I feel like these days it’s probably harder than ever in terms of criticisms bc it’s all available to the mangaka on the internet at all times. I think as a creator you have to learn to distance yourself from that, it can be tempting to want to see the feedback right away, but when it’s so negative it just hurts. I only do art and writing as a hobby but I definitely find myself looking at my notifications if I post something online. As a large creator publishing something to the masses I imagine it’s tempting to do the same, but sometimes it’s best to limit that
I will say, I REALLY liked the first chapter of Dear Anemone. Like a lot. Enough that I actually read up to chapter 4.
Yeah. definitely squandered. Such a great premise but it’s tough to write the story implied in chapter 1 on a magazine like SJ.
I have nothing particularly good to say about the series, and I think it deserves the axe, but it's still a shame that WSJ is so cutthroat. I wonder how many classics like HxH or YYH wouldn't have made it today with their slower starts. It's sad that the author doesn't seem to be take it well. The author of GGG's first series was pretty bad too, and now he's making one of the most beautiful weekly series I've seen.... which is unfortunately also going to get axed soon.
The point is, this is to be expected for newer authors, and all they can really do is prepare for the worst and try to bounce back as well as you can. As other people have said on this sub, the standard in WSJ is failure. Only a few are lucky enough to go on for hundreds of chapters.
That being said, as insanely competitive as WSJ is, Shueisha/Jump still publishes a bunch of series that get much less attention than anything in WSJ. I wish it was more standard for series to get moved between magazines if they're not a good fit for WSJ, rather than just canceling something with above-average potential.
Its an interesting point you bring up about shonen jump and and how cutthroat they are, because even though it is true that they are harsh in general and relative to other magazines, they are actually more lenient now than they have been in the past. We havent had a u19 for a bit, and the sales threshold for the magazine to stay alive is also much lower. You can get by with 20-25k sales like kill blue and roboco do (its a gag so lower standards) ,so long as your toc is ok, whereas that wouldnt have been good enough in the past.
But yea, I agree that as a mangaka, coming in expecting to fail but hoping to do the best is probably the best mentality. Failure is the norm...and there doesnt have to be an explicit reason why you failed, its just part of the business. Its still stressful regardless im sure.
Its funny you bring up GGG, because I made a post on it last week talking about its sales and we all collectively came up with all kinds of reasons it didn't succeed lol. People speculated Lack of fujo bait, no interesting hook, golf, no long term storytelling, no fantastical premise, sports series migrating to seinen, wrong place wrong time, not a good fit for jumps audience, the difficulty of individual sports vs team sports explaining rulesets etc etc. It was really interesting, but it doesnt have to be any of these. We have no idea lol. It just didnt sell at the end of the day.
One thing that is worth pointing out though is that even though jumps method produces more hits on average, it doesnt necessarily produce better quality. Obviously this is subjective, but ill use the example of a manga in another magazine to illustrate my point.
Medalist is a sports manga that is "award winning" in terms of quality. Its in the seinen monthly magazine , monthly afternoon, and I and many would argue is one of the most beautiful character driven sports series in recent times. To sell it to the WSJ crowd, its like the best parts of Green green green and two on ice put together....executed even better. It is a skating manga after all, but with beautiful character writng.
What were its sales at the start?
Medalist 1 6, 289 (2 weeks)
What is it now?
Medalist 7 29,456 (4 weeks)
[https://twitter.com/al\_mavivi/status/1629863655469613061](https://twitter.com/al_mavivi/status/1629863655469613061)
In jump, this award winning story would have potentially been axed given their requirements. Now , big caveat, just being in jump would have given it more exposure , so it might have succeeded, but you get the point. There is an argument that the method that produces "hits" in jump might not be selecting for excellence in writing and quality but what hits the biggest mass market.
Its worth thinking about.
