Kōcha Agasawa Interview Collection
My note: I was surprised that no one has post this here. So I asked GPT to translate the two interviews from Kocha-sensei (one in 2023 and another in 2025). They will help you understand her two stories.
I Want to Explore What Comes After Romance Is Fulfilled
CHANTO WEB • March 10, 2023 • Interview and article by Hanae Abe
Real People Cannot Be Saved by Romance Alone
Interviewer: Romance is often a major driving force in shōjo manga, but both The Ramparts of Ice and You and I Are Polar Opposites depict many different kinds of friendship.
Agasawa says this may, first and foremost, reflect her own personal preferences.
In her view, a boy and a girl becoming close does not necessarily mean that romantic feelings will develop between them. In real life, people of different genders can get along well and talk to each other regularly without seeing one another as potential romantic partners at all.
The excitement of romance is wonderful, of course, but she also very much enjoys observing these purely platonic friendships.
Interviewer: The Ramparts of Ice does not reach its happy ending as soon as the romance is fulfilled, which feels refreshing. Why did you deliberately take the story in that direction?
Agasawa believes that if a story ultimately makes its protagonist happy simply by giving her an ideal boyfriend, it raises a question: if the couple later breaks up, does that mean the protagonist becomes unhappy again?
It is wonderful if their relationship lasts. But if its ending takes away the protagonist’s happiness once more, then the story has ultimately left us with someone who still lacks inner stability.
That is why she feels the characters need to confront personal struggles that exist independently of their romantic relationships.
For example, why did a character develop her present personality? What past experiences gave rise to her difficulties? How should she face the complicated, tangled, unresolved problems deep inside her?
For Agasawa, romance itself is more of an element that helps readers enjoy the story. What she truly wants to focus on is how the protagonists face their deeper personal problems and gradually overcome them.
If they can achieve that growth, then even if their romantic relationships end one day and they find themselves on their own again, they should still be capable of living well.
People Can Change Only Little by Little
Interviewer: The Ramparts of Ice also portrays the difficult question of distance in parent–child relationships. The protagonist gradually comes to see her parents as ordinary, imperfect people, which is another memorable perspective.
Agasawa observes that, as children, we tend to think of our parents as if they were born parents—as though they had always existed in that role.
As we grow older, however, we gradually discover that our parents are ordinary people too. They have their own emotions, personalities, and imperfections.
High school students are at precisely the age when they begin to recognize this.
Through Koyuki’s relationship with her mother in The Ramparts of Ice, Agasawa wanted to portray the process by which a child gradually realizes that parents are ordinary people as well.
Interviewer: You and I Are Polar Opposites, meanwhile, is a bright, lighthearted romantic comedy. Its characters are good kids without being unrealistically good. Watching these ordinary high school students try to grow closer and understand one another makes you want to cheer them on.
Agasawa believes that perfectly good, angelic people do not exist in real life.
Similarly, even someone whom we consider deeply unpleasant may have close friends or people willing to stand by them.
For that reason, she does not particularly like simple good-versus-evil narratives in which someone does something wrong, the protagonist steps in to lecture them with the correct moral argument, and the problem is thereby resolved, leaving everyone with a happy ending.
To her, that kind of development feels unnatural because it effectively assumes that the protagonist is absolutely right.
More importantly, people do not immediately change long-established patterns of thinking simply because they hear a sound argument.
Even when someone points out their mistakes, they may not be able to accept it on the spot.
They might instead take those words away and turn them over in their minds: Why did I think that way in the first place? Does the other person have a point? Is my own view really right?
Through this repeated reflection and uncertainty, and through one experience after another, people can gradually change, little by little.
That is the kind of character growth she hopes to portray in her manga.
Happy Endings in Romance and Friendship Begin with Individual Independence
Kōsho Kōjitsu • March 13, 2025
Why Set the Stories in High School
Interviewer: You made your debut with the vertical-scrolling manga The Ramparts of Ice. Why did you choose high school as the setting for both that series and You and I Are Polar Opposites?
Because high school is the setting that best suits the themes I want to explore.
Middle school students are still too young. They have curfews and other restrictions, so there are many things they cannot do. University students, on the other hand, have too much freedom. If they meet someone they do not get along with, they do not really have to keep spending time with that person, do they?
High school students have a certain amount of freedom, but their world is still relatively small, and they have to interact with all kinds of people with different personalities.
I want to portray relationships between people who are not yet emotionally mature. Compared with the complicated relationships between adults, even when things become a little unsettled between high school students, readers can still watch over them with a certain warmth.
I think high school students are easier both to write about and to read about.
Interviewer: What age group did you originally have in mind as your target audience?
Since The Ramparts of Ice was a vertical-scrolling manga, I wrote it primarily for teenagers. But when I started working with Jump+, I realized that its readership seemed to be surprisingly older than I had expected.
