This week's poll is from iamssjvash. Do you think that an author's latter series are better than their first series?

You can submit poll ideas here
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=3903

Previous Poll Results:
Question: You come across a translator note with a URL in it. You...
Choices:
Ignore it and keep reading - votes: 1945 (59.3%)
Look up general info about the topic the note refers to - votes: 649 (19.8%)
Try to search for the site via keyword search in a search engine - votes: 294 (9%)
Type the URL into the address bar - votes: 391 (11.9%)
There were 3279 total votes.
The poll ended: October 6th 2018

I guess it does depend on how much you already know about culture and what not...

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A just ruler amongst tyrants

Most of the time, yes, even with one long series you can see the improvement mmm...
What blinded people is that sometimes even though the newer manga is objectively better it might be a bit similar to the old one so it's kinda boring and repetitive mmm...

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I will change this world mmm...
So the world can change me mmm...

50/50 Most mangaka don´t last the distance due to the extreme stress and low-ish pay for people who aren´t bestselling authors. The ones who survive the grind can absolutely age with time, as long as they are smart enough to stay away from youth-focused stories later in life. Not that I ever cared too much for Rumiko but her current work that just repeats the same old tunes for the 4th decade in a row is her worst work yet. Mr. JoJo though has only grown as an author due to switching demographics, going monthly, switching topics/genres and taking breaks. That´s how you do it and even Berserk is currently going through a high fantasy phase.

My all-time favorite (comic) writer Grant Morrison is currently about as good as he ever was and finally had one of his works adapted properly with Happy!. Chuck Dixon though is sadly past his prime and many bronze age artistic legends (70s to mid 80s), as Neal Adams or even worse Frank Miller, can barely draw or write a coherent page.

Last edited by residentgrigo at 11:29 am, Oct 6 2018

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I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
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50/50
It depends on the author.
Some authors have a distinct vision, and almost all of their works end up being fantastic. Their experience over time only lends to their later output being even better than their early stuff, simply through hard work, honing and practicing their skills.

Other authors get lucky with an early hit, and then they try to capitalize on it... but none of their other works ever live up to that hit, because they don't actually have a visionary mindset and instead simply created something that people enjoy out of what seems like pure luck.

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::End of Transmission::

Quality does get better with time. Quality of art that is. But with a lot of authors the storytelling quality of early works is just better. There seems to be more passion in those. Some of the great ones manage to keep the passion so their later works are better, but some don't, and for some middle of their career is when they make their best manga. So 50/50 for me.

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I am envoy from nowhere in nowhere. Nobody and nothing have sent me. And though it is impossible I exist. © Trimutius

50/50
It's not necessarily the same. Varies from person to person.

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Tv Tokyo - Anime & Manga ~ MinatoAce

I don't read all of their works since most of the time they only have one long series and a lot of one-shots or 1-2 volumes where it's a little harder to judge. Or the newer series is on-going and I tend to ignore them in case scanlators drop them or they go on hiatus.

50/50 due to sometimes their newest series can sometimes be better in story and art (most times it's just the art) but I think squeals to their works are hit or miss. What started off as a fairly serious sci-fi with shojo elements later became more light-hearted and softer focusing on family life, and there was practically a child terrorist in the first story!

There are mangaka like Rumiko that seem to go in a rut but then you got manga like Osamu who just gets better with every manga they make (as expected of a god)

nothing wrong with being an author who just makes 'popcorn' entertainment content
50 years of Marmaduke or Garfield.
I did read/watch a lot of UY from Rumiko when I first started and loved it; but I never went back for more, in any of her follow-up titles because they were derivative and there was so much more out there to compete for my attentions. And I imagined I naturally aged out of her target audience as well.

it does feel bad when one of the other kinds of serious authors goes mainstream as I had high hopes for diverse and long overdue feels

starving artists take more chances with their stories, once your mangaka goes Hollywood they have a whole cabal of advisors trying to tweak the product for maximum appeal.

I would guess many writers put 'the effort in' to make a new masterpiece but they're super harsh critics and the discarded works which may be gems never see the light of day.

Last edited by Sugarshark at 10:00 pm, Oct 6 2018

My thoughts on this are still generally yes, but I came up with this idea because I started to hit a few series around the same time that I personally felt were not quite as up to the par their author's previous works had set. It got me thinking so I looked into all the manga I've read by author and noticed that my opinion was not what I was really reading. I once thought that nearly all authors scaled pretty reliably upwards, but after reflecting I've come to the conclusion that it isn't as prevalent as I'd though. I think the sometimes years between works coupled with the quantity of different mangaka I have followed has cursed my perspective with nostalgia. I do still clearly believe there are more improvements than not, but there were more struggles than I'd expected.

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Thanks to the Japanese, I have been deprived of any left over paycheck cash since high school.... >.<'

Joining the 50/50 chorus.

A manga-ka's art is much more likely to be well-refined at 40 than 20 (hi, Oda), but to me, the fundamental plot and character interactions are key to whether a manga is "good", and those are ridiculously hit-or-miss. There may be a manga-ka that refines their ideas over their lifetime to make a magnum opus later, but there are just as many that have these really great ideas growing up that they just can't wait to tell as soon as they go pro. To me, the level of polish isn't nearly as important as these types of things, so I really couldn't say one is more likely than the other.

Watsuki make Kenshin at age 24 and then Buso Renkin (which I enjoyed, but was pretty meh in comparison) later, after Kenshin was over. Oda made One Piece at 22. But Toriyama, in contrast, ramped up from Wonder Island to Dr. Slump finally into Dragon Ball, and the famous Tezuka Osamu himself just kept churning up more and more engaging stories as time went on. Many people remember Mighty Atom (astro boy) the most, but I personally think Black Jack (which he started around age 45) was even better.

Given how Miyazaki's best work is Otto Carius: Tigers in the Mud, while the majority his works since '84 are just remakes trying to recapture the "magic", I'd say it depends more on the author actually creating work that relates to their own interests rather than their experience.

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