How do you want Nanamine to fail?

[RoloLamperouge]

After reading the recent chapter, I was just wondering how he is going to lose, and if so will he work with his editor after that?
I hope it's not a something boring like Ashirogi Muto make a better manga with the help of their editor and teach him a lesson that way, I personally think it would be great if all this online advice backfired on him like when Miura advised our heroes not to take advice from fan letters. Would it be funny if Eiji had been giving him advice online this whole time and he leaked it after that or just showed him the true power of a genius.
If his manga fails in the ratings will he blame his friends and they get angry and go public about it.
He fails and Ashirogi promise not to tell if he works with his editor and then he becomes a side character.

What so you guys think? I want him to fail simply because he is insulting the other mangaka in my opinion but I think it's also possible that his one shot will succeed and his online friends not having time or nor getting paid to work with him to make a good serialisation.

[saladesu]

I absolutely want him to fail too :XD I'm still not very sure how, though. I also agree wholeheartedly that I don't want it to be something boring and trite like Ashirogi beating him in the rankings (though that could be part of it, like a one-two punch he just can't stop :hurr)

Bringing the discussion over from the chapter discussion threads, how do you think a leak would really affect him? Reclaimer brought up some good points that really, even if there was a leak, would fans really care? Would it stop them from wanting to know what happens next in the manga? Personally, I think I'd lose respect for the author, but I would probably still read the manga because I'm already invested in the story. So would a leak by any of those 50 people really prove as damaging as some of us are making it out to be?

[-Ken-]

I think it'll be. There's many other people who would and would not continued to read the manga. They'll also be complaints about those who don't (who share the same view as Ashirogi Muto right now). They might be enough of a volume that'll make the editor cancel the series.

[RoloLamperouge]

I think the leak would get him in trouble with Jump, it might be considered giving away spoilers for upcoming chapters. And surely his editor Kosugi will notice that he isn't taking his advice and if he tries to assert himself, I think Nanamine wil freak out on him and ruin everything.

[saladesu]

Spoilers aren't necessarily bad, though... I stalk 2ch regularly for spoilers every week for the various series I read, and it's not uncommon to see stuff to the effect of "I don't usually buy Jump but I'll buy Jump this week because this chapter looks interesting!" So in some ways it can actually help to build hype and improve sales :)

Can you explain what you mean by "freak out on him and ruin everything"? I'm not really sure I know what you mean by that :blink

[Crude]

I keep imagining a situation in which Nanamine will have trouble splitting his payment from the series between him and his team, which could probably lead to an even worse situation.

[RoloLamperouge]

By freak out I mean get angry and break character and say how he feels about the editors.

[basher]

Now that would be interesting RoloLamperouge.

I think he will be his own downfall. Doubt he can keep up getting help from 50 people with a manga that runs weekly. He talks to editor then his people. Makes changes. It took two weeks for the one-shot. If it runs weekly he will have to make sure a good number of his people are there. Only 34? last time. That number will keep on dropping.

What if the board he uses goes down? Or the net fails? He pretty much screwed himself over. He won't be able to do it on his own if he has to.

I agree with the possibility of leaking.

[saladesu]

I keep imagining a situation in which Nanamine will have trouble splitting his payment from the series between him and his team, which could probably lead to an even worse situation.

I thought of this too, but I wonder if he even is paying them anything at all. I doubt he is.

This is another area where contention might arise - the fact that Nanamine gets the fame and glory and yen, while they get nothing for their efforts.


By freak out I mean get angry and break character and say how he feels about the editors.

Hmm, that's a possibility... But I think he's too calculative and too good an actor for that. I believe it will take a lot to make him break character. It's possible, definitely :) Alternatively, he could accidentally brag about something and accidentally drop hints that someone smart like Hattori (or maybe it will be Kosugi) will put 2 and 2 together and expose the conspiracy. After all, he already dropped the hint that he has "friends" to help him... And Hattori made the statement that either he has super talented friends (in which case, I myself would think, why not they make their own manga?) or he has a whole lot of friends (which is spot on).


Now that would be interesting RoloLamperouge.

I think he will be his own downfall. Doubt he can keep up getting help from 50 people with a manga that runs weekly. He talks to editor then his people. Makes changes. It took two weeks for the one-shot. If it runs weekly he will have to make sure a good number of his people are there. Only 34? last time. That number will keep on dropping.

