TheJump Manga Award is an online portal compiling all manga-related contests organized by Weekly Shonen Jump publisher Shueisha. As most of Shueisha’s contests’ main purpose is to discover new talent in the manga sphere, Jump Manga Award’s official X account has an open Q&A box where aspiring authors can freely seek advice on manga creation or ask questions about the industry. Recently, the account went viral after offering an unexpectedly blunt answer to the question, “What does it truly mean to face your audience?”
“You need to draw while thinking of the readers,” “Your work is not facing the audience” are some of the advice aspiring mangaka often get when making their submission, the anonymous inquirer explains. However, while it’s natural to, for example, not feature explicit content in a manga that’s meant for young boys, as in knowing your target audience, the idea of “truly facing your audience” is perhaps difficult to grasp for someone who’s just starting out as a mangaka.
“We believe the difference lies in whether the author is drawing ‘simply’ for their own self-indulgence, or with the intention of entertaining the readers burned into their minds.” As the Jump Mangasho editorial team notes, on social media, you sometimes see authors and aspiring mangaka with sets of values that are fundamentally detached from the idea of “entertaining the readers” and are closer to the desire to “be viewed as an amazing mangaka” by the readers. “You could say it’s like being obsessed with ‘being unpredictable’ while completely making light of ‘not disappointing your readers’,” Jump writes.
Of course, they also state that having a certain degree of self-indulgence, in a positive sense, is also important. With the market being so oversaturated nowadays, a manga that’s 100% “reader-oriented” is always at a risk of fading into the background if it doesn’t have the author’s personal touch or quirks, Jump argues.
“However, if that self-indulgence goes out of control, with an overbearing ‘Just you watch!’ mentality – a twist that’s never been done before and surprises the readers (in a negative way), sadly boils down to your work not being on the same page as the audience The ideal is to overcome both the readers’ predictions and expectations, but from the perspective of manga being a commercial work, we get the impression that ‘If you’re going to betray readers’ expectations, at least don’t be unpredictable’ is something you hear very often. But this is only a personal opinion, and other people may have a different understanding of this.”
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