Longtime industry veteran Kazuhiko Torishima, who was an editor for manga hits in the 1980s and '90s like Dragon Ball and Video Girl AI, supplies advice on entering the Japanese manga industry, using examples from his own work guiding and fostering the talents of manga creators at Shueisha's Shonen Jump magazine. Torishima's guide focusses on popular manga creation techniques and styles at first, before delving into the fascinating world of Shonen Jump's editorial department to discuss how editorial decisions are made behind the scenes, before speculating briefly on the impact of the Korean digital comics juggernaut Webtoon and manga's place in the future.

This is a very informative guide, and it gives strong practical advice while warning the reader about the pitfalls that creators often get into trying to break into the Japanese manga industry. It does mean that the layout is cramped (some parts were frankly difficult to read, even on a large screen) with so much information jammed in, but Torishima also draws heavily from pasted-in manga examples both for his professional advice about art, and editorial background from the comic series Bakuman (a series made by the creators of the hit manga series Death Note, in cooperation with Shonen Jump's editorial department, about two youth who break into the manga industry). In a few sections, Torishima uses Bakuman so readily I wondered if the advice should just be "read Bakuman", but Torishima supplements with what Bakuman leaves out, and what has changed in the nearly twenty years since its publication.

This guide is VERY specific to the Japanese manga industry, and the creation of shonen manga, specifically; meaning that it has a very narrow focus, not only in the very specific advice about the Japanese industry, but also the specific demographic being targeted (shonen comics: comics made for elementary school and middle school boys). The sections about interacting with editors, artistic layout and framing choices, manga survey results, etc., may have diminishing returns in use for readers drawn in by the title who just want to make their own manga-style comics outside of the Japanese industry. As a how-to-break-in guide, this feels very solidly constructed, and some advice (like how to take critique from editors doing reviews) may be transferable to the other comics markets (the American comics market, international distributors like Webtoon, etc), but otherwise the information about the manga industry may have limited appeal to the cross section of those curious about the inner workings of the Jump offices, and the much smaller margin of English speaking comic creators intending to enter the Japanese industry.

This is a densely packed book meant for teaching people about the ins and outs of the manga industry in Japan from the advice and knowledge of "Dr Mashirito", an editor at Weekly Shonen Jump best known for being Akira Toriyama's editor and working on the Dragon Ball series with him. I think kids and teens interested in creating manga would really like this book, as well as people who want to learn more about the manga industry in general. Panels from "Bakuman", a Jump manga about making manga are used in many of the chapters to illustrate the points he is introducing.

Both a master class in manga and an emotional, nostalgic look back at Akira Toriyama's legacy as one of the most legendary mangakas of all time.