Surviving a Shounen Manga

Prologue

[M Comics Column] – In an interview with the author of ‘Adventure King’.

Q.
First of all, congratulations on the completion.
How do you feel?

A.
Happy as well as sad.
No other words seem necessary.

Q.
This work was famous for having a lot of characters.
Who is the character you love the most?

A.
Probably the main character.
He’s the character I’ve been watching and cheering for the longest.
Other than that, the weight of each character in the work can be seen as a measure of my affection for them.

Q.
Are there any missing characters that you feel particularly regretful about? Or anything that received many complaints from readers.

A.
There is absolutely nothing.
In the case of some characters, there were times when I thought that the abilities they had were disappointing.
But even so, what had already been shown were enough to build the story.
There is no other reason for a character to disappear, it’s because they didn’t have enough strength to survive.
I send my deepest condolences to the few readers who loved them.

Q.
So, what are the requirements for a character to survive?

A.
A character should draw the reader’s interest and attention as soon as it appears.
Otherwise, it loses its utility value immediately.
Even if you drag it, the moment they’re forgotten, it’s over.
Except for the main characters who were born with important roles from the beginning, attributes of other characters are basically predetermined.
Their appearance is controlled by the author, but from then on, it is solely the responsibility of the character to live on.
Unless the characters try to live on their own, they can’t see the light of the end.

Q.
Did the character popularity vote affect the development of the work?

A.
I can’t say no.
If you do not understand the needs of your readers, you are disqualified as a commercial writer.
But …

⁝

I read up to there and closed the page.
Because I couldn’t stand it.

It was all pathetic.

A character that doesn’t attract the reader’s attention from the first episode can’t see the light of the end.

If the character doesn’t try to live and breathe on his own, he will eventually disappear.

It was funny that the author himself said that.
Well, no, it wasn’t really funny.

The character disappeared because the artist didn’t draw it.
It’s just been forgotten because we didn’t love it enough.

What did the simple character do?

Actually, I even thought about dropping the series when the character I was cheering for died.
Because of that, there were times when I didn’t read it for several months.

[Corrupted Knight Lucas].

My favourite character in Adventure King.

The Corrupted Knight certainly attracted the attention of many.
A character who appeared as a villain and ranked in the Top 10 of the popularity polls after just 15 episodes.

However, the Corrupted Knight died before the story reached its climax.