So rather than writing specifically for teenagers, I decided to portray school life in a way that adult readers could find heartwarming and comforting.
I also made this series brighter and more colorful than my previous work because I wanted adult readers to enjoy it. I felt that if the story became too dominated by negative emotions and exhausting developments, adult readers might simply lose interest and move on.
So whenever the story started getting too dark or overly serious, I asked my editor to point it out, and I tried to steer things back toward a lighter tone.
Interviewer: In The Ramparts of Ice, you depicted high school students confronting themselves through romance and friendship, gradually changing for the better. What was the most important thing you wanted to portray in You and I Are Polar Opposites?
What I wanted to portray was actually quite similar to The Ramparts of Ice.
Just because I am writing about couples does not mean I think the story should end with a time skip to a wedding scene and a “happily ever after.” That does not feel right to me. Even if two people are dating, if they are in an extremely codependent relationship, I would not consider that a happy ending.
To take an extreme example, even if a couple eventually broke up, as long as both of them had grown into people capable of living happy lives independently, I would consider that a perfectly satisfactory conclusion to the story.
So I saw my role as helping each character grow through their experiences of romance and friendship.
For example, a girl who was previously unable to show vulnerability in front of others gradually learns to express her weaknesses. Or a girl who had simply been relying on her optimistic boyfriend to save her learns to think for herself and communicate her own feelings.
Although I am depicting romantic relationships between high school students, I wrote the story with the hope that every character would develop independence as an individual.
Interviewer: That sounds almost like a parent watching over their children’s growth.
Yes, I definitely approach it from something like a parent’s perspective.
My memories of being a teenager are getting further and further away, so I am certainly not writing from the perspective of someone currently going through those experiences.
I would like to preserve the painful, prickly memories I had back then, if possible. But as time passes, those memories are gradually becoming romanticized, and sometimes I think, “Oh no, that’s not good!”
Both the Joys and Difficulties of Human Relationships
Interviewer: What was your intention behind pairing Suzuki, a popular and outgoing girl, with Tani, a quiet and serious boy?
Originally, I wanted to post a short manga online to promote The Ramparts of Ice, so I decided to draw You and I Are Polar Opposites as a one-shot.
At the time, manga with premises like “For Some Reason, the Gyaru in My Class Keeps Talking to Me, an Introvert” were popular on Twitter (now X). I thought that if I jumped on that trend, maybe my manga would go viral too.
But I did not think simply following that formula would suit me. So instead of telling the story from the perspective of the introverted boy being approached, I decided to reverse it and tell the story from the perspective of the gyaru who keeps pestering him.
Ultimately, I was still writing a story about adolescent emotions, but I wanted to disguise it as one of those trendy manga.
Interviewer: You portray the inner thoughts of each character with remarkable subtlety. How do you explore their individual ways of thinking and their personal struggles in such depth?
I am often asked in interviews, “Which character is the most like you?”
But there really is not a character I can point to and say, “That’s exactly me.”
To be honest, I was a much more wicked teenager than any of these characters, so I actually would not want someone like my younger self in this world! (laughs)
That said, I sometimes incorporate emotions I have personally experienced into different aspects of individual characters. Other times, I think of someone whose personality is completely different from mine and imagine, “How would that person think about this situation?”
I draw on my own thoughts, things I have actually heard other people say, and things I imagine certain people might say.
Basically, I try to depict emotions that could realistically exist.
That way, the characters will not end up with ways of thinking that do not exist in the real world, and hopefully there will always be someone who can relate to them.
Interviewer: I think one of the greatest appeals of your manga is the careful way you portray people confronting themselves, learning about others, broadening their worlds, and growing through their relationships. Have you personally experienced difficulties in your relationships with other people?
Rather than having had particularly difficult experiences, I think what I realized as an adult was that I simply had not given these things nearly enough thought.
I am really not the type of person who is good at reading the room. After entering the workforce, I started realizing that I needed to pay more attention to the people around me and become better at understanding what others were thinking.
So I began working backward from people’s behavior, trying to understand the reasons behind their actions.
Things like, “Why did this person feel this way?” or “What led this person to reach that conclusion?”
The way I depict emotions in my manga is actually quite logical and analytical. I think that is because, as an adult, I learned to understand other people’s feelings by reasoning through them logically.
Interviewer: Interacting with other people can sometimes be troublesome or exhausting, but both The Ramparts of Ice and You and I Are Polar Opposites seem to depict the joy that lies beyond those difficulties. Do you personally enjoy interacting with people?
Yes, I do.
But I am not particularly sociable, and I am not very good at conversation either, so I am certainly not someone who can instantly become friends with just anyone.
