The Ronin Yoshino project began in 2002. It started out as extensive research on ancient Japanese culture. I wanted to learn how to draw manga
style art. It took me about 2 years to learn to do this. When I felt confident enough to draw manga style, I started the manga pilot chapter,
“Youkai” in Nov.2005. Back then, Ronin Yoshino was first called Shichimeitozoku.
After I received a lot of feedback, I knew what needed more work and what didn’t. As I was unsure of my writing skills, I put the manga on hiatus for
a year while I studied how to write novels and create character development. I received writing inspiration from watching anime, old samurai films
and the 1960’s TV show, “Star Trek”. I decided to focus on writing the manga like an old samurai film but loaded with mythology.
I thought that it would be easier to base characters off of real people rather than trying to make them up. All the characters are based on
someone from history, folklore or someone I already knew but I altered their profile to fit the storyline. Some of the events in the manga actually
happened in history while others are based on mythology.
Once I knew the style I wanted the manga to be in, I changed the title of the manga to “Ronin Yoshino”, got a website for it and re-did chapter one.
The manga officially started it’s run in Dec.2006. In 2007 it won 3rd place in an ADV Films manga contest. In 2009, at the Sakura Matsuri on Long
Island I had a table to display my manga and illustrations for the first time.
About the name of this site:
Translation: shichi (seven) meito (famed sword) zoku (group)
Pronunciation: she-chi-may-ee-toe-zo-ku
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