Shyness has never been an obstacle for Ana C. Sánchez (Múrcia, 1990) to become one of the most recognized Spanish mangakas on a European scale. She has been drawing since she was little, but the growth she has made in the last five years is to be framed. Some of his books can be read in France, Italy, the United States and even Brazil. “I am the first to be surprised that my vignettes have reached there”, he reveals smilingly to La Vanguardia. The icing on the cake came on Thursday, when the Manga Barcelona fair, which closed its doors yesterday with a new record of 165,000 attendees, recognized his latest work, Limbo), as the best Spanish-authored manga that has been published this year year. An award that is decided by the public and which is another example of how loyal readers are to their stories.
The protagonist of this last story is Aurora Edelweiss, a young woman who can see the spirits of dead people and can interact with them. A gift he used to earn money until he was entrusted to collect the essences of the soul. A complicated mission, given that he does not know where he can find them or if they really exist.
“I’ve had a plot like this in my head for a long time, because it gives a lot of play to implement in the real world, but I didn’t feel ready to develop it, at least as I had it in my head. It was easier to start with short, romantic, one-volume stories. In the end, however, I found myself able to add more action and start a longer project”, he reveals.
In February, the second volume of a series expected to have at least five books will be published. “Really, I don’t have an exact figure. I could have many more. It will depend on the public’s interest. When they decide that I have to stop, I will stop, but in the meantime, I push forward”, he admits.
Continue with great excitement. He would never have thought that he could make his dream come true. “It was enough to be able to draw for myself, show my cartoons on the internet and sell some of my works in salons and fairs”. He still remembers when, aged 20, he came to the Manga Barcelona salon for the first time, since “it was quite clear to me that it was a place where everyone who likes manga and this world should go”.
She joined a group of friends who, like her, were immersed in the otaku world, and they set up a stall where they sold bags, key rings and also zines that she drew herself. The experience was so “spectacular” that in the following years he repeated it and became a regular at this festival and other manga and anime festivals. He understood that he would have to spend hours on the train up and down with his creations. “I used to print about fifty fanzines and take them with me. It was very loaded, so it was better to sell all or most of them so as not to have to bring them back.”
Knowing that an event of this kind was near was a motivation to come up with new comics, which I first published on the internet, “because it’s a good laboratory to get to know your audience better”, and then printed and sold them.
In 2018, in a fit of confidence, thanks to the good comments received on the networks of the chapters of the new story, which he titled Alter ego , he printed a hundred issues and, to his surprise, sold them all. This caught the attention of the Planeta Manga team, who told him that they were about to launch a magazine and that they were looking for new talent. “The salon is a good place to meet cartoonists. What I couldn’t believe was that it was me they were calling. I admit that I am a bit of a negative person. They asked me if I would like to continue making chapters for their publication and of course I agreed. I had to undo some pre-sales I had done at the salon. And then people started asking what was going on, until we finally made it public.”
Here began her professional adventure, which did not take long to take off, despite the fact that there was a pandemic in the middle that, far from setting her back, helped her to inspire the “distorted world” of Limbo, “which was not far so much of the real thing, because it seemed like we had all gone crazy.”
About her position as a civil servant she had until then, she says: “I had to leave it. I know it was a stable thing, but it didn’t fill me up. I was always looking for a job that would allow me to continue drawing. That was my only and main goal. And I made it come true. Who knows if I’ll have to go back. I hope to always be able to live off my drawings, but, as I said before, the readers rule”, he concludes.
