Trivia / Kokou no Hito

• Breakthrough Hit: Sakamoto's first few manga series were not very successful, lasting only a few volumes. In an episode of Naoki Urasawa's manben NEO where Sakamoto was featured, he discussed this, stating that in the first few years of his career he was primarily concerned with making manga that would be marketable and sell well, but this didn't work out for him at all. Feeling that Kokou no Hito could well be the last manga he would work on, he decided to be more honest with himself, taking more risks with the story and putting more of himself as a creator into the work. This paid off handsomely for him as Kokou no Hito ended up selling 1.5 million copies and lasted for 17 volumes, making it a bonafide success and firmly establishing Sakamoto's career.
• Creative Differences: As the manga went on, Sakamoto felt strongly that he wanted to take the series in his own direction and he and Nabeda's visions for the story were no longer compatible, leading to the latter's departure and the drastic shift the manga took afterwards.
• What Could Have Been: The original writer, Nabeda Yoshiro, left the series after volume 3. As a result, a lot of the plotlines and characters from the first 3 volumes which were presumably set up by Nabeda( Mizuki's suicide, Hara Keito, etc) just completely vanish from the plot, and the characters from that part of the story who do appear again, two of them (Yumi and Miyamoto) have their Character Development and role in the story go in completely unexpected directions, which was almost certainly not part of the original plan.