Interview: Jump+ & Weekly Shonen Jump Manga Creator Daijirou Nonoue (Hatori and Furuta's Extraordinarily Ordinary Life)

For me, 2025 was the year of storytelling centered around the mundane. I finally watched that anime about a stargazing insomniac pair looking for more out there in the galaxy, and fell in love with two girls who would trade meaningless topics at a food court each episode.

But the year was completed by discovering Daijirou Nonoue’s Hatori and Furuta’s Extraordinarily Ordinary Life, of which I said at the time—a tear rolling down my face after the first chapter—and I’ll say again now: had one of the best first chapters of a manga that I’ve ever read.

Hatori’s extraordinary desire to experience more than he does is magnified by Furuta, who, for as special as she is, feels like an otherwise ordinary girl perched at the gateway to the night sky and all the wonders out there, like a halo, or the actual moon if you want it to be badly enough. It creates this captivating force that draws him to her. (As Furuta describes it, Hatori is the insect reaching for the moon and the flames.)

Furuta—eccentric, charismatic, marching to her own tune with an eye for wonders, and alone, almost as if in contrast to her specialness, is drawn back to Hatori.

The gravity created by the artistry and promise of Nonoue’s storytelling meant I needed to do something with how I felt, and so I kept reading.
I bought the volumes in Japanese.
I reread the previous chapter before each new one.
And I hope this interview with Nonoue-sensei might encourage you to do the same.

Weekly Shonen Jump & Jump+ manga creator Daijirou Nonoue makes his English-language interview debut!

Born in 1989, Daijirou Nonoue is a mangaka hailing from Okayama, Japan. At age 20, he won an Honorable Mention at the 33rd JUMP Treasure Newcomer Manga Awards (March 2010) for rhapsody in blow. He has released one-shots including Sajitari (2010) and Ryuu ga Ita Machi (2024), as well as serials Mutou Black (2013) and The Last Saiyuki (2019), both published in Weekly Shonen Jump. Up for the 2026 Next Manga Awards, his latest series Hatori and Furuta’s Extraordinarily Ordinary Life is currently serialized on Jump+.

Anime Corner: Please tell us about your childhood and upbringing.

Nonoue: I moved schools frequently during my childhood, but I found that drawing characters from manga and games helped me make friends wherever I went. Looking back, it seems only natural that I came to aspire to become a manga creator.

I joined the art club in high school as I was aspiring to become a manga creator, but I was the worst at drawing among the club members. Despite being the worst, I was also part of the baseball team and didn’t really have a sense of urgency. Then, one day, the art teacher said to me, “You’re terrible at drawing, with no talent or drive. I don’t think you’ll be able to get a job involving art.”

You can become a manga creator even if you’re not good at drawing, but I liked manga where the art was really good, so it got me really thinking about my future. However, my love for manga didn’t go away even after facing the reality that I lacked artistic talent. I decided to make up for my lack of talent by putting in a lot of time, and committed myself to becoming a manga creator.

I think if my teacher hadn’t given me that harsh reality check, I probably wouldn’t have come to the realization that I didn’t have any talent until I was an adult and eventually given up on becoming a manga creator. I was very fortunate to have realized that I don’t have talent early on. This is a side note, but when I told my teacher that I was going to continue the art club, he coached me diligently and by the time I graduated, he praised me saying, “You’ve really improved.” It made me super happy.

Introduction to Hatori and Furuta’s Extraordinarily Ordinary Life:

Nonoue: Furuta and Hatori are both modeled after my friends. They’re a mix of a few friends, both male and female. As I worked on them, the core mindset of each character became apparent, so I incorporated traits and themes to reinforce those aspects, resulting in the current form.

I created Chapter 1 with the hope that readers would experience the thrill and excitement of the extraordinary existing in the ordinary, just as the title suggests.

Anime Corner: A core theme is the magic in the mundane. We see this in how you take the real concept of reading books changing you as a person, and transform this into a literal magical concept. What motivated you to take that normal, everyday phenomenon of books transforming people and literally apply it to magical books transforming people?

Nonoue: A book so terrifying that it leaves you unable to sleep for days after reading it, or conversely, a book that makes the darkness of a closet, which was once a source of great fear, seem not so scary at all. There have been multiple instances in my life where books have changed my life, and I feel like I tried to simply depict that idea. While you might not come across something as extreme as a “book that kills you the moment you look at it,” I’m sure that your local library will have at least one book that someone like Nijiyama would strongly desire.

Anime Corner: What motivates you to explore themes like the beauty/surrealism in the mundane more generally?

Nonoue: I think that this, too, probably stemmed from moving around a lot as a child. I moved to a variety of places, from Hokkaido (Japan’s snow-covered northernmost region) and the foothills of Mount Fuji to smog-filled industrial zones by the sea and rural towns where rice fields and mountains stretch out. I experienced many things that seemed ordinary and trivial to the locals who lived there, but were so interesting, beautiful, and extraordinary to me. These experiences are probably what piqued my interest in the ‘extraordinary within the ordinary.‘

Anime Corner: You continue to receive praise for your use of perspective, spreads, and stunning artwork generally. How much work goes into one page?

Nonoue: When I draw everything by myself, including the background, a double spread takes me a full day. But thanks to my very skilled assistants, we’re able to get through about 3 pages in one day.

Anime Corner: What do you want to continue to express, and what should fans look forward to?

Nonoue: Hatori and Furuta have grown through their encounters with mysterious places and people and are able to do more. I intend to depict how they fully embrace that change and throw their heart and soul into extraordinary experiences, so I hope you’ll look forward to the adventures that lie ahead for the two of them!

Thank you kindly to Nonoue-sensei for taking the time to answer our questions and the team at Shueisha for coordinating this. Released biweekly, the first and latest six chapters of Hatori and Furuta’s Extraordinarily Ordinary Life are available to read for free in English on MANGA Plus by SHUEISHA. The MANGA Plus by SHUEISHA app lets you read every chapter once for free. Two volumes have been released in Japan as of July 3.

The series has been nominated for the 2026 edition of the Tsugi ni Kuru Manga Taisho (Next Manga Awards). You can vote for it here and keep up with its latest updates, as well as Nonoue’s other works, at @daijiro_nonoue on X (formerly Twitter).

Featured image: HATORI TO FURUTA NO HINICHIJOSAHANJI © 2025 by Daijirou Nonoue/SHUEISHA Inc.