What does it take to write a great manga?

Yeah, manga is as varied as western literature

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Have connections with jews, they know everything

monthly schedule

Actually knowing how your shit is going to end instead of writing by the seat of your pants

These things are hard to be put into words. Good mangakas simply read good mangas.

So basically get better taste?

Well, first you have to be japanese.

From other mangakas. Shonenshit is infamous for how derivative it is.

I don't see how One Piece and Yotsuba is similar. They're both shounenshit

Well that's how good chefs are made are they not?

Boichi is Korean and relatively successful, award winning even.
Granted, that's only one example, but there you go. It's not that it's impossible, but probably more that there are so few foreigners who go on and try.

this, so much fucking this

But aren't most mangaka emotionally stunted shut-ins? How do they know how to write compelling, realistic characters?

all ideas are Synthesized from history, philosophy, older fiction, and past experiences. A good writer has the ability to use that synthesis to make something new and interesting. (isayama, Asano)

A mediocre writer Synthesizes from the same sources but without proper understanding leading to confused narratives and poorly thought out themes. Their work may be derivative, shallow, and/or nonsensical but may not necessarily be bad. (kubo, kishimoto)

A bad writer synthesizes exclusively from personal experience and thus creates something that only functions inside of their head but falls apart when outsider thought is applied. The work is bad on all fronts except maybe on the basic concept or presentation. offers nothing but the most surface level of entertainment. (The vast majority of LN authors go here, including reki kawahara who proved it was extremely lucrative to offer nothing but self insert power fantasies. Also this game called YIIK is a perfect example of this)

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But his writing is bad.

Maybe so, it's subjective. I was just pointing out that someone with a foreign background has indeed made it far enough to be recognized by the industry he works in.

World building > all.
World building is the big canvas, everything else is sub-themes.

Attack on titans world is basically land, Titan powers, territories and race/countries.
From there you hide everything and start telling from the protagonist view point.

Long term story telling is basically world-building exploration from your characters point of view.
One Piece works the same way.

But world building alone doesn't make a series memorable (like Toriko).
Toriko has everything One Piece has in world building, bug lacks social development and seriousness.

It's not novel ideas that make a great manga. Just look at all the garbage with fancy premises that get churned and burned all the time, and all those mangaka who after one big hit make a million new series where they blow their creative load early and then drop it for the next thing.

What makes a good manga is planning, having all those ideas laid out so readers stay invested with an interesting progression and feel rewarded when elements they remember reading tens of chapters ago are brought up again. A great manga makes you feel satisfied like your time was well spent, a manga is not great when it's abundantly clear that the mangaka is making things up as they go along just to exploit the reader. Isayama in OP and Kaguya-sama's Akasaka are great examples of mangaka who clearly have a plan for their stories, and their stories are in turn both interesting AND satisfying to read.

I think the best way to make a truly great manga would be for a really good artist to team up with a really good writer. That way both the story and the art can be on point.

>A bad writer synthesizes exclusively from personal experience
This is hilarious because people tend to immerse themselves and forget that everything and all characters in the series come from only one person experiences and desires.
For example if a character accidentally grabs the boob-cliche, it just tells the author is a virgin who knows no sex.
When you see a Gary stu, you can tell the author is a frustrated person who desires power.
When reading a series you can make a psychologic profile of the person writing in.

This.

I read Origin and its stories were badly written and the ending is as rushed as most manga in the market.

>one punch man

I think what would make manga great, is if it would be allowed to end when the writer wants it to end. Way too often manga have a fate like this:
>Author makes a great manga
>Almost wraps it up at a really great climax
>Editor steps in and forces him to continue the story past the natural end point
>The mangaka is out if ideas
>the quality starts dropping
>People no longer like it
>it gets axed
>We end up with (and the authors legacy is) a manga that started out great, then went mediocre and then got a rushed ending.
If more manga was allowed to end when the authors feels like it, we would end up with more solid series. But sadly editors are greedy and only think about the present

Don't work at WSJ

Add a little bit of fantasy on top of grounded reality

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Editors are a blessing and a curse. On one hand they do executive meddling and the result is inferior quality in hope of more sales, on the other they provide insight and advice to the mangaka and keep them in check with what might be a good idea and what bad.

so like Briffault's law but for editors?

