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In their first-ever interview for an American comics magazine, Koike and Kojima discuss Lone Wolf and Cub's staggering sales in Japan (roughly 252 million copies over the original serialization run), the role of their generation in elevating manga to mainstream cultural status, and their views on censorship, color, and comics education. Koike holds a 4th-degree Kendo rank and draws on Bushido tradition in his writing; Kojima describes his cinematic influences, his pre-manga career as a kami-shibai street performer, and his belief that art cannot truly be taught. The two candidly reveal that Kojima initially hated Koike's wordy scripts and began inserting comic relief involving the child Daigoro to release narrative tension.