Do you dream of being a mangaka, or simply wondered how manga are made? Then this is the series for you.
Mashiro Morita would have rather not taken the path of a mangaka when his uncle, a former famous mangaka passed away due to overwork. However, with the urging of Akito Takagi, and a lot of motivational push from his crush Miho Azuki, Morita and Takagi takes the hard path of a mangaka, with Morita working on the art, and Takagi, working on the story.
The series builds on the premise of dreams and how we must work hard to achieve those dreams, despite trials and hardships. They learn that not only is writing and creating manga is hard, but getting it published and serialized is even tougher. Then, once you get serialized, keeping it serialized is also hard. Manga artists must ensure their works maintain a certain level of popularity, or the series gets the axe.
Being in the shounen genre, the main characters are young. They started off in their high school, and they dreamt of having an anime by the time they reach 18. Will they be able to reach their goal? The burning passion of their determination is captivating. Aside from the hardship of getting a series, and also maintaining its popularity to keep that series running, getting an anime is even harder. It must get a high popularity ranking, and then capture the attention of animating companies who will sponsor the work.
What kind of shounen story will this be without some friendly rivalry? This has it, and I can’t help but like this aspect of the story. One of their great rival – who is also their fan, is the teenage genius mangaka Eiji Nizuma. He has been drawing since he was young, and aspired to be Shounen Jump’s number one mangaka. He is very eccentric and yet he knows his manga well. He can create with little effort masterpieces that the audience likes.
Aside from Eiji, there are also other mangakas who share the a sort of friendly rivalry with Morita and Takagi. Though they are rivals in the magazine of Jump, they aspire to beat the rest by creating the best manga. The desire to be the best pushes the skills of everyone to greater heights, and improves their skills even more, which in turn is also best for the magazine and the entire manga industry as a whole. While they are rivals in their field, they also form a friendly bond with each other. That, I guess, is one of the things I like about this series. It gives some sort of logic to having rivals as friends. Can their friendly competition continue once things get serious with their series?
Another interesting aspect of the manga is the insertion of story ideas of the mangas that the artists make, some concepts in the creation of stories and how to make an interesting manga in general, plus a few insights on how the manga industry works.
I hope you decide to give this manga a shot.
Resources/Links:
MyAnimeList
Mangareader