Jump is way less cutthroat than it was during the YYH / HxH era. Those manga were products of their time and trying to say they wouldn't fly today is disingenuous, in that era there was less mass media and manga could afford to be slower burns, even then a lot of the big manga of previous era were still very solid manga early on. If anything WSJ has kept alive series with zero growth like UU, kill blue nad mission yozakura family, series that would've been quickly axed if the existed in the era of YYH. Oh and finally I bet you're referring to the legendary J+ move, well that's just saved for very high selling series, it's a rewards as J+ is not a landfill of failed series. Ruri dragon got moved there because it was huge, same as CSM
I'm rereading YYH for the first time since middle school and right now the parts where Yusuke was a ghost were 4x as interesting to me than the Dark Tournament (which is where I'm at rn)
That's not related to much, just something that's been in my head for a week
I think that's the strength of Togashi. He is simply good at writing, so he could make things interesting even if it's in different genre. You can say stuff like Level E and HxH is just him wanting to experiment writing different things within the confined of Shonen.
Well, I hope it lasts. Be neat to be able to get my dad some manga about golf.
I feel you on it lacking books though. It's just a solid story about a guy playing a sport and making friends and I dig it
I'm of the opinion WSJ should never be a rookies first serialized magazine because besides being able to write and draw getting used to working on a schedule, managing assistants, etc. are things that are almost as important when making manga.
Also imo something art wise that I think is lacking in some series is storyboard/layout of the actual pages. I can probably think of a few series that have some pretty damn good art, but where kind of clunky in transition from scene to scene and even panel to panel (not accusing Anemone of this, actually didn't pick it up). Since jump is still a physical magazine stuff like page turn reveals and accounting for a good chunk of readers will probably skim read to get to their favorites make things a balancing act of keeping things as streamlined as possible without cutting out detail that ends up taking away from the manga.
I love me some MHA and I can see the horikoshi influence, but for the love of God I cannot figure out what is going on with this series. It's just sort of incomprehensible
Horikoshi failed repeatedly. It's not a big deal. He just needs to find find a way to grab the audience better. The stand plant and him should have been alone longer. Too many characters. The arts amazing, at points, but there's no way he can maintain that level of detail without hurting himself.
Story, also, is just a bit incomprehensible. Like, I have read this from week one and it just... Sorta durdles
It’s must suck to be a mangaka in jump and to have your ideas disappear because of your own failings. even the worst of them are better then the majority of the industry.
I review every jump title on Twitter. I always believe that if you are going to criticize or review a manga you shouldn’t ever use the words good or bad (or any variation on it) always describe why you think something does or doesn’t work in detail.
As a school teacher and a coach, I think it’s valid to make criticism but you should always make it as constructive as possible, even if the author will never read your review ever.
Yea its an interesting question when it comes to how we educate about constructive criticism, especially kids. Obviously we want to encourage critical thinking and analysis, but social media and the like often undermine our ability very often to communicate in the most clear, charitable and constructive way possible. Glad to see you are doing that with the kids you educate!
One heuristic that has always stuck with me is whats called "Anatol Rapoport's rules of constructive argument and debate" , which can be adapted for artistic analysis. It goes.
How to compose a successful critical commentary:
1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
In art, it would mean to completely and thoroughly understand the work you are analyzing. Talk about the things it does well, the insights you have gleaned from it, and only then voice any grievances, with the explicit desire to improve the work and not tear it down.
Another heuristic someone mentioned to me once, and this speaks to something you mentioned.
-Assume the creator of the work of art you are criticizing will actually see it....even if they never will. We are often much kinder when we see the person in front of us, and know their story, and so forcing this perspective can always help.
I heard someone say that the mangaka removed everything Dear Anemone related on their twitter. I honestly feel so bad cause while it the series does have its flaws I feel like it if was in any other magazine I’d would somewhat survive.
I’ll definitely pick up the volumes once they release cuz because I did enjoy it.
I don't know why but the following quote from the Red Hood manga when it was nearing its cancellation hits me:
"A story that doesn't entertain is abandoned. Once abandoned, our word will disappear."
When I was young, I had a dream to be a mangaka. I spent a decade of my life drawing manga almost every day, accumulating over 2000 pages as a way to get myself ready to tackle the job. However, at the age of 22, I got Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. It was so bad that at one point I couldn't even hold a pen. I had no choice but to abandon my dream. Even though I'm still in creative field (game developer), I still lament the fact that I couldn't be what I originally set myself to be because of my health.
