YUPI-LOCKS!

4koma manga created by Kikino in 2009. It tells the story of YUPI, a japanese singer-songwriter exploited by her boss, MrSorny, and her best friend, Shige-chan.

Characters

Main characters

YUPI: Main character.
Shige-chan: YUPI's music producer. He never shows his face on public.

Secondary characters

MrSorny:: YUPI's boss. He is all about money.
YUI: The real one.
Part time guy: Some say he finds partime jobs to be around YUPI and stalk her. Not confirmed by the author.
Toshiko: YUPI's cat. Dangerous member of a yakuza clan.
Kikino!: The egocentric author.
Random french guy: He is french.

Special Guests

Icchi: Something I dont remember xD
Teo: Former YUI encyclopedia.
Ed and Al: Fullmetal Alchemist characters.
Lou: YUPI's favourite comedian.

Translators

• nowayyui and k.s. Team Ψ
• depyon

Sponsor

MrSean

History

YUI and YUPI‎

October 2008. YUI went to New York on vacations, so they posted a couple of entries about it in STAFF DIARY and talked about it in YUI RADIO. A couple of weeks later, Kikino thought it would be funny to make a little story about it.
He based his character on YUI's original creation, ゆっぴー(Yuppii), a high pitched voice character that appears from time to time in YUI RADIO. It was first posted in YUI-Lover forums and had a very well reception by users, so it became a regular comic, released almost every week for more than a year. Months later it would move into a website of its own.

The Project

After a couple of months, Kikino came up with the idea of turning this into a big project. with the final goal of sending a full edited copy to YUI herself, in sign of appreciation. Two copies of the manga were send on March 12, 2010 to Hisashi Kondo, asking him to give one copy to YUI for her 23rd birthday and keep one for himself.

Problems!

• Later, on April 4th, Hisashi said he hasn't seen the package yet. Perhaps, the side effects of the eartquake in Chile on February delayed the delivery process? (It normally takes up to two weeks only).
  
• Wrong! the package arrived safely on time, but according to the tracking code service, the office was closed and it was reteined on Postal Office at hokkaido. Kikino only knew about this on April 12nd. the package was reteined 2 weeks already...maybe its too late to do something?
• The only thing left to do was to email Hisashi and ask him to go to the postal office personally to pick YUPI up. That's so not going to happen!
• But first he had to find someone to translate an email for him. And all his japanese translators vanished.
• On April 16, Kikino emailed nowayyui (the first YUPI-locks translator) in english, as a last resource to get things done.

Finally

One day later, Hisashi Kondo replied in his ameba group:

返事遅くなってゴメンよ！！

CDサイズのコミック ！？届いていました。

いろんな国での写真も入っていて

びっくりしました。

あれはオリジナルブック？だよね。

作ったのかい？

みなさんにもよろしくお伝えくださいな。

ありがとう。でわ

April 18th. Kikino replied Hisashi's message asking once again, to give one copy to YUI.
He replied the same day:

ありがとう！！

わかったよ！！

No further replies were made by hisashi. We never got the confirmation that YUI saw the book or not.

YUPI Travels project

Later on January 2010 Kikino started an activity to involve readers around the globe.
He asked people to take YUPI out for a travel and take pictures of YUPI in different places. At the end, YUPI was able to travel to more than 20 countries. The project is still ongoing.

External Links

YUPI-Locks! website http://www.yupi-locks.com
YUPI-Locks! Twitter http://www.twitter.com/yupilocks
YUPI-Locks! Facebook fan page http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/#!/pages/YUPI/69007172411