This was another one of the very good episodes of Bakuman. The premise was simple: just stuff a bunch of mangaka into a room watch them for 20 minutes. It worked wonderfully and I loved how good they play off each other. Nizuma and Moritaka already were very different, but the creators add two more vastly different characters here, with varying amounts of experience.
This episode also touched upon the less than dreamy side of manga writing: if you can’t come up with interesting storylines or images you can very easily spend decades as an assistant. Granted, this is an anime so I guess that we are to assume that that 33-year-old guy is really old, but this episode did seem to suggest that most manga authors are fairly young. Is that a fair assumption, or are there also plenty of older mangaka around, beyond the successful ones?
I also like how this episode established that Niizuma wasn’t perfect either, and that he actually learns some things from the other characters. The dialogue in this episode felt quite natural, especially when Eiji went out of “airplane-mode” and started talking normally. This probably is the first shounen jump adaptation in ages that doesn’t have some sort of bad guy, and it really showed in this episode: nobody is really trying to be evil here, and instead they’re just being themselves.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Many mangaka’s in this story are young as, in the end, it is a Shounen. However, there are also a few older characters.
But I don’t think 30 is that much for a mangaka. You probably won’t be a mangaka until you end with your studies and it takes a few years to get a hang of it. I think 30 is age when you are able to come up with a good story AND make a good manga out of it.
Of course, there ARE famous young mangaka’s but with hundreds of mangaka’s out there, those few don’t make everyone.
Pretty much all successful Jump authors start very young. Just a partial list of the all-time best-sellers:
Toriyama published Dr. Slump at 25.
Hara was first published at 21 and started Fist of the North Star at 23.
Inoue appeared first at age 21 and published Slam Dunk at 23.
Watsuki started Rurouni Kenshin when he was 24.
One Piece got serialized when Oda was 22. He first entered the Tezuka at 17.
Kishimoto was first published at 23 and started Naruto at 25.
Kubo: first serialized at 22, hit it big with Bleach at 24.
Yeah, by Jump’s standards a 33 years old unpublished writer is… ancient.
Should also add that a 33 year old unpublished writer TRYING to be published for 10+ years is what makes it really bad.