The Four Color Media Monitor

Diario AS reports the manga series My Hero Academia is coming to an end about a decade after it first launched:

After 10 years and 430 chapters, the story of Deku and My Hero Academia has come to an end. The Shonen was one of the most popular and important manga series of the last decade, and the most important mangakas of the world did not take long to say goodbye with a series of messages and illustrations reminiscent of those made after the death of Akira Toriyama. The community of artists in Japan could not be more united, and their support for each other could not be more beautiful and inspiring. Specifically, today we bring you the farewell of Eiichiro Oda, who was one of the first to say goodbye to ‘Boku no Hero’.

Although his message was in a joking way, classic for him, his drawing was one of the most exciting and symbolic. “Now you can play Pokémon GO as much as you want. Thanks for 10 years of hard work,” the author wrote. He accompanied his words with an illustration of Smoker that was inspired by an identical illustration made by Kōhei Horikoshi at the age of 15, when he was not yet the mangaka behind My Hero Academia, but a simple fan of One Piece. The fact that Oda remembered and returned such a sign of respect is one of those details that touches the heart.

That makes it another example of a manga series where a writer feels the time's come to end it on a good note, or a realization the series can hold up better if there's a conclusion. Something mainstream USA comics creators likely haven't understood yet. When will Marvel/DC come to realize the time's come to wrap things up on products they're destroying? And will continue to do so until they're bought out by a better-run business, or until their casts of characters all enter public domain. Many mangakas are certainly doing a much better job, mostly based on how their stories are creator-owned.

Labels: Europe and Asia, history, manga and anime