Developing a Diverse Cast in Kia Asamiya’s Silent Möbius

Kia Asamiya has been writing manga for nearly 40 years. His most famous work, Silent Möbius, is an explosive mashup of genres: taking place in a cyberpunk Blade Runner-esque dystopia, it depicts the plight of AMP, an all-woman team of sorcerers, psychics, and even cyborgs to fight the Lucifer Hawks, a mysterious force from beyond this dimension. Having created two spinoff manga based on this universe, Silent Möbius Tales and Silent Möbius QD, Asamiya has also worked in many other genres, even doing design work for Western comic books and a manga about cars and car culture, My Favorite Carrera. His most recent work, That’s My Space Opera! (or SPEOP!/Space Opera for short), is currently being adapted into an audio drama starring Runa Katagiri, who plays the protagonist Opera Cat. ANN got the chance to speak with Asamiya and Katagiri at Otakon in Washington, DC. The guests talked about the inspiration for the team behind Silent Möbius and the importance of giving diverse characters a voice and amplifying that voice.

One of the first things I noticed when reading Silent Möbius is the blending of different genres and cultures: the supernatural and the fantastical with science fiction dystopia. I was wondering how you approach bringing different kinds of genres and cultures together in your work?

Kia Asamiya: At the base of it is definitely cyberpunk. And, like Silent Möbius, many things in the late 80s were heavily inspired by cyberpunk properties such as Blade Runner. However, if you go with the same premise as Blade Runner, you’re gonna crash and burn. So cyberpunk is one of the elements, but another element of it is things like the spiritual part, the Lucifer Hawk part, and then putting that together with a multinational women-only group. That’s basically where Silent Möbius is coming from.

Was there a particular reason you chose to focus specifically on women in an ensemble cast?

ASAMIYA: I would say that what you mentioned with regard to “ensemble” is actually really interesting because I feel that “ensemble” is an excellent way to say it. There is actually a musical element to it, as the organization is named AMP. It comes from the musical audio amp, as in an amplifier. So, I believe the amp is just as important as the speaker to get the message across in this world. That is also seen from the diversity—having everyone in the cast excel at their own specialties, with their own background. For example, they’re all female, but everyone is different because you have a mage, a spiritualist, an onmyōdō specialist, a cyborg, an ESPer, and a cyber information specialist. They all have different things that they’re good at. Then the AMP is there to amplify “the sound” worldwide.

Related to the idea of AMP: I noticed when reading Silent Möbius is a lot going on but in a very good way. It’s like this burst of energy and ideas flowing out of the page, and reading in that way is very exciting.

ASAMIYA:I believe that’s also an interesting point because the amp analogy in Silent Möbius QD goes a bit further. As the number of the AMP members increased, I split it into three teams and gave each team a name associated with an audio amplifier, such as the Woofer, the Squawker, and the Tweeter. The teams’ names are meaningful for me in the setting, as to what roles the speakers take on as opposed to what roles I put into them as part of the setting.

To shift the conversation a bit, you’re publishing a relatively new work, Space Opera. What has been the process of adapting Space Opera into an audio medium without visuals?

ASAMIYA: Regarding those types of media formats, Silent Möbius was also an audio drama. And it’s essential to give characters a voice; giving them that voice helps you understand the world and the characters a lot better. And giving the character’s voice, giving the world background music, or a soundtrack is really important to get the feel of the manga because manga is a visual medium. I believe that getting that voice adds an additional layer. That’s the reason why I gave Space Opera an audio/radio drama.

Runa KATAGIRI: So I can’t speak too much about the process, but doing the voice of Opera Cat has been fun. It’s been a full five years that I’ve been able to do the role, and five years ago, when everything started, I was still a new voice actor. However, even when I had just gotten to know Asamiya-sensei, he immediately said, “Do you want to do the voice?” And that’s when I was really surprised. This gave me a chance to voice something when I was still new, even allowing me to come here to Otakon like this. So it’s all thanks to Asamiya-sensei.