What if the board he uses goes down? Or the net fails? He pretty much screwed himself over. He won't be able to do it on his own if he has to.

One thing that's questionable is really how much talent does Nanamine on his own have? We can't take the original SnK as a standard since he did have 4 people looking over it and giving him suggestions, and Shuujin points out that the 2 things he felt were the most outstanding were actually not Nanamine's own ideas. But that doesn't mean that Nanamine isn't talented at all, he could still be talented but merely not as talented as he's touted to be. If he does have a certain level of talent, then he could still survive without his troop of 50 at least for a while. Enough for him to find a new set of 50 even if his original 50 ditch him.

As for the number of people on the chat room, the number 34 is the number that happened to be there, and that's quite a lot. He needed to rush his edits, so he just worked with those 34. But if he had the luxury of time he could set a date and make sure all his 50 people knew about it, and that way he would also make sure a maximum number of people were online.

Of course, I'm not ruling out the fact that people might get bored and not bother to go on anymore. But I honestly don't think it would be too hard to find people to replace them. Humans innately enjoy the thrill of being involved in things like this, imo.

If he makes it a weekly series, he will have assistants to help with the tones and inking etc :) He would only need to really be concerned with the story, and I doubt chat room convos would take that long and cause too much of a delay to any schedule that is in place.

[Reclaimer]

I can only imagine one scenario in which him "failing" is not awful:

Pride/Wrath-
Nanamine and his group dislike editors and think they are smarter than them. With every success going against editorial advice, they will become bolder and put less and less stock into it. Eventually, Nanamine and his group will do something that doesn't work. His editor will suggest something to solve the situation and he will do the opposite simply to spite him/show that he and his group are better than him. He will say that he achieved his success going against his advice, so why should he listen now? This will backfire and the series will drop far enough that it will get cancelled.

If it barely manages to stay afloat and he is humbled starts listening editorial advice, it would come off as too didactic or feel good.

It would be the counter to the Tanto arc where they were being "forced" by their editor to do something they didn't want. One being the Goldilocks Too Hot and the other being the Too Cold.

Actually, the more that I think about it, the more that I start to dislike that idea (too much balance and it is still somewhat didactic) though it still feels better to me than something outside of his control bringing his series to ruin. Stories need to be centered around a character's volition.

Aside:
If a series by him does get "cancelled", I wouldn't be surprised to see him self-publish it on his website. I would also expect him to channel Lucifer's speech in the first act of Milton's Paradise Lost in an angry diatribe delivered to the editorial department. Say "'tis better to reign in hell than serve in heaven". Say that if he wasn't constrained by their rules, he would be more popular.

[basher]

Thanks saladesu for the background information. I'm probably reading into it to much because I recently had an issue with my College accounts. Their fault not mine.

So far I think we can assume that Nanamine doesn't have talent. Well I will until I see something concrete. Those two "most outstanding" weren't his as you said. Even the one that could have been "good" but not shounen manga material wasn't Nanamine. Maybe there is some talent at least putting them all together. Do you think the 50 people Nanamine has gotten are like him?

After reading what Reclaimer wrote I realize that Nanamine will at least get 50 number 1s in the rankings. Is that significant enough? Anyone know?

I can total see Nanamine and his 50 people doing something they are not suppose to due to lack of experience. I think it could be two things like won't be anything noticeable so small detail or possibly all of the story not shounen. His first manga not shounen material. I bet that he and his editors all felt that SJ editors were all idiots. Anyway, I agree he will have trouble changing it. His poor editor is in for some trouble.

[RoloLamperouge]

Some interesting points brought up there, When he gets assistants, will they be from online? Or the ones jump send like usual and would he accept them? Would they tell the editors if they found out? Hattori's pretty sharp so I think Nanamine will try to avoid confronting him.

I definitely think something will happen with his friends, I don't think them being offline or the internet being down will happen but what about a disagreement between his friends on ideas because the editors won't just have bad advice.

I feel sorry for Kosugi but hopefully they will work together in the future.

