 25 2010

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Motomi Kyousuke is DA (WO)MAN ;D
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=14467&p ost=382161

If anyone still cares, or if it makes a difference, in the back of both volumes of Beast Master on the artist’s description page, it says she’s a she. Wouldn’t VIZ know, or wouldn’t they have checked?

今日は、
アメリカ人です 。あなたのもと み先生のアイン 見目増した。本 当にかっこいし ました。あの・ ・・あたしはも んだいですよ。 いいですか？　 もとみ先生は男 や女ですか？　 あなたは先生見 目増した、です よね？　それか は私の友達は戦 いです。助けて お願いします。

Posting that reply to the Japanese source.

It's rudimentary Japanese so it should be good enough to get the point across. If you have objections. You can address them. But the pictures of the autograph and the account seem legit.

I should note that I dispute your source because.. Let's put it this way, I can post a link to a website in Chinese, which I know you don't read, state that some person on there said something or other, and then should I really expect you to believe me because I say he's my friend and many people have met them in person? This would make this a third source rather than a primary source, where say, he comes on and vouches for himself that it's true in English so that his own reputation is on the line.

Do you get what I'm saying? It's not a matter of if he's a good person or not, it's a matter of questioning your sources even if you generally trust them. Books make errors, people lie, it's just a part of humanity to make huge errors and mistakes, and since the lock was put onto the profile based on your post alone which was linked, and I found it dubious, I decided to find a primary source. It's not a matter of mistrusting the admins so much, as questioning their source which was you quoting a website that the admin could not read or verify... which is just odd at best.

Since there was a post before yours that claimed to a primary source, i.e. signing where a person saw them, this causes a dispute, and I'd simply like to sort it out with another primary source. I hope that makes it clear.

This isn't saying anything about you, but I've seen people actually fall for the "It's in another language you can't read so believe me" crap. But since I can read that other language, I track it own and find that the person quoting it was making up things and the people believing it are simply suckers who just believe the person translating for the sake of it. So, please don't take the suspicion personally, but as a matter of course to verify the facts and make sure they line up and all disputes are resolved. Better?

BTW, the head shaking is for the suckers that don't question anything in their lives and the facts they are given. But if you don't question then how do you learn, grow, and actually know that the reality you think is real is true? And I did question Stuart Levy, CEO of Tokyopop... so you know I'm gutsy to question sources. (It was over a con suspicion...)

Last edited by goldshep at 8:29 pm, May 25 2010

Buy betsucomi, this month, there's a picture of HER. Apparently has long hair and glasses too.

It would not be the first mangaka to do stuff like that... George Asakura wrote free-talks as a man for years! She referred at herself as a man for very long time... before pictures came out.

Anyways... publishers do know better and both Viz and the Italian Publisher probably asked directly to the Japanese publisher/agent when they purchased the rights of the comics - and talked to them in good japanese... - and were answered in female form (she did this and that).

But it's a pretty clever thing to do... leave foggy and mysterious information around about oneself... if people waste so much time wondering about the true identity of the author, it might help sales! And since it's been done before... that's probably why it was done again: manga is all about money nowadays!