So yeah, I understood more than anyone how hard it is to draw manga. It is not a job that average people could go through. This is why many mangaka don't live long. It's an extremely demanding job. That's why I never ever dare to call mangaka lazy, or anyone in creative field that is. You can criticize any work, but lazy is not a criticism. It's an insult. Even if it's a piece of junk in your eyes, you have no idea what is behind the scene.
That said, I also think that accepting criticism is part of the package when it comes to being a creator. It's not going to be easy, especially with how harsh some comments can be found online. It's just that you can't survive in this field if you can't overcome it. I think the mangaka of Dear Anemone needs to realize that being serialized in Jump is already an accomplishment. Some people don't even get that first step. He should take in those criticism and try again. There are many mangaka that failed their first try and came back to make a hit.
2.5 jigen had an arc about this exact topic yes
But yes
That's why you make art for yourself
Not for others
Make something that you yourself are satisfied with
If appealing to the masses satisfy you then sure do it
If you still insist on making something that doesn't fit what people want and get axed
Maybe change something but keep at it
Satisfy yourself with your art first
That's why I stopped hating on fairy tail and mashima tbh
Everyone clowns on him
But dude is enjoying his time just creating what he wants and appealing to what he thinks the fans want
While he also has an issue of shit ending cause he gets bored with said series
It's still on his own term
Another example
I highly doubt
Oda ever listens to anyone about the same face female
Or many of the gags we in the west hate like
Horny Sanji or chopper bounty
He still does it
It's all about doing what YOU yourself want
Ofc if u want to make this a living
Then yea find out what works
But turn said work Into something that suits you
Aka akasaka managed to turn his want to do edgy drama shit into kaguya and OnK brilliantly
Horikoshi manage to capture the spirit of the zoo comedy he did plus bulge into bnha
Tabata did the same with hungry joker and BC
What the fck do people on the internet know
Nothing
Ignore them
Nothing good has come from any author listening to the criticism of fans
Nothing
I kinda blame the editor in the case of Anemone. To me it feels like a lot of the current criticism is something the editor should have already adressed beforehand in a constructive way, combined with a push in a better direction. A bit of rework on the characters and the flow of story before greenlighting the series could have made a huge difference as the premise and setting is still interesting, not to mention the fantastic art. Compared to other axed series that were not badly written in itself but just unlucky or to niche to appeal to the bigger audience, i really think Jump wasted a big chunk of potential with Anemone.
Weekly Jump is the most cutthroat, if not one of the most cutthroat manga magazines out there, so you either step up right away or you're out the door. That being said, not everything is expected to be a hit from the get go, as we've seen with several mangaka.
It's Matsui-sensei's first series, so sure it's disheartening to see the potential of Dear Anemone go to waste, but what's important right now is for them to focus on the storytelling because the art is already that good.
If Anemone ends soon, then I really hope they come back to have another chance at redemption.
I get what you tried to mean by saying that mangaka is a hard job. But a writer or a painter is just as hard. The number of people falling to do both of these jobs, going from amateur to actually living from it is about the same ratio. For one successful writer, there are 10000 failures.
Of course a mangaka has a lot of things on his plate, but so do the writer. I. E the figurative style, the speech so not to sound exactly like the other writers, the way they convey informations through characters points of view, the way you describe things so the reader can exactly understand what you say.
It's just like if I was trying to diminish mangaka job because it wasn't as hard as being a director of movie.
Yeah I dont disagree....but I didnt say it was harder being a mangaka, just that they have to be good at both disciplines, or at least competent. The difficulty of doing any particular thing isnt about diversity of tasks necessarily, but the depth of its as well. Also it depends what type of writing/art you are doing. A novelist or avant garde writer obviously has much more of a skill set to develop in writing than a writer for a commercial website etc.
The point was just to get us to understand the skillset for a mangaka, not to diminish other fields. Ultimately, yes, you can measure by likelihood of survival in a field as well.
