I remember, many years ago at this point, going into a bookstore and looking at the manga that they had available there. Among the myriad of covers, one stood out to me in particular, that being the first volume of a series called “Sakura Hime: The Legend of Princess Sakura”. The art style of the main character immediately caught my attention and I immediately became curious about the author, that being Arina Tanemura, and what other series she’d done. I thought then that it may be interesting to provide an overview of Arina Tanemura, the manga she’s written as well as touching on her work outside of being a mangaka.
Arina Tanemura began drawing at the age of 5 and attempted to model her art on the shojo manga she read. However, others pointed out that, despite her efforts, her art was unique and different, something that I’d argue is a good thing. At the age of 18, she managed to release a one-shot chapter in a shojo magazine which was warmly received, paving the way for her first series, I.O.N, which was serialised in 1997 and, interestingly, received a sequel chapter 13 years later!
Her next series, Phantom Thief Jeanne, ran from 1998 to 2000 and is one of her few manga to receive an anime adaptation. I seem to have a memory that Arina Tanemura had a distaste for her works being adapted but I’m unable to find any firm statements on this with the closest thing being a statement that she intended to draw in a manner that would make her titles difficult to animate. Her next series was Time Stranger Kyoko which ran for one year and, from what I’m aware, the series wasn’t particularly popular with her own words describing, “In the middle, they were really rushed and I had to quickly finish the story and end it.”
It was after this that she wrote what many people would arguably call her most popular title, Full Moon O Sagashite which ran from 2002-04 and was adapted into a 52 episode anime as well as an OVA. As far as I can tell, this was the last instance that one of her titles received an anime adaptation. She followed this up with one of her longest series, The Gentlemen’s Alliance Cross, which ran from 2004-08 and was also her first manga to feature no supernatural or fantasy elements. After a one volume release called Mistress Fortune in 2008, she began releasing the first series that I read from her and what is her longest series to date, Sakura Hime: The Legend of Princess Sakura, running from 2008-12 across 12 volumes and is based on The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter.
Her next manga was Fudanjuku Monogatari, a manga portrayal of a boy band that she’s friends with and which was only one volume long. Neko to Watashi no Kinyōbi followed soon after, running from 2013-15 across 11 volumes. In the same year, she also began writing her very first josei title, Idol Dreams, which has had 7 volumes released but went on hiatus in 2020. She’s also provided the character designs for the mobile video game Idolish7 as well as drawing several manga adaptations and, perhaps most surprising to me, she’s also written the manga adaptation of the Disney animated film Frozen II!
Let me know your thoughts on this overview of the mangaka Arina Tanemura, which manga of hers you have read and whether you liked or disliked them, what other projects of hers you’re aware of, what you think about her art style and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs!