With a background as a manga artist and SOME-influencer in China, Wang Daa started again in Norway. Now he is working on a manga about a Chinese adventure hero in Bergen 

I first met Wang Daa (first name Daa) at Oslo Comics Expo in early June, but soon decided that I needed to talk to to him some more. We met again at his rented office at VIS at Nygårdsparken, Bergen. From here he manages his small media empire with three million followers in China – Something above average, even for Chinese-level influencers. He posts his videos on Tiktok and Bilibili (the equivalent of YouTube in China). Here he makes vlogs, e.g. about his own life, and about experiences from Norway. Recently he interviewed Maria Arredondo. A sponsorship agreement with Møllers, which sells a lot of cod liver oil and omega-3 capsules in China, ensures the profitability of the SOME activity. Daa is self-employed, with a lot of freedom in his daily schedule. -Sometimes I work on my manga, sometimes I’m developing a game, and sometimes I do videos and live streaming, he begins.

Daa’s background story is typical of the modern Chinese: Grew up as an only child, raised by parents who worked long hours. On lonely days, he found solace and joy in Dragon Ball, which inspired him to become a manga artist.  Son-Goku was nice and tough, I wanted to be like him, Daa remembers.

If we fast-forward, Daa has settled in Norway, he has married the Norwegian student he met in Beijing and spent some time getting his residence permit in order. In 2024, his wife, who has a cousin who works at the Oslo Comics Expo, pressured him into completing a test print of «Spirit Gaze» for this year’s festival. They even booked a table without telling him first. -Okay, I can finish it by Christmas, I said. No, it’s in June, they told me. But that’s okay, I needed that push.

«Spirit Gaze» is a manga (or manhua in Chinese), an adventure series set in Bergen, with the Chinese immigrant Xingyu in the lead role. Xingyu has inherited the role of a guide for the souls of the dead but is caught in the crossfire between between Norse and Chinese gods. As a result, the Norse goddess Hel takes his grandmother to hell, and he must enlist the help of the Chinese deities Hei Wuchang and Bai Wuchang to become a soul guide. And maybe save his grandmother. Bai Wuchang has time to compliment the fish at a Bryggen restaurant («Are you here on vacation?», Hei Wuchang asks snarkily) before the two deities hurries to help Xingyu defeat his first demons.

This is how the first 80 pages of the test print «Spirit Gaze» go. The print has so far only been for sale at OCX 2024. It was the first draft, Daa emphasizes. He has already made some changes. Several characters will get new looks, among other things Hel will get a design that is more in line with the mythology. He envisions «Spirt Gaze» as an epic.

-But it is more difficult here, since nobody has heard of me in Norway, Everyone loves manga and cartoons in China, Daa says, while he describes Norway as a «blue market» with more limited mainstream appeal. He also doesn’t have a strong social media presence in Norway.

Few have heard of «Spirit Gaze» either, of course. – I focus on the story, on quality, Daa says. The quality of manga in general is getting worse, that’s my experience. So I’m chilling and taking my time to make this manga as good as possible.

And with his social media income, he can afford to take his time. It wasn’t always like this. Daa has drawn manga for nine years and published seven different titles in China. For magazines at first, then webtoons. Two of them were romances, but he didn’t think he wasn’t very good at those. He prefers to make series in the fantasy/adventure genre, of which Spirit Gaze is also an example.

The first, finished volume of «Spirt Gaze» will be 250 pages in color, and he already found a Chinese publisher who will print the manga, in 10,000 copies. There are plans for editions in Chinese, English and Norwegian (the wife translated the test print from Chinese to English). In any case, the plot will still be set in Bergen, and Daa envisions potentially 20-30 books, with the first volume out in 2025.