Source: @NetEase Game Channel column

As with many film and television games, the key to the end of Japanese manga is not the author, but the popularity.

Just earlier this month, Shueisha officially announced that the "Naruto" manga serialization has entered the countdown to the end, and the final words will be published in the 50th issue of this year's "Weekly Shonen Jump" on November 10, which also means that this popular manga that has been serialized since 1999 and lasted for 15 years will finally come to an end.

As soon as the news came out and it was confirmed, everyone's reaction was not regret, but cheering and rejoicing - comments such as "never expected", "lifetime series", "finally don't need to burn it to yourself without your grandson" and other comments can be seen everywhere on the Internet. And the reason why many die-hard loyalists can also express this kind of relieved sigh is because the comic itself has dragged on for too long, and for readers who have started from scratch, 15 years can erase too many things, including the initial touch.

Looking at the entire Japanese manga industry, Naruto's serialization career is neither unprecedented, nor endless, and even just a common phenomenon of popular manga, there are too many works that have embarked on the same path, even if the enthusiasm of authors and readers has cooled, and it has not been completed. In the final analysis, it is the serialization system of Japanese manga magazines that determines this qiē, and it is also the result of the common choice of readers and editors in the market environment.

The double meaning of long-form comics

The "length" of Japanese manga varies depending on the work, and the criteria for judging it in the minds of different readers are also different. Generally speaking, if the serialization time is more than 5 years and the number of single books reaches 30 volumes, it can be regarded as a long story in the hearts of the public, and a work such as "Naruto", which lasted 15 years and is expected to reach 72 volumes, is naturally a veritable long-form manga.

However, specifically, the serialization time and content length of the work may not be equated. For the same ten years, it is not difficult for the number of weekly works to exceed the 50 mark, and the monthly works may only be half or even one-third of the weight. Kosuke Fujishima's manga "My Goddess" has been serialized in the monthly magazine "Afternoon" since 1988, and it will also end this year, and the final single book that lasted 26 years is only 48 volumes.

And the serialization time and content length of more works do not match, most of them because the author has too much rest time during the serialization, and the weekly magazine becomes a monthly magazine, a monthly magazine becomes an annual magazine, and finally it simply becomes an irregular serial. This is the case with several well-known 10,000-year-old pits such as Kentaro Miura's "Legend of the Sword Wind", Hagiwara Kazuji's "Diablo", and even Nagano Go's "Five Star Story", where the author is happy to draw a few words, and then may wait for months or even years, without any reason and without telling the reader when to return. In contrast, "Strong Breeding Armor", which is often compared to these few, is somewhat wronged, and the author Takaya Yoshiki subjectively does not mean to be lazy, but the eight characters are not good, and the magazines that serialize the comics have repeatedly collapsed, and the director zhì comics have been dragged on and on, and from 1985 to now, there are only more than 31 volumes......

A more well-known representative of this aspect is Yoshihiro Tomiyasu's "The Hunter". The Hunter Hokage was serialized on JUMP, and the former was a year earlier than the latter in terms of the start time, but now, when the 700 chapters of the Hokage's serialization are about to end, the Hunter only has 349 chapters, which is less than half of the juniors. The reason is that the author has often taken a break without warning since the middle of the year.,After the 260 words in February 2006, it suddenly disappeared for more than a year and a half.,The hunter's 261 words have almost become a legend.,And since then,The hunter's serialization has completely become an annual magazine.,Every year or two, a few words come out and serialize enough to make up the weight of a single book and then disappear.,Let it belong to the entire history of JUMP magazine.,It's also a strange example of no one before or after.。

Unlike these special cases above, the length of the Naruto manga is in line with the general rules of weekly serialization in terms of time and content, and the number of more than 70 volumes in a single book is far better than most Japanese manga, even if there are many long-form works in "Weekly Shonen Jump", only a few names such as "One Piece", "Jojo Bizarre Adventure" and "Oolong Police Station" can surpass it in this regard. At that time, "Dragon Ball" was regarded as a large feature, and there were only 42 volumes at the end, which seems to make everyone feel ordinary now, and JUMP's current pillar "One Piece" has been serialized for 17 years, with more than 74 volumes in a single book - and the important thing is that there is no possibility of ending it in a few years, and it is very likely that the single book will eventually break through 100 volumes.

