The year 2001 was a pivotal year for Shogakukan’s Weekly Big Comic Spirits (週刊ビッグコミックスピリッツ) magazine. For the magazine that started in 1980, it was celebrating its 15th year anniversary from it’s change to a weekly release starting in 1986. The cover designs would change over to almost exclusively gravure photos, rather than a focus on the manga titles and the fruit/vegetable mascots which was the standard for the years past. Additionally, the year 2001 would include a changing of the Editor-in-Chief. To catalog these changes on a more issue-to-issue basis, we are starting a new article series looking back at each issue of Weekly Big Comic Spirits via the author comments found on the table of contents. A new article will be released each week, on the same release date as it was exactly 25 years ago. Please enjoy this journey on exploring another manga magazine for the entirety of 2026. You can find all of our articles related to Weekly Big Comic Spirits on this page.
The cover date on the issues are not the actual release dates for the magazine. As such, we will be posting the articles based on the calendar date when the magazine was actually available for readers to pick up in Japan. In the year 2001, this would typically be published on every Monday.
Every issue, the editorial staff would ask a single question to all of the published authors. While the magazine was released weekly, not every series in the magazine was published in each issue. Below is the listing of the manga series as they appear in the issue along with a rough English translation for the question and each response.
Issue Info
Release Date: 1/15/2001
Cover Date: 1/29/2001
Cover Design: Anne Suzuki
- Thirty Girls starts serialization
- Saikano had the opening color pages
Question
If you could read the biography of any person, who would that be?
この人の伝記があれば、読んでみたいという人は?
| Series | Author | Comment (English) | Comment (Japanese) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Saikano 最終兵器彼女 | Shin Takahashi 高橋しん | My wife. | うちのヨメさん。 |
| Fighting Sun Legend Gutch!! 格闘太陽伝 GUTCH!! | Hiromi Aoyama Supervision: Lou Thesz 青山広美 監修・ルー・テーズ | The professional billiards player, Mieko Harada (Aoyama) | ビリヤードプロの原田美恵子 (青山) |
| Subaru 昴スバル | Masahito Soda 曽田正人 | Sylvie Guillem (Ballerina) | シルヴィ・ギエム(バレリーナ)。 |
| 20th Century Boys 20世紀少年 | Naoki Urasawa 浦沢直樹 | Editor-in-Chief Takashi Nagasaki. | 長崎尚志編集長。 |
| The 3 Young Men THE3名様 | Makochin Ishihara 石原まこちん | Mukku (But I don’t want to read about Gachapin) | ムック(ガチャピンはなんとなく読みたくない) |
| Millennium Stock Exchange Legend: Monkey Money ミレニアム相場師伝説 猿MONEY | Seiki Kimura & Kōshi Kabuto 木村清輝+兜公司 | Yūji Oda (Kimura) | 織田裕二。(木村) |
| Gekka no Kishi 月下の棋士 | Junichi Noujou 能條純一 | Howard Hughes. | ハワード・ヒューズ。 |
| Otana-Bukuro 大人袋 | Isami Nakagawa 中川いさみ | Gin Maeda. | 前田吟。 |
| A Capricious Concept 気まぐれコンセプト | Hoichoi Productions ホイチョイ・プロ | Zhang Zhongjing (Author of Shanghan Zabing Lun, the bible for traditional Chinese medicine) | 張仲景(漢方医療のバイブル、傷寒雜病論の著者)。 |
| Heaven? ~Gokuraku Restaurant~ Heaven? ~ご苦楽レストラン~ | Noriko Sasaki 佐々木倫子 | A biography that reminds me that the light bulbs in my house burn out too quickly now. | 伝記で思い出したのですが、このごろ家の電球がよくきれます。 |
| Yoiko よいこ | Yugo Ishikawa 石川優吾 | The First Pucchimo. | 初代プッチモ。 |
| 8 8エイト | Atsushi Kamijo 上條淳士 | Jiro Shirasu’s biography would be interesting. | 白洲次郎の伝記は面白いよ。 |
| Senkousekka 電光石火 | Kenji Morita 盛田賢司 | Cro-Magnon. | クロマニョン人。 |
| Thirty Girls サーティーガールズ | Miya Kitazawa & Takeshi Wakasa 北沢未也+若狭たけし | It’s been a while. How are you? (Wakasa) | お久しぶりです。お元気ですか。 (若狭) |
| Kaijuu Jinsei 怪獣人生 | Nobuyuki Hori ほりのぶゆき | I often see a man in my neighborhood riding a bike and probably shouting out complaints. | 近所でよく会う、大声で不満らしきことを叫びながら自転車を乗りまわす男。 |
| Jimihen じみへん | Tatsuya Nakazaki 中崎タツヤ | Queen, Himiko. | 女王、ヒミコ。 |
| Boku 僕 BOKU | Yasuhito Yamamoto 山本康人 | This is unrelated, but I find the term “personal history” quite funny. | 関係ないけど、「自分史」とかってなんか笑っちゃうぜ。 |
| Naoko 奈緒子 | Story: Nobuhiro Sakata Art: Yuu Nakahara 坂田信弘+中原裕 | Ken jī. (Nakahara) | 権じい。(中原) |
| Animal Mania アニマルマニア | Kiriko Kubo 玖保キリコ | Hm. Hm. Hm. Do you mean someone who doesn’t has a biography yet?? Bus 1. | うーん。うーん。うーん。伝記がまだない人のってことですか?? バス1。 |
