Koji Oishi shows on TV the 'Jump wedding' gifted by fellow mangaka

Mangaka Koji Oishi and his wife, talent Meron Yamaguchi, appear on the 18th on ABC TV and TV Asahi's Shinkon-san Irasshai!. During the broadcast, the kekkon Jump will be shown on television for the first time: the one-of-a-kind issue that colleagues at the magazine give to an author when he gets married, with illustrations and manga drawn for the occasion.

Oishi is known for having serialized Inumarudashi in Weekly Shonen Jump. He currently publishes Reiwa no Omocha Upin on the Manga SPA! site. His wife, Meron Yamaguchi, works as a talent and comes from the College of Art at Nihon University, where she studied music: she won a piano competition with a gold medal.

The couple's story begins in autumn 2017. Yamaguchi walked into a konbini and picked up a magazine with a character she didn't recognize at all. It was Weekly Shonen Jump, and inside was Tomatoipu no Lycopene, the series Oishi was publishing at the time. "I hadn't bought Jump in about fifteen years. I read it and thought the sense of humor was great and the art was adorable," she says. From that day on, she bought the magazine every week.

Around the same time, Oishi saw Yamaguchi on television and fell in love instantly. "I thought: she's gorgeous, and she also looks a lot like the heroine of my manga," he recalls. They followed each other on social media and he started liking all of her posts. Merchandise and illustrations drawn by Oishi arrived at Yamaguchi's agency. They went on like that for five years, each a fan of the other, without making a move.

"I thought: she's gorgeous, and she also looks a lot like the heroine of my manga"

In December 2023, it was Yamaguchi who made the first move. Oishi gathered the courage to invite her to an aquarium, but didn't dare confess. He did it on the next date, in Odaiba, with the last train already approaching and while walking: "Sorry, um... I like you." A confession just under the wire that finally got them dating.

A character-shaped bread and a first kiss at the ceremony

Shortly after they started dating, Yamaguchi made him a homemade bento. When he opened it, Oishi found a bread shaped like a manga character and burst into tears. "No one had ever made me a bento," he explains. At that moment he decided he didn't want anyone else to take her away and that he was going to marry her.

The couple's first kiss wasn't in a park or on a trip: it was the vow kiss, at the ceremony itself. Oishi confesses he didn't dare go for it, afraid she wouldn't like it. Even at the altar he didn't decide quickly, and the guests responded with laughter and a few shouts from their seats.

The kekkon Jump will be shown for the first time on set: the volume that Jump authors receive when they get married. In it, other mangaka from the magazine leave illustrations and short congratulatory manga. Oishi's gathers works by creators representative of Japanese manga.