Aven@deighthepal
None of the evidence that has been provided at all suggests that Gege Akutami is friends with Kenya Suzuki.
A shikishi is a drawing board— a traditional Japanese drawing board in which numeral individuals (or one, but it’s usually a group project) put together calligraphy poems, or any form of art. One common use of this is an autograph collection. Now, what’s most important is WHERE this was taken.
In Japan, there is a place called an “izakaya”. Whilst culturally inappropriate to debase it to just this, effectively see it as a bar. In these bars, SEVERAL mangaka attend what is known as a “nomikai”— a drinking meeting, often corporate, but occasionally casual. There’s even preset terms for after parties such as niji-kai, which are explicitly intended for closer friends AFTER the corporate one. If you notice, in the initial post prior to its deletion, they were attending the former, not the latter. So, while I have precedent to believe that Gege Akutami MAY have actually been there (as he received a Naruto shirt within the same day and was said to be drinking with Muroi), he was at the location which mangaka so often frequent that it’s not exactly lightning in a bottle. Additionally, it’s all in the same pen colour— in various izakayas, there are available pens for the mangaka, as these autographs through the shikishi are that common. However, if it wasn’t that, it would instead be for a yosegaki— a collaborative drawing board often passed around across the industry to bid farewell or greetings to an old or new mangaka respectively. This means that the presence of Gege’s illustration could range from someone handing him it at a bar for an autograph to someone handing him it at a bar to greet a new mangaka. This is what leads me to then state the necessary component: the author, Yashiro Manabu, was never claiming to be at the same party as Gege Akutami, just that they acquired it at the LOCATION of a drinking party.
Yashiro is not part of Shueisha. Yashiro serialises Tank Chair on Kodansha, whilst Kenya was (tmk) Kodokawa. This effectively verifies that the drinking meeting in question, given it was not specified to be anything but corporate and that is the standard for the majority of izakaya meetings (as work life is EXTREMELY integrated into social life in Japan), was not with Gege at the very same party, even if the same establishment. He used a drawing board with a pen that might not even be the same one as the others due to the intensity of ink spillage on the top right, who, by the way, was Kenya Suzuki (who, as we know from available manga panels, often has a softer style— Gege’s sketches, whilst not always the case, are also often somewhat harder, but this is a leaf in the win compared to previous points).
In addition, within Japan lies a cultural phenomenon known as “Tatamae”— the public facade of obscuring true feelings to avoid unnecessary conflict. The alternative is you’re known as a troublemaker. A tribute illustration is an obvious example of this, since if you need a NAMED SOCIAL CONSTRUCT to define disagreeing with something but doing it anyway, it’s clearly large enough to happen. There’s also giri (social debt), but that’s aside from the point.
Effectively, misconstruing our own culture with Japan’s has led us down a rabbithole of just not getting it. My conclusion is not “Gege was 100% not there, he is free”, my conclusion is “of all the information posted, Gege Akutami was at an establishment mangaka very often frequent and someone gave him a sheet of paper, which he filled out. Furthermore, Gege has only been explicitly stated to have been drinking with Muroi by Hanazawa, so it’s likely the two were together before being invited to engage in the shikishi.” We know that Muroi was with Gege at one point, that is ALL we know, and further speculation of a public relations event which is historically impersonal in Japan is just obtuse.
Conclusion? Gege was at a bar with Muroi and drew. That’s it.
