Mag Talk Weekly Shonen Jump [2019] - Discussion and TOC Talk

[Tamil]

Wow, we are back at this again.
I guess with S8 being out of the picture, we need another topic to reach 1000 pages.
We already knew WSJ are asshole toward female editors. What are we gonna do about it? Boycott WSJ products?

Same here. At least the S8 topic was more amusing than this.

 

[CuriousReborn]

Why? What possible (good) reason is there to exclude them?

Rather than saying we need female editors wouldn't it better to say we need good editors, considering how everything flops these days. I'm not against the argument of having females but I don't see why having a woman will automatically make things better. If TSS or DT Or BS had female editors would they magically be good? Yes I sound like an ass, but I only care about results.

So why is everyone saying we need female instead of just better editors regardless of the gender?

 

[Thundercat27]

Same here. At least the S8 topic was more amusing than this.

S8 was a one-side punching bag. And I didn't adore your side of arguement. I am against no female editors in WSJ. But we are fucking powerless against Shueisha employment policies.
And if boycotting was effective then Israel would stopped oppressing Palestinian already.

 

[TyVip]

you can't be good without experience and you can't get experience without getting hired.

 

[Nemesis]

So it was true

Edit:

Are the ones handling WSJ mentally 12 years old?

I literally posted this page here weeks ago about this issue. lmao And I was already late with this as this is even older.

 

[Thores]

I'm not sure if that could help with the female characters problem. I think it's mainly on authors and readers personal taste. Does the average Jump reader even care about having well written female characters, or appreciate them to begin with? Editors are charged with maximizing sales and popularity after all.

The Promised Neverland, Kimetsu no Yaiba, and Spy x Family are amongst Shueisha's biggest successes of the year. All three series happen to include female leads with character depth, consistent development, and a primary function in the narrative beyond "love interest" or "vehicle for fanservice". While there are other factors that also contribute to the success of each series, I don't think it's 100% a coincidence that manga with fan-favorite female characters like Nezuko, Emma, and Ania have all been chart toppers this year.

 

[Paze]

you can't be good without experience and you can't get experience without getting hired.

The s8 editor didn't have any experience

 

[Thores]

The s8 editor didn't have any experience

...so you agree with TyVip, then?

 

[Kharthas]

Just because they accept an application doesn't mean they don't immediately throw it in the shredder

And we don’t know if that’s the case here. They might be actually biased against female applicants, or there aren’t that many women applying to begin with. We have no clues.

 

[Halloween]

Yes I sound like an ass, but I only care about results.

This just comes off as extremely sexist. Unless you can prove that hiring women as editors will uniformly result in a worse product, there's no good reason to not at least try. At least once.

I mean, hell, they only just hired a non-Japanese artist for the first time with Dr. Stone (Boichi is from South Korea), so it's not unfair to say that WSJ is rather old fashioned and a little behind the times in certain respects.

 

[Nemesis]

The Promised Neverland, Kimetsu no Yaiba, and Spy x Family are amongst Shueisha's biggest successes of the year. All three series happen to include female leads with character depth, consistent development, and a primary function in the narrative beyond "love interest" or "vehicle for fanservice". While there are other factors that also contribute to the success of each series, I don't think it's 100% a coincidence that manga with fan-favorite female characters like Nezuko, Emma, and Ania have all been chart toppers this year.

The Nezuko example is laughable when it's a character that... isn't even a character.
Also, tons of series without such things have been successful in the past (Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, Dragon Ball) and currently as well.

The s8 editor didn't have any experience

He was 4 years working at Shueisha.

 

[Thundercat27]

The s8 editor didn't have any experience

Now he knows not to let author get away with dumb ideas
Seriously I am not against WSJ hiring good editors, But we never know how good editors are until they have good titles under their hands.
And if WSJ is biased and not hiring any female editors, they are just shooting themselves in the foot by restrict their pool of labour, which, consequently, just reduce their pool of good editor.

 

[Nemesis]

This just comes off as extremely sexist. Unless you can prove that hiring women as editors will uniformly result in a worse product, there's no good reason to not at least try. At least once.

I mean, hell, they only just hired a non-Japanese artist for the first time with Dr. Stone (Boichi is from South Korea), so it's not unfair to say that WSJ is rather old fashioned and a little behind the times in certain respects.

This argument is really weak and can literally be made for pretty much all magazines in Japan. 99,9% are japanese people working on manga. Which makes total sense when those people need to speak and understand japanese to write and even to just drawn for many things, so the chance of success of a foreigner is much much lower than a japanese even in the base level.

 

[RingoRoadOnceMore]

Rather than saying we need female editors wouldn't it better to say we need good editors, considering how everything flops these days. I'm not against the argument of having females but I don't see why having a woman will automatically make things better. If TSS or DT Or BS had female editors would they magically be good? Yes I sound like an ass, but I only care about results.

So why is everyone saying we need female instead of just better editors regardless of the gender?

