Manga Editor Interview with Yohei Tanahashi

What is the manga editorial process like in Japan?

A brief introduction before we get to the interview

Today marks my one-year of being a professional comics and manga editor at a major publisher, and it’s been everything I could have ever hoped for and more. So it feels very appropriate that to mark the occasion, we’re going to jump all the way to Japan to hear from my friend, manga editor Yohei Tanahashi.

Yohei has a lengthy career in manga, the majority of which is in licensing, and he is applying that expertise to a new endeavor as a manga editor. He also recently became 50% of a really exciting manga podcast called Roughs and Rights that you simply must check out.

For anyone wanting to know what the editorial process is like over in Japan—for a major publisher, no less—look no further.

Enough from me, let’s get to the interview.

What is your day-to-day like on the editorial front?

It can really depend. So, I’m currently working on four different titles. Two of them are serialized on the Monthly Afternoon (Kraken Mare and Paris Etoile), one of them is serialized on its sister magazine good!Afternoon (Magus of the Library), and the other one called Watashitachi wa mutsuu rennai ga shitai (a feminist manga probably too domestic) serialized on &Sofa, which is Afternoon’s digital platform for the female audience. All of these outlets have different deadlines but they tend to overlap. During half of the month, I feel like I’m on fire with so many different things for these titles, and I could be staying up really late into the night at the office. The other half of the month, things are much slower (thank goodness).

But, like any other white-collar job, my day starts with checking the e-mails. They are from my fellow editors at the office, or colleagues at the company, those who I work with that are outside the organization, and, of course, last but not least, the artists.

At the moment, I’m not the main tanto (the editor in charge) of any of the titles. I’m a newbie and a newbie starts as a sub-tanto. So, I get all sorts of editorial tasks imaginable thrown at me. Therefore, no day is the same.

And, people work differently. I want to go home early, so I try to be at the office in the morning, but most of my colleagues come in the afternoon (no pun intended) and work late into the night. Working with them ends up having me work late into the night, unfortunately, so I tend not to go too early in the morning. I’d been a morning person, so this is a bummer, to be honest. Hopefully, when I get more used to the job and have more control as a main tanto (which means I have to successfully launch my own series!), I get to work the way I want to.

When you get pages from a mangaka, what is your process in reviewing them, sending feedback, etc? And how does that differ depending on the mangaka?

Yes, it really depends. With some of the big name artists, the editors just receive the manuscripts from the mangaka and work on them as they are to be print ready. With younger artists, the editors take more time to work on each episode, discussing together how to make it more entertaining for the readers.

But, I don’t think there is any exception regarding the basic process. We first receive what we call nemu (neh-mu), a blueprint of the particular episode. An editor reviews it, and gives the artist a feedback. The artist works on it, and submits again. This can take multiple times as long as the time allows it. Sometimes, an editor might ask the editor in chief for advice.

With the oversea artists, like the case of Kraken Mare and Paris Etoile, there’s the translation involved. Sometimes, I have to flex my weak and rusty French to read the nemu and see if the translation done by the translator is right.

I think Western artists will be surprised how much an editor can get involved in the process of the creation. In the world of manga, many artists ask us what we think. They want to know if something doesn’t make sense or land as effectively as they intended.

What are the steps of your editorial process? Over here, granted, it’s different project to project, but we generally want storyboards/thumbnails/rough layouts first, then we move on to inks/line art/finalizing the visuals, then we move on to lettering and balloon placement. Is it similar for you?

I guess it’s similar. But many artists actually send the plot in text before the nemu so that the editors know what’s coming. Creating the nemu is a lot of work. So, it’s important that there is some kind of an agreement on the output.

Of course, the mangaka might change his mind, or what worked as a plot in text might not work as manga, so we don’t really know until we receive the nemu. But, it’s good to have the plot in text done prior to the nemu because we don’t want to waste the time by pointing out something wrong in the nemu that could have been solve during the plot phase.

We often hear about how mangaka work at breakneck pace to meet deadlines—how strict are deadlines?

It is break neck for most artists. But, we prioritize their health. If they get too sick, we give them a break. We also give them a break after several episodes (months) when we deem that they have been working very hard. They need to rest and rejuvenate to maintain the quality of their works. But, too many unintended breaks can be problematic. We want to sell the tankobon (the books) as soon as we can for the revenue and profitability.

You used to work in licensing, so I’m curious how your experience on that side of the industry impacts your outlook and thought process on the editorial front?

I’m definitely more attentive about a work’s oversea potential than most of my colleagues. I know that a successful series can be long, but also how that could be a risk for the oversea publishers. I could also spot something that could be problematic in the oversea market (mostly nudity and sexual depiction of minors). We have monthly meetings in which everyone evaluates a candidate title for a serialization.

Everyone’s comments are different, but I think mine tend to be more different from the others. Maybe that’s not so much about licensing itself, but my experience of having grown up in two different cultures and having learned that the markets can differ country by country.