A cold and realistic serialization system

The reason why manga such as the Pirate Hokage can be serialized seemingly endlessly is because there are still readers who buy it. And the word popularity is the key to determining the fate of many Japanese comics - there are authors who don't want to end being cut in half, and there are also authors who can't finish it. The pyramid of the Japanese manga industry, the ecology of "Weekly Shonen Jump", the first of the three major weekly magazines, is such a cold and realistic portrayal.

Founded in 1968, Weekly Shonen Jump was not prominent among similar magazines in Japan in the early years, with no classic history and no well-known authors, but it was able to rise to become the king because it has always adhered to the principle of prioritizing popularity and relying on readers' votes to decide the fate of serialized works. Survival of the fittest, what can go to the top may not be the best work, but it must be the reader's favorite work.

Regarding the investigative supremacy of "Weekly Shonen Jump", it is a secret that many people have been introduced by domestic anime magazines in the early years, and later there was the popularity of their own work "Explosion Man". To put it simply, it is a popularity voting system, through the guò questionnaire and other ways to collect readers' opinions on serialized works, and then reflected in the serialization order of the magazine, the top works are naturally the top brands, the middle class is the main force of stable dìng, and the last few are not optimistic works, if you can't get out of the trough for several consecutive periods, then most of the waiting is the serial abort, forcing the ending to cut your fate in half.

This serialization system is a double-edged sword for new authors. On the one hand, JUMP is full of opportunities, any powerful newcomer who submits or wins awards for his debut work and is appreciated by the editor may enter the magazine serialization array, and then seize the opportunity to become famous in one fell swoop; But on the other hand, the competition mechanism of JUMP is almost a death for new authors, and every few months JUMP will always publish four or five authors' serialized works, but nine times out of ten, after the first two-month buffer period, it will continue to decline and be suspended, and most of these authors will not be able to seize the opportunity again, and will disappear from the manga industry. Even if you go through the initial period of time, it doesn't mean that you can really stand firm, and you may always face pressure from the rankings in the next few years, and the plot may continue to decline irretrievably if the plot is a little dull, JUMP For decades, those who have only been serialized two or three times, and the average single book is about 5 or 6 volumes abounds, and they may have been the lucky ones in the entire industry, but under the voting system, they are still just passers-by who are quickly forgotten.

Not only for newcomers, but even if it is an ace that once sold tens of millions of dollars on JUMP, it may be cut in half after the popularity of the work gradually declines. The "Psychic King" of that year is an example, and when the plot has come to an end, the author Hiroyuki Takei also failed to apply for the whole story, and directly rushed the ending to a few years later before it was completed in the newly revised single book. And for the new serialization after the end of a popular work by a big-name author, JUMP never talks about old feelings, and if it is not popular, it will be treated with newcomers, and it should be cut. Masami Honda, Nobuhiro Wazuki, Ken Ohata, Ryu Fujisaki, Haruto Umezawa, Nozomi Kawashita, and many other names have tasted similar treatment.

It's because serialization on JUMP is like Shurachang, and it's already a victory to survive, and once you get a foothold and then animate, the rewards of becoming a popular work are also a level that other manga magazines can't compare, so contrary to "wanting to serialize but can't cut it in half", there is also a "continuation that you want to stop but can't", and it's not something that a manga artist can decide to finish a work with.

The author can't lead the finale

The end of the Naruto manga has made many readers sad and happy, and the length of the serial is one of the reasons, but the essence is because of the structural problems in the plot, commonly known as the part that drags the play. Constantly escalating battles to open new chapters, or plot loops to inject water and delay time, most of the long-form comics that are criticized by everyone have similar problems, but Cheng dù is serious, and readers who don't know may blame the author, but many times this is not necessarily their original intention.