I see what you're saying. Maybe people aren't phrasing it like this (and I honestly haven't been keeping track of the conversation), but I think what everyone really means is there shouldn't be this gender wall that's potentially preventing good editors from getting in, just because they're female.

 

[Tamil]

The Promised Neverland, Kimetsu no Yaiba, and Spy x Family are amongst Shueisha's biggest successes of the year. All three series happen to include female leads with character depth, consistent development, and a primary function in the narrative beyond "love interest" or "vehicle for fanservice". While there are other factors that also contribute to the success of each series, I don't think it's 100% a coincidence that manga with fan-favorite female characters like Nezuko, Emma, and Ania have all been chart toppers this year.

That's the biggest reach I've seen. I haven't read TPN but wow that praise for Kimetsu is a lie. Nezuko doesn't have character depth and consistent development. In fact, no character in Kimetsu is even consistently developed.

I dont have much praise to say about Anya but I placed teh series on hold so I wont comment further.

--- Double Post Merged, Nov 6, 2019, Original Post Date: Nov 6, 2019 ---

S8 was a one-side punching bag. And I didn't adore your side of arguement. I am against no female editors in WSJ. But we are fucking powerless against Shueisha employment policies.

That's why it was amusing lol. Also just because I dont see the need for them that doesnt mean I'm against female editors.

 

[Ctkk]

I also don't think female editors would really change a lot about stuff like the way female characters are written, but of course they should hire them.


To begin with, any woman working in the shonen market would probably be very influenced by it in regard to preferenreces and style.

They'd probably be rookies too, so they'd get teamed up with more veteran authors that don't need a lot of input.

And most importantly, an editor's job is to make series popular and successful, not push some personal agenda.


Like, if Miura got a female editor, would she tell him to tone down the Ecchi? Probably not when that's the main selling point of the manga.

And if we're talking about having a female perspective, there's no way that perspective is gonna have more influence than when a woman is writing the story themselves (which they already do)

 

[pamuchi]

That's the biggest reach I've seen. I haven't read TPN but wow that praise for Kimetsu is a lie. Nezuko doesn't have character depth and consistent development. In fact, no character in Kimetsu is even consistently developed.

I dont have much praise to say about Anya but I placed teh series on hold so I wont comment further.

Errr, aside of Nezuko, several characters have their respective development. But that's an opinion anyways. But what I think thores wanted to convey was that those 3 female leads are being praised because they go beyond from being fanservice or ship baits, if they have development and other stuff it's another story.

 

[Kharthas]

The Promised Neverland, Kimetsu no Yaiba, and Spy x Family are amongst Shueisha's biggest successes of the year. All three series happen to include female leads with character depth, consistent development, and a primary function in the narrative beyond "love interest" or "vehicle for fanservice". While there are other factors that also contribute to the success of each series, I don't think it's 100% a coincidence that manga with fan-favorite female characters like Nezuko, Emma, and Ania have all been chart toppers this year.

One of the most enduring criticism of Kimetsu is how Nezuko is barely a character when she is supposed to be the heroine of the story. I know many people are disappointed because her role is more like a battle pet and plot device most of the time. Even in the west, people only like her for the cuteness. I bet that most people don’t even care about her real personality. I wouldn’t take Kimetsu as an example for well-written female characters. They’re not used as walking fanservice, or confined to MC’s love interest role; but that is really a low bar to begin with.

 

[Tarot]

It's hilarious how some of you are sidestepping the issue and not giving any reasonable argument to why a female shouldn't be given a chance in WSJ as an editor.

And let's not pretend there's no such issue by saying "maybe they're not applying". Japanese corporate culture is no secret. I didn't want to use an offtopic example but even Toei has or had similar issues where their female staff were told straight to their face that women aren't allowed to direct shows because they're not suitable.

 

[Paze]

Wsj has always targeted the shonen demographic, so they probably want their other magazines to target the other demographics. But wsj is read by many females now and many of its hits succeed because they have a larger female audience, so should they try to target that audience instead or change the philosophy to target everyone and not just teenage boys, but the only reason they got into the position of popularity to have so many female readers was by targeting the shonen audience, and if they stop focusing on that they could lose some of their core base or entire appeal.

I think this is the catch 22 they find themselves in.

--- Double Post Merged, Nov 6, 2019, Original Post Date: Nov 6, 2019 ---

It's hilarious how some of you are sidestepping the issue and not giving any reasonable argument to why a female shouldn't be given a chance in WSJ.

And let's not pretend there's no such issue by saying "maybe they're not applying". Japanese corporate culture is no secret. I didn't want to use an offtopic example but even Toei has or had similar issues where their female staff were told straight to their face that women aren't allowed to direct shows because they're not suitable.

But does anyone still in this convo think women shouldn't be allowed to be editors? It seems like it just became a back and forth of people saying they should and people saying they should but not because they're female and no one disagreeing.