I enjoy the lively atmosphere of everyone having fun together, but I also understand how exhausting it can be to struggle with relationships.
In that respect, I think I am actually quite similar to the manga I draw.
Interviewer: Although both series depict high school romance, they also explore universal themes such as self-consciousness and self-esteem. I think that is another reason they have resonated with such a wide audience. Have you personally had experiences of confronting your own flaws or the less admirable sides of yourself?
Oh, absolutely. My whole life has basically been a repetition of that! (laughs)
But as you become an adult, you gain the ability to choose environments where you do not have to do things you are not suited for.
Of course, you should correct the parts of yourself that need correcting. But if you are in a place where you are causing too much trouble for others, or where you simply do not feel comfortable, you can choose to leave.
So I do not confront myself quite as intensely as the high school students in my stories do. But I do think I am someone who spends a fair amount of time reflecting on things.
How Those Memorable Lines Are Created
Interviewer: Another appeal of your manga is how deeply moving lines and thought-provoking moments suddenly emerge from the everyday lives of high school students. Toward the end of You and I Are Polar Opposites, there was this particularly memorable passage:
They aren’t events with names, nor will they remain as medals of achievement.
Yet moments dismissed as “pointless” or “a waste of time” can sometimes bring color to our hearts.
But only if we have enough room in our hearts to recognize and appreciate those little moments of happiness.
—You and I Are Polar Opposites, Volume 8
I did not have any particularly remarkable experiences in high school, like excelling in club activities or winning awards.
When I think back on those days, my memories are mostly trivial things, like chatting with friends and remembering how hard we laughed together.
But looking back, I think those were precisely the moments that made me happy.
So that passage was really just a direct expression of my own values.
Of course, it is not like I normally think in such formal, literary language as “but only if…”! (laughs)
Interviewer: You and I Are Polar Opposites also stood out for its lively conversational rhythm, excellent comedic timing, and rapid-fire retorts. How did you develop your sense of humor?
I grew up in Kansai, and perhaps because of the local culture, there were lots of funny people around me.
Whenever someone made a joke, there was always someone ready with a tsukkomi—a sharp comedic retort. In fact, people often made jokes with the expectation that someone else would respond to them.
I also watch a lot of manzai comedy, and I really enjoy fast-paced conversational exchanges.
I think those things have definitely influenced my writing.
Interviewer: Would you say you are more of a boke (the funny one) or a tsukkomi (the straight man)?
I am not very good at being the tsukkomi.
When there is someone around who I know will pick up on my jokes, I might mumble silly things here and there.
In manga, though, if the tsukkomi is the answer, then I can write the boke because I already know what the answer is supposed to be.
But actually coming up with a tsukkomi on the spot is difficult. The person responding has to use more brainpower.
People who can immediately come up with a clever response to a joke that is difficult to work with in real conversation must be incredibly quick thinkers.
Interviewer: Are there any manga or manga artists who have particularly influenced you?
My favorite manga artist is Ai Yazawa.
When I read NANA as a child, she became the first manga artist who made me think, “I want to read more works by this person.”
I went on to devour Neighborhood Story, Last Quarter, Paradise Kiss, and her other works. I could not afford to buy all of them, so I borrowed some from friends.
As for artistic influences, I think Magical Circle Guru Guru, a fantasy comedy manga I read over and over again in elementary school, had a major influence on my drawing style.
Whenever I draw people in a simplified or exaggerated style, I tend to think that the rounder their cheeks are, the cuter they look.
I suspect that is because I grew up reading Magical Circle Guru Guru.
In Magical Circle Guru Guru, whenever a romantic scene starts getting particularly sweet, a creature named Gipple appears with a disgusted expression and makes fun of the whole situation.
I also get embarrassed when my scenes become too sweet, so sometimes I will have a noisy truck come barging into a confession scene.
That urge to ruin a beautiful romantic moment with my own hands—I feel like I have been influenced by Magical Circle Guru Guru at a fundamental, almost spiritual level! (laughs)
Interviewer: The final volumes of both The Ramparts of Ice and You and I Are Polar Opposites have now been published. Your first exhibition, You and I Are Polar Opposites Exhibition, will soon be held in Tokyo and Osaka. Both of your series have also received anime adaptation announcements. Your career seems to be going from strength to strength. Do you have any plans for future serializations?
I thought that once my serialization ended, I might end up living like a NEET, doing absolutely nothing.
But it turns out there are still quite a few things I need to do!
So for the time being, I would like to spend my days peacefully while remaining involved in the anime productions to the extent that I can be helpful without getting in the way.
Serializing a manga requires an enormous amount of physical stamina, so I would like to get myself back into shape before taking on another one.
Once the things I want to draw start taking a concrete form, I will get back to drawing.
And when that time comes, I hope you will all continue to support me!
