he maintains close relations with renowned personalities of those circles. As he states in his website, he likes to drink with friends and to practice photography while jogging. Among his works that have been cancelled due to failing to attract fans: Otoko Zaka, Silent Knight Shō and Aoi Tori no Shinwa. His works that suffered popularity decrease: B't X (which he successfully concluded without facing cancellation), and Saint Seiya. In Saint Seiyas case, Kurumada was forced by Shueisha, his publisher, to finish the manga after the Hades Arc, in 1991. He put his manga in hiatus after he finished the mentioned arc, and resumed it in 2006 with Saint Seiya Next Dimension. The anime adaptation of Saint Seiya experienced a popularity decrease during the anime-only Asgard arc, while the popularity of the original manga was still strong; the anime back in 1989, was in pre-production of the episodes that would adapt the Hades arc of the manga. Because of low popularity of the anime adaptation, the project was suspended and remained so until 2003, when it was resumed and the Hades arc of the manga finally was adapted to animation. The episodes that adapted the two final volumes of the manga were aired in between May and August 2008, finally leaving Kurumada's manga completely adapted to anime. In 2004, Kurumada celebrated 30 years as a professional manga artist, and that same year two of his older and best known works experienced a resurfacing. The original Ring ni Kakero was adapted to anime, 27 years after its manga debut, and as mentioned before, the Saint Seiya anime adaptation was resumed in 2003 and an attempt to start the Zeus Chapter was made with the release of the Saint Seiya Tenkai-Hen Josō ~Overture~ movie in 2004, which was planned to continue the story with the subsequent release of OVAs, but due to discrepancies between Kurumada and Toei Animation, the project failed and was abandoned. Kurumada still plans to publish the "Zeus Chapter", written and drawn by him, in manga form in the near future, by 2012, a considerable amount of elements from it have already been revealed by Kurumada in Saint Seiya Next Dimension and he is set to continue doing so in the next instalments of that work in the japanese summer in 2013. Kurumada's works have had influence on manga authors and related media. Worthy of mention is Yudetamago's Kinnikuman,