for interviews, see the chocola section


   Koge-Donbo is an OL (office lady) and part time manga artist living in Japan. It's my opinion that she is one of the greatest manga artists of all time. Her style is simple yet beautiful, and extremely unique. Her style is so unique to her that it's very easy to identify pictures as koge-donbo creations the moment you see them.

   The style of the eyes she draws are round with pupils that are usually solid or with very pale gradients and small highlights. The eyes are spaced wide apart, but not too wide. The face shape compliments the eyes by being shorter and wider, while the ears stick out slightly. Mouths and noses are usually small unless the character is speaking, in which case the mouth may be drawn quite large or exaggerated.

   Koge-Donbo's SD style is also quite unique, and seems to be her favorite style. Silly pouts or cat style lips with comically squinted or feline shaped eyes characterize her SD style. The bodies are squatty and cumbersome looking, while the limbs are stubby and round. Mostly, her SD expressions are squarish looking. In a yoncoma (four panel comic) on page 50 of the first volume of the PitaTen series, Koge-Donbo compares her SD style to popular anime-style emoticons used on the internet. Some of those include: (=_=) and (; ¯ O ¯ )

   Her storytelling style is also rather unique. While she does tend to keep in step with mainstream "magical girl" format (normal girl with some sort a short-coming is dicovered to have magic powers, at first is disoriented, but quickly assumes her role as magical girl and saves her friends from peril while learning her way and becoming increasingly more popular/powerful... or magical angel latches onto a boy in need and helps him get through everyday life's trials and tribulations... etc).

   However, unlike most other mainstream shoujo manga, koge-donbo's works rely heavly on odd or outlandish "gyagu" comedy usually found in shounen manga. Twists and odd situations, accompanied by her SD style and sometimes rather crude humour make her stories multi dimentional, and successfully avoid the vacuousness of most other shoujo series.

Koge-Donbo's credits include:

- Creator of the characters in the DiGi Charat series for Gamers.

- Artist for Aquarian Age card collection.

- Lead participant in the 'DiGi Charat Koshiki Comic Anthology' and 'Pia Carrot' series.

- Creator of characters for 'Chicchana Yukitsukai Sugar' series and card collection.

- Writes and draws her own manga series 'PitaTen' and 'Kamichama Karin.'