[huntersq]

I would think that his over reliance on the 50 online advisors will be his downfall. Like if one of his online advisors gave him a good plot scenario, Nanamine used it, and that online advisor was not even accredited for it or anything. Slowly, these advisors get tired of giving advice without getting the acknowledgement. While Nanamine's manga is getting popular, they know that it is them who are making it popular and has less to do with Nanamine. Which would lead to three scenarios:

1. A few of the online advisors go public and expose Nanamine, and tells everyone that he's just taking ideas from them. (which he admitted to taking ideas from various mangas at the beginning, but this takes it to a whole new level of plagiarism and raises the question of when and where it is considered as stealing ideas)

2. The online advisors get ahead of themselves and went a step further than just criticizing the editors' opinions but Nanamine's as well. They would say that Nanamine is taking the manga in a bad direction, and this leads to infighting. Nanamine would then have no one to depend on anymore.

3. Netizens GENERALLY being a fickle bunch will grow tired of it all and the number of advisors will start to dwindle (NOTE i said GENERALLY). The numbers of advisors online will start to decrease until there are only a few who could not give very good advice.

Personally, I would love to see a combination of the 1st and 2nd scenario

[luffyg2]

A lot of possibilities

-He gets real mad and break out of character then everybody discover that he was a fake

- Some of the people helping him start to ask for money or for credit in the manga

- The people just stop helping him (and if he make a new team the manga would get so different people would notice)

- One of the helper get mad he didnt took his idea so reveal to the world that he and x people was helping Nanamine

I'm sure there's even more ways he could fail, which is why his plan is not flawless

[Nefnora]

How I would write it...
I'm obviously not Ohba, but I love writing, so I figured I'd post my take on the development of the story.

Nanamine gets serialized and his manga is a hit, to the point where Eiji recognizes him. Ashirogi Muto keeps brainstorming on their 'new manga*'. But when they see Nanamine's success, they are determined to beat him with PCP rather than with a new manga (perhaps after Nanamine challenges them directly). They throw themselves at PCP with renewed determination. In the meantime, Nanamine keeps his editor Kosugi in check with his brilliant manipulation, thus keeping the editorial department in the dark. They are already suspecting something is off, but they wont'be able to tell what it is just yet.

Problem 1 - Pretense of genius
The first problem is that Nanamine's manga is slowly dropping in the charts. Partially because 'being the best' isn't as easy as he thinks, partially because the other mangakas are working their butts off to make it so, and partially because the readers will be able to tell something's off too. That's when the fun starts. Because when a work suddenly isn't "utterly brilliant" to the point where "everybody raves about it" anymore, improvements need to be made if you want to be 'the best'. Which leads to problem number two.

Problem 2 - Discord
When 50 people work together to create something, those 50 people will have 50 visions of what to create and how to get there. They will inevitably start to argue. Nanamine will need to make choices. People will get upset over those choices. Some will leave. Nanamine's pool of input and ideas will dwindle and the quality of his work will decline with it, slowly but surely.

Problem 3 - Secrets are temporary
With Nanamine's manga lacking consistency because of his advisors leaving him, people will begin to notice even more. I suspect the editor-in-chief will be the first to catch on, Eiji being a close second, Hattori third. As to why the editor-in-chief and not Eiji as first: to drive the point home Nanamine is severely underestimating editors and because he's in the best position to teach Nanamine a life lesson or two.
I don't think the editor-in-chief (do we have a name for him?) will end Nanamine's manga. He isn't that type of person. Just like he told Eiji to become the #1 mangaka before asking to end one manga and allowed Ashirogi Muto to end Tanto, he'll tell Nanamine the kid is free to try it this way, as long as he's willing to bear the consequences. The best lesson is life. Nanamine will take that as a challenge, but he has lost the trust and sympathy of the editorial department at that point.

Problem 4 - Viscious cycle
At this point, Nanamine's manga is in a viscious cycle downwards. He isn't the brilliant writer he pretended to be, the 50 (or what's left of them) have less brilliant ideas to offer him, and his manga is slowly but surely dropping in the charts. At the same time, the PCP and other manga are getting better and better. Not just because Nanamine is slipping, but because they're manga are truly great. Something Nanamine will probably admit reluctantly.
Until, miraculously, one of the remaining 50 (or someone newly recruited) gives Nanamine that one, utterly brilliant idea that gets his manga back up their in the top. Or, better jet, a range of brilliant ideas. And back is Nanamine's belief his method is the best, along with his arrogance.

