Then we were lucky to be able to meet the man, one of Indonesian Manga scene’s hottest! He is a seasoned veteran in the Indonesian Manga scene, currently working on a re-work of Japanese Manga “Dragon Sakura”, drawn by local Manga-Ka for the home market.   He talked to us, discussing valuable insight into the thinking of a manga publisher… With long history of importing Japanese Manga into Indonesia, lately his focus is more towards helping local talents of Indonesia, succeed in their home country. He is a team worker, as such what goes to press is decided by the team of editors. There are two main thoughts of selection, 1 : Titles that are popular in Japan. 2 : Manga on a theme that suites the Indonesian market. So what are “Suited” to Indonesian manga scene? in brief, for girls ( Shoujo Manga ), School romance, like a love story between student and the teacher is a popular style. For boys, ( Shonen Manga ), Action is universally popular style for boys, but also detective thrillers are very popular too in Indonesia. There are many young Manga talents in Indonesia, but they have no idea how to make it as a profession. Mr. Gupta is possibly the only dedicated Manga editor in Indonesia. Such is his popularity he has about 120 people bringing in own Manga to him for review every month. Must be a very busy man! To make communication easier, he uses Facebook to communicate with Manga-ka’s. We couldn’t agree more that it’s one of the best ways to keeping in touch with a group of people 🙂 Being a publisher he is well knowledgable about the Indonesian book distribution. There are 40 shops in Jakarta, some 130 scattered around the nation. 170 in total. We had very insightful conversation with him regarding the young talents in Indonesia, we hope knowledge we gained today will help us in helping future great Manga-ka’s achieve their goal. Thank you very much, Mr. Gupta Mehendra!