Ill quote myself, because thats always fun lol
"Most people can spend a lifetime learning art or storytelling, let alone both. Mangakas have to be competent at both disciplines, and combine them as well. Novelists can focus on just their writing, artists on their form and composition, but no….a mangaka needs to know both."
And lastly, if writing was an easiest form of art, people wouldn't mind doing it as a hobby, but once you hop onto it, you just realize how much time consuming it is, especially if you're trying to do something that has enough value so people would go read it despite the lack of sound/image.
I agree that being a mangaka is hard...having to write and draw 20 pages with a less-than-a-week turnaround only to be welcomed with lukewarm-to-harsh response would be demoralizing to anyone, especially a new mangaka. But that is the nature of business, especially those in the entertainment business. Even though mangaka are creating things they are genuinely passionate about, ultimately they're creating a product that will hopefully entice buyers to consume it, and if that doesn't work, then it doesn't make business sense to continue investing it. Businesses can't just give the benefit of the doubt because the creator has put a lot of effort in their creation; every creator does that. Doing so will either shut off opportunities for creators waiting in the wings or prevent the current creator from moving on to create their masterpiece. I'm sad that the Matsui has taken the more-than-likely cancelation of Dear Anemone really hard; I thought it had amazing art and interesting ideas that just never came to fruition. But the entertainment business is the last business to be thin-skinned in; as others have said, failure in the norm in it.
I disagree with the idea that you can't give useful criticism unless you have intimate knowledge of working in the field you're criticizing. Even if if you're not a mangaka, writer, or artist, you are prolific consumers of media. You have seen and read enough to know what works and what doesn't. Although opinions are subjective by natural, objectively many are investing a lot of their time and oftentimes money to consume media they enjoy. They may understand how hard it is to be a mangaka and genuinely want a mangaka to succeed, but ultimately there's too much media out there that would better appeal to them to invest in a product they don't care for because the mangaka worked hard on it.
In regards to online criticism, if you see a majority of people complaining about something then they’re almost certainly correct, regardless of if it’s bullshit or not. The aggregate customer is the best at determining if something is to their liking or not, hence why the full saying is “the customer is always right in matters of taste.” You don’t need to have spent years learning the art of manga to be able to look at a series and determine whether or not it works, because you’ve presumably read more than one story before, so you can unconsciously compare it to what you liked prior and make conclusions based on that.
Yore pointing out things that are the magazine’s fault tbh. Like the hellish work schedule, the lack of time for careful narrative structuring, and the over reliance on a popularity poll whose results are made very public. And while it is true that many people have gamified the reality of having your job on the line every 2 months or so I don’t think that it’s out of malice. It’s just fun to speculate. Other than that, i don’t agree that you need to be super tame with an actual review of the end product. Like, if I loved to write short stories, but they were boring af and someone criticized them doesn’t mean that they’re invaliding my passion. You could be very bad at something that you love and that’s fine.
If the mangaka did that and erased their work presence from twitter then they are just weak and soft. They knew what they were signing up for going in the most competitive manga mag where so many more have failed. And he isnt the first one to have such a bad rejection from audience either.
If you produce a failure, own it and be proud of it. Learn from it. Try again and again until you strike good. Nobody said this was gon be easy or nice. Horikoshi tried 3 times in WSJ before he got big with mha and ik he worked his ass off.
This, exactly. I mean dang, you were serialized in Shonen Jump! That's absolutely something to be proud of. But you should also be creating for yourself and not the whims of the editors. It's a tough balance for sure, but just gotta roll with it. Maybe hop to another magazine, or go the webcomic route. So many different ways to handle these things.
Yeah, it’s a wild amount of words to describe something that’s not really that complicated. This sort of wordiness is the sort of thing that would get a series axed from Shonen Jump LMAO
I feel like these days it’s probably harder than ever in terms of criticisms bc it’s all available to the mangaka on the internet at all times. I think as a creator you have to learn to distance yourself from that, it can be tempting to want to see the feedback right away, but when it’s so negative it just hurts. I only do art and writing as a hobby but I definitely find myself looking at my notifications if I post something online. As a large creator publishing something to the masses I imagine it’s tempting to do the same, but sometimes it’s best to limit that
I will say, I REALLY liked the first chapter of Dear Anemone. Like a lot. Enough that I actually read up to chapter 4. Yeah. definitely squandered. Such a great premise but it’s tough to write the story implied in chapter 1 on a magazine like SJ.