Problem 5 - Credit where it's due
So Nanamine is back in the top, getting rich and famous. Perhaps he's even at the point of getting an anime. Meanwhile another person is doing most of the writing. Needless to say, he or she will demand credit at some point. They'll either go public or go straight to jump, or both. Nanamine can't credit this one person without crediting the other 49 (they'd flip), and Nanamine's manga finally ends up being cancelled. In the end, with the life lesson learned, Nanamine will probably team up with the "another person doing most of the writing".

Most 'rivals' of Ashirogi Muto stick around endlessly, so it'd be nice if this changes a little and Nanamine decides to explore web comics or start drawing for some seinen magazine. But that wouldn't really be bakuman-style...

Nanamine becoming desperate enough to ask Kosugi for advice might also fit in with the story, but it wouldn't fit as neatly. It would be great to see Kosugi snap at Nanamine, and it would be heartbreaking to see Kosugi forgive him and help him, but Kosugi can never be Nanamine's writer, and I believe the kid is going to need one.


* I'm actually hoping there won't be one. They don't need a new manga to get an anime. What they need is an ever improving manga and an ever increasing fanbase. Sooner or later, sponsors will show up and the editor will budge. Going though the hoops all over again would be... boring.
** Rather than a moral, I hope they learn a way to improve their manga to such degree, that it will finally get an anime.

[Teeba]

^Brilliant write up, Nefnora! I can totally see this happening.

I also think that, Kosugi could somehow disguise himself as one of those fifty and start giving tips as well, but only when Nanamine's manga is in crisis and his original 50 start to dwindle.

I think its the nature of the internet for our interests to change. Just because 50 people today decide to help you out, doesn't mean they are going to do so continuously for the next three years, if your manga becomes a success.

[saladesu]

Why would Kosugi want to disguise himself as part of the 50? Just to get his ideas heard and perhaps listened to? I don't really think that will happen. After all, even if Nanamine does end up heeding Kosugi's advice when he's under the guise of one of the other online advisors, there's no real "meaning" unless Nanamine had actually listened to him as his "editor". Should Kosugi reveal himself, he's just opening himself up to get further dissed and bashed by Nanamine imo :s

Also, it is possible for Nanamine to have a practically endless flow of people to make up his 50 advisors. If one loses interest and leaves, a new one can take his place from the thousands who read his manga (and in SnK's case bothered to even comment).

IMO, Kosugi brought up an important point which was royalties. Nanamine claims he would just cut them off if they asked for royalties, but how would he do that? Change the password to the channel? :oh I'm not very familiar with the law (Koen maybe you can enlighten us :amuse) but is it actually possible to sue in such a situation? If so that could be a big huge problem for Nanamine...

[CBlitz]

I feel pretty sorry for the editor tbqh, he doesn't deserve to get screwed over this early on in his career. He'll probably end up being the person to reveal Nanamine to everyone since unethical behavior is still unethical even if the finished product (his manga) is good

[saladesu]

So, Nanamine has begun his descent into failure, and while he hasn't hit rock bottom yet, how are you finding the way his failure is being depicted?

Personally, I think it's too fast and unrealistic for a series to fall in the rankings so quickly even if it has the flaws pointed out by the various characters. What are your views? :)

[kagato23]

I dunno if it's unrealistic. I talked about this more in another, similar thread, so I won't repeat myself too much here, but Nanamine's strategy is basically his downfall: By deliberately making something designed to beat PCP, he's basically making sure he's compared to them every issue. So the people who might have voted for him but like PCP better vote for them and likely NOT for him at the same time. Even a popular series would probably do bad in these conditions, since the primary flaw Nanamine didn't count on was PCP being BETTER then him at what he's trying to do.

If Naruto suddenly started an Arc tomorrow where they were all being pirates, with magical food items that gave them powers, and they went to an underwater kingdom with fish people, (and the editors somehow were high enough to let this ridiculous scenario happen :P) I'm gonna bet even with it's longstanding popularity it'd be in serious trouble fast. (not saying anything derogatory towards Naurto or it's writer here, I know better then to start off-topic flamebait, but I don't think anybody can out-pirate Oda).