The Importance of Being Rejected: The Secret to Becoming a Hit Manga Artist

Let me share with you a secret story about working with the legendary editor “Dr. Masirito” aka Kazuhiko Torishima.

This was before Akira Toriyama became a hit manga artist.

Before the hit manga was born, Mr. Kazuhiko Torishima, aka “Dr. Masirito,” was in charge of Akira Toriyama as an editor at that time.

According to Editor-in-Chief Torishima

If you let Akira Toriyama write freely, he would not be able to write interesting works.

The quality of works drawn by Akira Toriyama at that time was low and uninteresting.

Specifically, Akira Toriyama “had no sense of what was popular and what was not.

Torishima was determined to break out of this situation.

With a single-minded determination to break out of this situation, he decided to “submit a rejected proposal to Akira Toriyama.

Moreover, he was not instructed to “write something like this. In other words, he submitted a “rejected proposal” without saying anything.

I tried writing it, and it was rejected.
Next, I tried writing something like this, then rejected it.

And so on.

In this process, there is no such thing as “wrong” or “wrong”.
That is why this is a very difficult process.

But I kept giving rejections to Akira Toriyama.

According to one theory, the number of “rejections without reason” sent to Akira Toriyama reached 600.

Then one day, I went to …….

“I like it.”

and Editor-in-Chief Torishima gave the OK.

This led to “Dr. Slump Arale-chan.

From there, Akira Toriyama began to change.

At first, Toriyama did not know what was popular and what was not. When he received his first OK, he was puzzled, but he gradually got the hang of it, thinking, “Apparently, this kind of thing is popular.

It is very important to have one’s work rejected.