Popular series like Black Clover, One Piece, Tokyo Ghoul: Re and so forth have mangaka that are famous for crafting their works into enjoyable manga for us to read. Remember though folks, creating manga isn’t like just putting a pen to a page and creating images/word bubbles. Manga is a process that has teams of upwards to 100 people doing something to create that manga and make it happen. Mangaka assistants come into place by helping their bosses by doing tasks such as fixing an image that might go outside panels, drawing items needed within the scene and even adding their own effects to an image already done. We aren’t saying the manga above have mangaka that rely on assistants but the point is, is that often assistants help mangaka by reducing the workload. Creating manga is tough but manga assistants can mitigate the challenge slightly by helping out in smaller tasks.

Naruto mangaka Masashi Kishimoto has an assistant, Osamu Tezuka had an assistant—more on that in a minute—and numerous others have assistants. The point being in this case, folk, is that mangaka rely on assistants to help their manga series get done quicker and with more polish. Manga work alone is grueling with long hours and a lot of possibilities of injuries from sitting in one position for too long. With an assistant, a mangaka can focus their time on major points of their work which in turn allows their assistant to help do minor tasks and/or help with things they just can’t do alone. Pride is great for creating works of art but it also causes a creator to lose sight in one major thing. Even the best creators need help and manga assistants do that for them as we mentioned before.

Above we mentioned a few mentioned several big named mangaka who rely on assistants. Did you know though that some of the bigger mangaka started off as manga assistants themselves!? Leiji Matsumoto, Miwa Ueda and even, Eiichiro Oda all started off as manga assistants to bigger time mangaka. Having a manga assistant means to have someone that not only helps you—as we keep mentioning—but also someone that will learn from you and can be taught to create their own works one day that could become popular and amazing. Mangaka assistance are needed because it’s a starting point for a lot of creators and without that first step, some of them would never find themselves in the world of manga like they are today.

You noticed how in our article we keep mentioning mangaka assistants are helpful for mangaka? The reason for that is because at the end of the day, manga is created by teamwork, dedication and fortitude. Manga creation is like a well-tuned machine that requires maintenance from not one person but several. Teamwork from mangaka and their assistants makes for manga that we as fans will eventually pick up from a book store and read it with smiles on our faces. Together, mangaka assistants and their creators can do this by making teamwork a major priority.