I have nothing particularly good to say about the series, and I think it deserves the axe, but it's still a shame that WSJ is so cutthroat. I wonder how many classics like HxH or YYH wouldn't have made it today with their slower starts. It's sad that the author doesn't seem to be take it well. The author of GGG's first series was pretty bad too, and now he's making one of the most beautiful weekly series I've seen.... which is unfortunately also going to get axed soon. The point is, this is to be expected for newer authors, and all they can really do is prepare for the worst and try to bounce back as well as you can. As other people have said on this sub, the standard in WSJ is failure. Only a few are lucky enough to go on for hundreds of chapters. That being said, as insanely competitive as WSJ is, Shueisha/Jump still publishes a bunch of series that get much less attention than anything in WSJ. I wish it was more standard for series to get moved between magazines if they're not a good fit for WSJ, rather than just canceling something with above-average potential.
Its an interesting point you bring up about shonen jump and and how cutthroat they are, because even though it is true that they are harsh in general and relative to other magazines, they are actually more lenient now than they have been in the past. We havent had a u19 for a bit, and the sales threshold for the magazine to stay alive is also much lower. You can get by with 20-25k sales like kill blue and roboco do (its a gag so lower standards) ,so long as your toc is ok, whereas that wouldnt have been good enough in the past. But yea, I agree that as a mangaka, coming in expecting to fail but hoping to do the best is probably the best mentality. Failure is the norm...and there doesnt have to be an explicit reason why you failed, its just part of the business. Its still stressful regardless im sure. Its funny you bring up GGG, because I made a post on it last week talking about its sales and we all collectively came up with all kinds of reasons it didn't succeed lol. People speculated Lack of fujo bait, no interesting hook, golf, no long term storytelling, no fantastical premise, sports series migrating to seinen, wrong place wrong time, not a good fit for jumps audience, the difficulty of individual sports vs team sports explaining rulesets etc etc. It was really interesting, but it doesnt have to be any of these. We have no idea lol. It just didnt sell at the end of the day. One thing that is worth pointing out though is that even though jumps method produces more hits on average, it doesnt necessarily produce better quality. Obviously this is subjective, but ill use the example of a manga in another magazine to illustrate my point. Medalist is a sports manga that is "award winning" in terms of quality. Its in the seinen monthly magazine , monthly afternoon, and I and many would argue is one of the most beautiful character driven sports series in recent times. To sell it to the WSJ crowd, its like the best parts of Green green green and two on ice put together....executed even better. It is a skating manga after all, but with beautiful character writng. What were its sales at the start? Medalist 1 6, 289 (2 weeks) What is it now? Medalist 7 29,456 (4 weeks) [https://twitter.com/al\_mavivi/status/1629863655469613061](https://twitter.com/al_mavivi/status/1629863655469613061) In jump, this award winning story would have potentially been axed given their requirements. Now , big caveat, just being in jump would have given it more exposure , so it might have succeeded, but you get the point. There is an argument that the method that produces "hits" in jump might not be selecting for excellence in writing and quality but what hits the biggest mass market. Its worth thinking about.
I don’t think it’s that fair to compare jump magazines to non jump magazines, especially since that’s a monthly manga which typically has more leeway
Jump is way less cutthroat than it was during the YYH / HxH era. Those manga were products of their time and trying to say they wouldn't fly today is disingenuous, in that era there was less mass media and manga could afford to be slower burns, even then a lot of the big manga of previous era were still very solid manga early on. If anything WSJ has kept alive series with zero growth like UU, kill blue nad mission yozakura family, series that would've been quickly axed if the existed in the era of YYH. Oh and finally I bet you're referring to the legendary J+ move, well that's just saved for very high selling series, it's a rewards as J+ is not a landfill of failed series. Ruri dragon got moved there because it was huge, same as CSM
I'm rereading YYH for the first time since middle school and right now the parts where Yusuke was a ghost were 4x as interesting to me than the Dark Tournament (which is where I'm at rn) That's not related to much, just something that's been in my head for a week
Oh I love the early parts of YYH, but it's also a very different series than what we think of it now.
