On Tuesday, November 18, the Japanese TV Channel Asahi TV broadcasted a new episode of the famous “Nakai Masahiro no Mi ni naru Toshokan” (中居正広のミになる図書館) aired. The theme for the episode in question was: Japanese Manga Artists and their Secrets.

The episode talked about manga artists and some of their secrets and were then rated by the guest celebrities as to how amazing they sounded. For example, “Terra Formars” Manga artist Yû Sasuga mentioned that a big reason his manga became popular might have to do with the fact that he polishes his choice of words as much as possible to make them sound as cool as possible (by using latin-scientific words, etc.).

According to “Investor Z” manga artist Norifusa Mita, it is also possible to outsource one’s drawing of manga. Norifusa Mita is currently writing two manga series at a time, and in order to be able to do that — and apparently also because he just didn’t want to write two weekly series at a time — he uses an outsourcing company to draw anything but the main characters and the backgrounds. Backgrounds are done by his assistants mostly. Via the Internet, he then passes on the manuscript to another company that adds certain final touches to the manga as well as drawing animals, or sometimes backgrounds his assistants haven’t done. In comparison, Eiichirô Oda and Masashi Kishimoto are confirmed to draw every living thing in their own manga.

Lastly, the show guests mention an interesting anecdote surrounding the beginning of One Piece’s serialization. According to the anecdote, before One Piece began, the “Golden Period (黄金期)” of Weekly Shônen Jump had just concluded. The so-called Golden Period featured series like Slam Dunk and Dragon Ball. After the end of the serialization of those series, Jump started to lose a lot in weekly sales, with a newspaper article even mentioning in the summer of 1997 that it had lost its first place status and was now on an equal level in sale to its rival magazine “Weekly Shônen Magazine”. Ironically, the article mentioning Jump’s downfall featured the issue of Weekly Shônen Jump that contained One Piece’s very first chapter. When editors were asked if Jump was going to be alright, they apparently mentioned that Jump was going to be just fine because, as they said:

“We found [someone with] amazing talent that only appears in one person in 100 — no 1,000 years, his name is Eiichirô Oda.” But Eiichirô Oda himself also got offers from all the other manga magazines to “come write for us.” The reason why Oda chose Jump is because Jump’s Logo is a pirate logo so “here’s where I’m going to write [One Piece]”.

「１００年に１人、千年に１人の逸材をみつけています、名前は尾田栄一郎というんです。(…) 尾田栄一郎先生自体は(..)ほかの漫画雑誌からオッファー全部来たんですって、おうちに書いてくれんと。少年ジャンプに決めた理由も、ジャンプのシンボルマークが海賊のマークだったんで、でここで書きます」

Considering this is not a primary source of information — i.e. the person who told this isn’t somebody working for Shûeisha who was there at the time — be sure not to take this quote too literally.