Viz Media’s One-Shots Program Wants to Make Manga for Everyone

Although manga is fundamentally akin to what the West considers comic books, it, along with anime, has often been stigmatized by Western audiences as an implicitly Japanese medium. Anytime someone makes the faux pas of referring to Western media inspired by anime like Avatar: The Last Airbender, Castlevania, or Teen Titans as anime, they’re met with an onslaught of virtual finger-wagging. Sure, they undoubtedly pass the vibe check of walking, talking, and looking like anime, but their spawn points do not originate from the East, which, for many, negates their qualification for being anime.

This same argument has been levied toward creators whose work feels as provocative and enigmatic as manga. Be they Bryan Lee O’Malley’s chibi Scott Pilgrim graphic novels, Aleš Kot and Tradd Moore’s Akira-esque The New World comic, or Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda’s steampunk Final Fantasy-like series, Monstress, creators professional or otherwise have taken clear inspirations from manga, making series that feel like manga in virtually every way.

But for whatever reason, Western-based output can only be anime and manga in aesthetics, settling for industry juggernauts like DC Comics and Marvel to make special issues or variants, lifting the visual style as a gimmick instead of a fully fledged mode of storytelling. That is until Viz Media launched the Viz Originals One-Shots program.

In June, Hisashi Sasaki, editor-at-large at Viz Media, unveiled the Viz Originals One-Shots program. This initiative offers manga-inspired creators from around the globe the opportunity to submit their stories to the leading manga publisher and potentially have them developed into a series. For the uninitiated, a one-shot is a self-contained manga series, typically 50 pages long, that can act as a standalone story (à la Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Look Back) or act as a mangaka’s pitch for starting a new series. Established creators like Bleach‘s Tite Kubo, One Piece‘s Eiichiro Oda, and Jujutsu Kaisen‘s Gege Akutami submitted one-shots for their respective series, leading to them being serialized.

Since introducing its One-Shots program, Viz Media has been advertising its initiative through social media blasts and on platforms like X/Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr to increase visibility for the stories vying for selection and the creators behind them. As of the time of writing, Viz Originals One-Shots has 13 manga series housed on its app and website, ranging from shonen to horror to shojo. To glean further insights into the program, we spoke with Sasaki to learn what inspired him to initiate the program, what trends he’s noticed in submissions, and his ambitions for dismantling the gatekeeping barriers that have historically restricted manga from being universally accessible.

Isaiah Colbert, io9: What incited the idea to launch the Viz Originals One-Shots program?

Hisashi Sasaki: When comparing the Japanese manga industry with that of the U.S., I noticed that there isn’t much of an intermediate level for artists in the U.S. There are many talented and motivated amateurs, and only a handful of professionals. In Japan, there is a large middle tier between amateurs and pros, essentially a large pool of talent that act as a “professional reserve force.” From this pool, truly talented artists have the opportunity to hone their craft and grow into professional mangaka. The entire industry, including publishers, is able to support this middle tier by providing them with work as assistants to already established mangakas. In Japan, there is an established path for artists to grow into professional mangaka—first by publishing a one-shot in a magazine, and if they gain enough popularity, gaining the recognition they need to begin serializing their work.

This is the main reason why I wanted to launch this program: I want to help create a similar career path here, for the many aspiring and talented mangaka in the United States to get their own shot at being a professional mangaka.

io9: How many applications has Viz received thus far?

Sasaki: Since we started accepting submissions of one-shots in November 2023, we have received over a thousand applications. We generally receive around a hundred submissions each month.

io9: Which countries have you received the most applications from?

Sasaki: Eighty percent of the submissions are from North America, but we also receive submissions from all over the world, countries like France, the UK, and Australia and so on.

io9: What kind of pattern have you noticed in the kinds of one-shot stories you’ve received? Have they mostly been shonen series, or have they included submissions for other manga subgenres?

Sasaki: In terms of genre, shonen is the most common, but we also get a lot of shojo and horror stories. In contrast to the Japanese mangakas I’ve worked with, I get the sense that creators here are more focused on world-building than on telling stories about the characters in that world. I feel that manga is uniquely suited to telling character-driven stories, and that is something I’m hoping to see in more submissions in the future!