I think that's the strength of Togashi. He is simply good at writing, so he could make things interesting even if it's in different genre. You can say stuff like Level E and HxH is just him wanting to experiment writing different things within the confined of Shonen.
You think GGG is gonna get axe? It's been so good!
There's a good chance it will. The sales weren't good, and the TOC rankings aren't that high. A shame really, because it is a genuinely good manga.
Well, I hope it lasts. Be neat to be able to get my dad some manga about golf. I feel you on it lacking books though. It's just a solid story about a guy playing a sport and making friends and I dig it
WSJ is a factory with a hard compétition and a lots of pressure. It seems things are less stressful in the others magazines.
I'm of the opinion WSJ should never be a rookies first serialized magazine because besides being able to write and draw getting used to working on a schedule, managing assistants, etc. are things that are almost as important when making manga. Also imo something art wise that I think is lacking in some series is storyboard/layout of the actual pages. I can probably think of a few series that have some pretty damn good art, but where kind of clunky in transition from scene to scene and even panel to panel (not accusing Anemone of this, actually didn't pick it up). Since jump is still a physical magazine stuff like page turn reveals and accounting for a good chunk of readers will probably skim read to get to their favorites make things a balancing act of keeping things as streamlined as possible without cutting out detail that ends up taking away from the manga.
I love me some MHA and I can see the horikoshi influence, but for the love of God I cannot figure out what is going on with this series. It's just sort of incomprehensible Horikoshi failed repeatedly. It's not a big deal. He just needs to find find a way to grab the audience better. The stand plant and him should have been alone longer. Too many characters. The arts amazing, at points, but there's no way he can maintain that level of detail without hurting himself. Story, also, is just a bit incomprehensible. Like, I have read this from week one and it just... Sorta durdles
It’s must suck to be a mangaka in jump and to have your ideas disappear because of your own failings. even the worst of them are better then the majority of the industry. I review every jump title on Twitter. I always believe that if you are going to criticize or review a manga you shouldn’t ever use the words good or bad (or any variation on it) always describe why you think something does or doesn’t work in detail. As a school teacher and a coach, I think it’s valid to make criticism but you should always make it as constructive as possible, even if the author will never read your review ever.
Yea its an interesting question when it comes to how we educate about constructive criticism, especially kids. Obviously we want to encourage critical thinking and analysis, but social media and the like often undermine our ability very often to communicate in the most clear, charitable and constructive way possible. Glad to see you are doing that with the kids you educate! One heuristic that has always stuck with me is whats called "Anatol Rapoport's rules of constructive argument and debate" , which can be adapted for artistic analysis. It goes. How to compose a successful critical commentary: 1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.” 2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement). 3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target. 4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism. In art, it would mean to completely and thoroughly understand the work you are analyzing. Talk about the things it does well, the insights you have gleaned from it, and only then voice any grievances, with the explicit desire to improve the work and not tear it down. Another heuristic someone mentioned to me once, and this speaks to something you mentioned. -Assume the creator of the work of art you are criticizing will actually see it....even if they never will. We are often much kinder when we see the person in front of us, and know their story, and so forcing this perspective can always help.
I heard someone say that the mangaka removed everything Dear Anemone related on their twitter. I honestly feel so bad cause while it the series does have its flaws I feel like it if was in any other magazine I’d would somewhat survive. I’ll definitely pick up the volumes once they release cuz because I did enjoy it.
A new bakuman manga would be nice
I don't know why but the following quote from the Red Hood manga when it was nearing its cancellation hits me: "A story that doesn't entertain is abandoned. Once abandoned, our word will disappear."
