So this is Chiyaki and I'm sitting down with Jamie Leno and why should you care about Jamie

Lano? Well she lived the dream. She went over to Japan and she worked as a manga car assistant. is that correct do I have that right yeah that's right excellent

so what can you tell us a little bit about your your personal origins and your artistic backgrounds?

Yeah, well I was born in Washington state in the United States

way back in the 80s and I grew up here I didn't get into anime until high school and well I

I mean I never thought of that anything relating to that as being like a career. I thought, you know, maybe I'd grow up and be an animator. So I went to school for animation in Phoenix. And then, you know how it goes part way into your degree you're kind of like

well I don't really like doing this but I don't know what else to do with myself so I'm just going to

finish my degree and see what

happens so in my case I finished my degree and near the end of it I had a friend who

was working in Japan as an English teacher and I said oh, sure, I'll take a year off, oh not off per se, but I'll take a year after I graduate and work in Japan and figure out, you know, use that year to figure out what I want to do.

And one year turned into two, turned into three,

and about three and a half years, I think,

into it, I ended up getting the job working for

Konomi sensei. It wasn't like I had started out wanting to do that I mean of course you know doing mongas like a dream but you know for me

too it was just a dream not something ever that was feasible or possible or you know

now for listeners like me who are really bad with names

What's Konomi sensei's background?

He has been drawing the manga The Prince of Tennis for 12 years or so. There was 32

volumes in the original series and when I started working for him, we were developing the new Prince of Tennis is what it's called, like sequel to it.

He was published, or Prince of Tennis was published in Shownen GelJell magazine, which is, you know, the magazine they published, you know,

one piece and Death Note and, you know, all that fun stuff.

Um, I don't know, that's, he's done some other manga like cool and lady cool and a few

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