It is not my intention to offend anyone but I have to say the current discussion seems dangerously close to a group of blind people discussing a painting. That's all. Please forgive me if my lack of tact brings you any bother. I'll remove myself from the thread now.
I'm not offended, just confused. o_O
Is not like we're talking about how horrible is to live in a flat planet, it's a cultural product and we're discussing our opinions & views on it. I'm very curious now to hear your take on all this,
Agassi, and how it differs so much from ours. Don't remove yourself, elighten us.
The part where it gets into incest territory is when you realize that the total symbiosis between a mangaka and his one-hit-wonder series is what fuels the circlejerk. Other people would clearly want to present their take on characters, but instead of actually doing it, they essentially go "well I'll create my own Naruto, with blackjack and hookers."
Yeah, just imagine how many retarded american super-heroes there would be if no one could use Superman, Batman and the likes besides their original authors...
And in general the whole industry is built around superstar artists who build up their name, empowered by nameless and faceless assistants who hope to one day do the same.
Not sure how much of it is real, but I found Bakuman very interesting to help understand the industry. It's also a very unique title, the ideia that "a japanese manga about japaneses making mangas" sells all over the world is rather amusing.
Bakuman talks a lot about assistants, and they are mostly wannabe mangakas that help the artist, doing backgrounds, secondary characters, inking and all that. It's often told to be a very cruel job, with insane schedules, massive work hours and low pay. Some manage to break into stardom, like how One Piece author worked as asssitant on Samurai X... but such success is very rare.