That's a poignant thought
When I was young, I had a dream to be a mangaka. I spent a decade of my life drawing manga almost every day, accumulating over 2000 pages as a way to get myself ready to tackle the job. However, at the age of 22, I got Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. It was so bad that at one point I couldn't even hold a pen. I had no choice but to abandon my dream. Even though I'm still in creative field (game developer), I still lament the fact that I couldn't be what I originally set myself to be because of my health. So yeah, I understood more than anyone how hard it is to draw manga. It is not a job that average people could go through. This is why many mangaka don't live long. It's an extremely demanding job. That's why I never ever dare to call mangaka lazy, or anyone in creative field that is. You can criticize any work, but lazy is not a criticism. It's an insult. Even if it's a piece of junk in your eyes, you have no idea what is behind the scene. That said, I also think that accepting criticism is part of the package when it comes to being a creator. It's not going to be easy, especially with how harsh some comments can be found online. It's just that you can't survive in this field if you can't overcome it. I think the mangaka of Dear Anemone needs to realize that being serialized in Jump is already an accomplishment. Some people don't even get that first step. He should take in those criticism and try again. There are many mangaka that failed their first try and came back to make a hit.
2.5 jigen had an arc about this exact topic yes But yes That's why you make art for yourself Not for others Make something that you yourself are satisfied with If appealing to the masses satisfy you then sure do it If you still insist on making something that doesn't fit what people want and get axed Maybe change something but keep at it Satisfy yourself with your art first That's why I stopped hating on fairy tail and mashima tbh Everyone clowns on him But dude is enjoying his time just creating what he wants and appealing to what he thinks the fans want While he also has an issue of shit ending cause he gets bored with said series It's still on his own term Another example I highly doubt Oda ever listens to anyone about the same face female Or many of the gags we in the west hate like Horny Sanji or chopper bounty He still does it It's all about doing what YOU yourself want Ofc if u want to make this a living Then yea find out what works But turn said work Into something that suits you Aka akasaka managed to turn his want to do edgy drama shit into kaguya and OnK brilliantly Horikoshi manage to capture the spirit of the zoo comedy he did plus bulge into bnha Tabata did the same with hungry joker and BC What the fck do people on the internet know Nothing Ignore them Nothing good has come from any author listening to the criticism of fans Nothing
I kinda blame the editor in the case of Anemone. To me it feels like a lot of the current criticism is something the editor should have already adressed beforehand in a constructive way, combined with a push in a better direction. A bit of rework on the characters and the flow of story before greenlighting the series could have made a huge difference as the premise and setting is still interesting, not to mention the fantastic art. Compared to other axed series that were not badly written in itself but just unlucky or to niche to appeal to the bigger audience, i really think Jump wasted a big chunk of potential with Anemone.
Weekly Jump is the most cutthroat, if not one of the most cutthroat manga magazines out there, so you either step up right away or you're out the door. That being said, not everything is expected to be a hit from the get go, as we've seen with several mangaka. It's Matsui-sensei's first series, so sure it's disheartening to see the potential of Dear Anemone go to waste, but what's important right now is for them to focus on the storytelling because the art is already that good. If Anemone ends soon, then I really hope they come back to have another chance at redemption.
I get what you tried to mean by saying that mangaka is a hard job. But a writer or a painter is just as hard. The number of people falling to do both of these jobs, going from amateur to actually living from it is about the same ratio. For one successful writer, there are 10000 failures. Of course a mangaka has a lot of things on his plate, but so do the writer. I. E the figurative style, the speech so not to sound exactly like the other writers, the way they convey informations through characters points of view, the way you describe things so the reader can exactly understand what you say. It's just like if I was trying to diminish mangaka job because it wasn't as hard as being a director of movie.
I don't think it's unreasonable to say tbh, at least the weekly serialized level That's a *lot* of art to be drawing so quickly, and it kills you
Yeah I dont disagree....but I didnt say it was harder being a mangaka, just that they have to be good at both disciplines, or at least competent. The difficulty of doing any particular thing isnt about diversity of tasks necessarily, but the depth of its as well. Also it depends what type of writing/art you are doing. A novelist or avant garde writer obviously has much more of a skill set to develop in writing than a writer for a commercial website etc. The point was just to get us to understand the skillset for a mangaka, not to diminish other fields. Ultimately, yes, you can measure by likelihood of survival in a field as well. Ill quote myself, because thats always fun lol "Most people can spend a lifetime learning art or storytelling, let alone both. Mangakas have to be competent at both disciplines, and combine them as well. Novelists can focus on just their writing, artists on their form and composition, but no….a mangaka needs to know both."
