After her visit to Toronto, which of course I couldn’t attend, we were lucky that Natsume Ono made a brief appearance in New York City at Kinokuniya. Even though Kino is often having events, getting a manga-ka is still fairly rare. For those of you less familiar with her, she is the manga-ka behind House of Five Leaves, Ristorante Paradiso, and Not Simple among many others. Natsume was kind and gracious, but camera-shy, and she spent a few moments in every signing to do a sketch.

As I have stated in the past my favorite part of any anime conventions is the ability to meet incredibly talented artists in the fields of anime and manga. The most coveted professionals are manga-ka because their schedules often make it that they cannot be pried away from their desks due to their hellish schedules.  So I leap at the chance to speak to any working manga-ka as they usually have made a major sacrifice to appear in the US. When they are at something free like Kinokuniya it is a unmissable treat.

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