"Dragon Ball" might have ended after defeating Piccolo at the martial arts tournament if Akira Toriyama had followed his original intentions, but in fact, we later learned that there was a story of Saiyan, a story of android and Saru, and a story of Majin Buu...... And in 1995, when the author was already clearly tired, and the reader had barely watched it by inertia, the end of "Dragon Ball" was no longer a matter for the author and the editor to decide, and even the entire magazine "Weekly Shonen Jump" had no right to decide, and had to report it to Shueisha's top management. Because at this time, "Dragon Ball" was already the number one manga work in Japan with sales of more than 100 million, bringing the sales of "Weekly Shonen Jump" to the highest in history with 6.53 million copies.

As mentioned earlier, once a work finally becomes popular and is qualified to become one of the magazine's trump cards, then its fate is linked to the prospects of the entire publishing house, even if the author wants to finish, he will be asked by the editor to continue serialization, and in history, JUMP did have the experience of the editor sending back the final words sent by the author to ask for redrawing, and since he does not plan to continue to mix in this industry after closing the pen, then the author can only choose to compromise and continue to find a way to continue the vitality of the work.

As a result, there are only a handful of long-form works that can get out of the JUMP system, and they miss the opportunity to finish at the peak, and most of the end is a perfunctory and hasty ending, like the Hokage's efforts to tell the story completely, and the editorial department has given enough time to prepare for the end can already be regarded as a good beginning and a good end. Two other special examples in this regard are two other popular works from the same period as Dragon Ball, "Slam Dunk" by Yuhiko Inoue and "Yuyu Hakusho" by Yoshihiro Tomiyatsu. Both of them wanted to finish after a paragraph and were asked by the editor to continue serialization.,In the end, they all broke up unhappily.,Inoue with his talent.,After dedicating an ending to Slam Dunk, he jumped to Kodansha.,Tomiya has since embarked on a lazy road.,In the hunter era, he completely broke out and closed the journal as he pleased.。

And from the editor's point of view, or the magazine's point of view, this seemingly killing the chicken and taking the eggs is also helpless, the reader's taste is fickle, and no one can guarantee that the next work will still sell well, so naturally we have to hurry up and make a fortune. In fact, after the end of "Dragon Ball" that year, JUMP immediately ushered in a sharp decline in sales. It wasn't until a few years later after the rise of "One Piece" that the next cash cow was found, and in the past ten years, with the overall decline of the Japanese manga market, the unusually strong director of "One Piece" has even relied on it more than "Dragon Ball" back then, and it is even more difficult to end lightly, in the case of the end of the Hokage and the fade of death, JUMP will have to continue to rely on "One Piece" to maintain its popularity in the foreseeable future, Eiichiro Oda also knows this, for him, "One Piece" Most of the time it will be the whole of the manga career.

In the final analysis,When comics as a market commodity take precedence over a work of art,This phenomenon is always unavoidable.,Other magazines are just different in practice.,It's essentially the same.,"Weekly Shonen SUNDAY" also has to rely on the 10,000-year-old elementary school student "Detective Conan" to ensure the declining magazine sales floor.,It's also a work that can't see the end of the end.,And in recent years, JUMP has also reflected on its own system.,Began to consider no longer blindly cutting works., The aim of placing it in a supplement magazine or online serialization is still to make the most of its value. Including the end of the "Naruto" manga serialization, it is not necessarily the end, and perhaps in the near future, there will be other ways to continue the vitality of the work, so as not to let the name disappear from everyone's field of vision.

In fact, looking at other fields, movies and American drama bestsellers, and even games themselves, there is a similar situation, popular works are also valuable commodities, and if they are not given up by readers, they will not be abandoned by the market, if readers feel that they are tired of a work, it is also a reasonable choice to give up at the right time, and maybe they will revisit it when it is really finished in the future, and they will also have another feeling.