One of these days, I'm going to have to create a Koge Donbo section...

Koge Donbo story time!

Koge Donbo was a guest at a very small now defunct convention called KintokiCon. The convention had seriously underestimated the cost of bringing her over from Japan. How they managed to bring anyone from Japan to their rinky-dink convention was anyone's guess.

As it was a small convention, I managed to meet and speak to a couple people running it. Although her handler didn't want to announce it, Koge Donbo was expecting at the time. KintokiCon staff didn't think that she would still attend the convention, but she was adamant that she still wanted to go.

I had brought some DiGiCharat production art with me, hoping that she would sign it if she didn't want to sketch. I asked her during her panel if she had any artwork from the animated version of her series. She rather coldly answered that they never tried to involve her in the anime and she had nothing from the show. While it's very common for mangaka to have little, if any, involvement in the animated version of their series, owning artwork from the series when the mangaka didn't have anything made me feel pretty bad.

Through a series of events, a couple of us managed to persuade Koge Donbo to take some commissions. She agreed but we were informed that she would complete them in Japan and then send them to us at a later date.

So we waited. And waited. And waited. A year passed. All of us wondering what had happened to the artwork.

The translator eventually was able to get in contact with Koge Donbo. She had finished the sketches shortly after returning to Japan. However, unbeknownst to her, her publisher had held on to the sketches. Originally, they were going to be scanned for a future artbook. But, for whatever reason, the sketches were never sent out. Koge Donbo felt bad about the delay and sent a small, additional sketch as an apology to each of us. Total pro IMO.

This particular sheet came in the package that I received.