...

More the publisher. Kind of depends what you draw for. If you're doing a weekly series on WSJ you bet your ass the publisher, and as such editors because it's their job, will have a lot to do with your work to keep it in guidelines and gauging how it could stay popular or increase the popularity.
If you're an auteur who puts out stuff once in a while in an UG magazine then there's less issue with whether the publisher derives particular benefit from that particular author because they know they have their niche audience and it sells enough.

>Where do the great mangaka get their ideas from?
American movies.

good artists borrow,
great artists steal

One Piece is a dragon ball rip off and Yotsuba is a Dr. Slump rip off. The answer is Toriyama.

What do you think about the author of Houseki no Kuni?

Well, it works like any other item of value.
To be great you have to have qualities that make up for everything else.
It has a place in the market, I can rate a manga as good, but maybe not you.
So we both buy different manga.
Eventually one has millions of copies sold, so it might be easier for the people to remark that manga as great.
I think it is realistic to view great media from an economic point of view. Even the concept of scarce resources applies.
Do you want to publish a manga now, or never?
The one you will never publish is the perfect one, and the one you publish now is the imperfect one, like every other manga on the market.
Mangaka make sacrifices to emphasis something in their work whether they know what they are doing or not.

But one generalization might be that the audience is meant to feel something.
Not every reader has to feel the same thing.
But you can gauge what people like from the reactions and discussion they create.
Editors and experience are most likely privy to what people like, minus their own bias associated from being a gatekeeper of sorts, and only having the exposure to manga that they do.
In the end, there are many indicators that a manga is great, but no one can say for sure.
The only thing you can really do is share, buy, discussion and support in some way the mangaka's idea to make as big a scene as possible.

But that doesn't stop smaller works from having an impact on a very individual level.
There are many works that I regard as being impactful, while not the best quality in some areas.
Maybe the story dropped off in quality near the end, or the art was generally awful.
The point being is that it is a market and a real answer doesn't really matter.

I think in a market full of talented artists and harsh deadlines can mean an artists artwork can drop off in quality.
However, if they invested in something else like a moral, or observation or unconventionality they can plan to make that the selling point instead.
Isayama (Attack on Titan) wrote the outline for his plot in 6 months before ever writing the first chapter.
Whatever the artwork was, AOT was always going to hit most of his predetermined story beats.
Which was one of the reasons I think he became so popular.
He focused on something he truly thought he needed to write about, and didn't compromise for what he wanted the readers to observe.

not being a brainlet

A good character-driven plot with plotlines that converge to create a great pay-off.
I thought SnK was your generic action shounen until mysteries unfolded with the titans in the walls and the titan shifters, the secondary characters I initially thought I wouldn't care for (Annie, Ymir, Historia, Reiner, Bert, Levi, Hange, Erwin, Jean) were well-developed and became crucial to the story, fights became high-stakes battles, and then the basement reveal explained the many mysteries in such a well thought-out way that you could re-read from the beginning and notice tons of foreshadowing/hints.

For manga that are more slice of life though, a good cast with likeable characters and a great MC who slowly changes through the events he/she goes through is needed too. Beastars and Vinland Saga are examples.

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>the mark of an educated person is the ability to entertain thoughts and ideas other than his own

This, according to what you perceive of authors, makes you a complete fucking retard - seeing as you cannot possibly fathom the concept of an artist exploring and extrapolating an idea/function in his work with necessarily endorsing or even connecting with it. The people you describe as lesser creators are the ones, much like you, who are unable to create something unique and explore outside of their comfort zone and understanding.

get good at laying out panels, its the only skill exclusive to manga