After an entire year, RESENTER is back and officially apart of the @VIZmedia family. Through VIZ’s One-shot program, RESENTER has a chance to become a serialized manga if the readership is strong enough! So please check it out! FREE to read now on the VIZ Manga app and website. pic.twitter.com/EziTCNyyV2

— Queen of Horror Manga now on VIZ (@gigimurakami) October 2, 2024

io9: Viz Media’s One-Shots program has led to an influx of series created by aspiring mangaka of color and different cultures of Japanese descent. Is there a hope that the program will expand Viz Media’s reach by telling stories rooted in the experience of creators from different cultures that are often reduced to stereotypes?

Sasaki: Yes, that was a big reason I wanted to work with English-speaking mangaka, and produce original manga in English in the first place. The goal is to help expand the manga market as a whole, by publishing stories that reflect the unique cultural backgrounds of different countries—stories that Japanese creators might not be able to tell in the same way. In this way, I hope we can make manga accessible to a broader group, both creators and readers, that we may not have been able to reach before.

io9: What is the vetting process that allows a submitted one-shot to be housed on Viz Media’s original one-shot catalogue?

Sasaki: First, the one-shot program team reviews all submissions. If a story seems like a good fit, one of our editors will reach out to the creator with feedback and request some revisions. This back-and-forth usually happens a few times. Once both the creator and editor feel it’s ready, the revised manuscript goes to the whole team at our monthly editorial meeting. If the team agrees it’s ready to move forward, it gets the green light for publication.

io9: What determines whether a Viz Originals One-Shot manga expands into a full series?

Sasaki: It’s not an easy question to answer, as there are many factors involved. Besides total views and completion rates, we also consider many other aspects, such as how invested is the mangaka in continuing to tell the character’s story, whether the character can even support serialization, etc. It’s already difficult to publish a one-shot, but a full series is a challenge on a completely different level.

io9: Viz Media, through Shonen Jump, has a reputation for canceling newer series as often as they announce them. Some examples are Hunters Guild: Red Hood and Tenmoku Cinema. What are the qualities in a manga that lead to them no longer continuing serialization, and what advice would you give prospective mangaka to avoid having their series canceled?

Sasaki: The truth is that Viz doesn’t decide which series in Shonen Jump gets canceled. It’s purely the decision of the editorial team at Shonen Jump in Japan. As I used to be the editor-in-chief of Shonen Jump, I am very familiar with the process myself. Only the editorial team can make the decision to start or end a series, and even the president of Shueisha has no input on that decision.

But with the one-shot program, Viz gets to make the decisions, and the goal is to launch a new ongoing series from one of the stories published on the platform. Of course, I’d love for every series to be a success and to run for a long time, but from experience I know that’s not always realistic, both in Japan and here in the U.S. as well. That’s why I don’t really have any specific advice in that regard. I think at the end of the day, manga is meant to entertain not just the audience but the mangaka as well. If the creator doesn’t enjoy what they’re making, the readers won’t either. Ultimately, the audience that mangaka should consider is themselves, and what they will need to continue enjoying working on the story in the first place.

Now that Drifting Into Summer has been out for a week, I can officially induct myself into the pink and black yuri club.
Come get your grumpy x sunshine swim team girls ✨💖#driftingintosummer pic.twitter.com/HP7lJrp1F9

— Tikklil~ new manga on Viz! (@tikklil) November 13, 2024

io9: There’s been a noticeable influx in sorcery manga as of late, with manga series like Jujutsu Kaisen leaving a void in Shonen Jumps’ lineup of weekly series. Is there a desire for the One-Shots program to fill that void, or is there a desire for the program to lead to an expanded series in other sub-genres like Seinen or Shojo?

Sasaki: As I said before, I truly believe that mangaka can only create what they themselves would enjoy. I don’t think a mangaka can really make an enjoyable story if they are only trying to write something because the genre is popular, or there’s little competition, and not something they truly enjoy themselves. I also don’t suggest genres or character types that I feel might not suit a particular creator. Instead, I want to encourage as many creators as possible to try different genres of one-shots to reach a broader audience.

io9: What are your hopes and aspirations for the Viz Originals One-Shots Program for the company and access to manga creation as a whole?

Sasaki: I believe, if we can create a system that gathers and nurtures talented mangaka, we will surely see a successful hit series in the future. It’s impossible to know how long that may take, so I hope everyone will keep an eye on this program and these inspiring creators until the day a hit is born.

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