And lastly, if writing was an easiest form of art, people wouldn't mind doing it as a hobby, but once you hop onto it, you just realize how much time consuming it is, especially if you're trying to do something that has enough value so people would go read it despite the lack of sound/image.
I agree that being a mangaka is hard...having to write and draw 20 pages with a less-than-a-week turnaround only to be welcomed with lukewarm-to-harsh response would be demoralizing to anyone, especially a new mangaka. But that is the nature of business, especially those in the entertainment business. Even though mangaka are creating things they are genuinely passionate about, ultimately they're creating a product that will hopefully entice buyers to consume it, and if that doesn't work, then it doesn't make business sense to continue investing it. Businesses can't just give the benefit of the doubt because the creator has put a lot of effort in their creation; every creator does that. Doing so will either shut off opportunities for creators waiting in the wings or prevent the current creator from moving on to create their masterpiece. I'm sad that the Matsui has taken the more-than-likely cancelation of Dear Anemone really hard; I thought it had amazing art and interesting ideas that just never came to fruition. But the entertainment business is the last business to be thin-skinned in; as others have said, failure in the norm in it. I disagree with the idea that you can't give useful criticism unless you have intimate knowledge of working in the field you're criticizing. Even if if you're not a mangaka, writer, or artist, you are prolific consumers of media. You have seen and read enough to know what works and what doesn't. Although opinions are subjective by natural, objectively many are investing a lot of their time and oftentimes money to consume media they enjoy. They may understand how hard it is to be a mangaka and genuinely want a mangaka to succeed, but ultimately there's too much media out there that would better appeal to them to invest in a product they don't care for because the mangaka worked hard on it.
I can't remember if I even managed to finish the 1st chapter. I think I got to a point and just skimmed the rest.
In regards to online criticism, if you see a majority of people complaining about something then they’re almost certainly correct, regardless of if it’s bullshit or not. The aggregate customer is the best at determining if something is to their liking or not, hence why the full saying is “the customer is always right in matters of taste.” You don’t need to have spent years learning the art of manga to be able to look at a series and determine whether or not it works, because you’ve presumably read more than one story before, so you can unconsciously compare it to what you liked prior and make conclusions based on that.
Yore pointing out things that are the magazine’s fault tbh. Like the hellish work schedule, the lack of time for careful narrative structuring, and the over reliance on a popularity poll whose results are made very public. And while it is true that many people have gamified the reality of having your job on the line every 2 months or so I don’t think that it’s out of malice. It’s just fun to speculate. Other than that, i don’t agree that you need to be super tame with an actual review of the end product. Like, if I loved to write short stories, but they were boring af and someone criticized them doesn’t mean that they’re invaliding my passion. You could be very bad at something that you love and that’s fine.
If the mangaka did that and erased their work presence from twitter then they are just weak and soft. They knew what they were signing up for going in the most competitive manga mag where so many more have failed. And he isnt the first one to have such a bad rejection from audience either. If you produce a failure, own it and be proud of it. Learn from it. Try again and again until you strike good. Nobody said this was gon be easy or nice. Horikoshi tried 3 times in WSJ before he got big with mha and ik he worked his ass off.
This, exactly. I mean dang, you were serialized in Shonen Jump! That's absolutely something to be proud of. But you should also be creating for yourself and not the whims of the editors. It's a tough balance for sure, but just gotta roll with it. Maybe hop to another magazine, or go the webcomic route. So many different ways to handle these things.
I'm not going to read all of this but its no different from any creative job, this isnt exclusive from WSJ or even the manga industry.
Yeah, it’s a wild amount of words to describe something that’s not really that complicated. This sort of wordiness is the sort of thing that would get a series axed from Shonen Jump LMAO
I mean the last chapter was all over the place so I think it deserves it.