Hajime Isayama Put His Foot Down After Shonen Jump Almost Forced Attack on Titan’s Story to Completely Change
- Despite being one of the most popular Manga Magazines, Shonen Jump is criticized for not allowing authors creative freedom.
- Hajime Isayama explains Shonen Jump's editorial interference, led him to publish his manga with Kodansha's Bessatsu Shonen Magazine.
- Isayama reveals some of the inspiration he found through older manga writers while creating his magnum opus, Attack on Titan.
Shonen Jump has produced some of the most popular manga on the planet. With the likes of One Piece, Naruto, Jujutsu Kaisen, Haikyu!!, Bleach, and Demon Slayer to name a few. However, there have been some complaints about the weekly manga magazine in the past, which was the reason they missed out on Attack on Titan, one of the most popular manga and anime series of the 21st century.
Hajime Isayama, one of the most popular manga artists of this generation, had originally planned on publishing his manga with Shonen Jump, before finally getting published with Kodansha’s Bessatsu Shonen Magazine. A popular anime content creator on YouTube explains what had actually gone down during the meeting with Shonen Jump.
Behind the scenes: Isayama’s stand against editorial interference for Attack on Titan‘s Story
Shonen Jump has made a reputation throughout the past notoriously pushing the manga artists to change the story of their series to better fit their demographic. Some of the more notable cases are Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer, which were both turned down at first for being too dark and lacking some comedic relief in the story.
The same thing was claimed to have been pushed against the mastermind behind Attack on Titan, just like it was done with Gege Akutami and Koyoharu Gotouge. But surprisingly, Hajime Isayama didn’t entertain any outside forces to make changes to his iconic manga.
Anime YouTube content creator, @cedgehoganime, delved deeper into Isayama’s response to Shonen Jump when asked to change the story to better fit the branding of Shonen Jump. He explained that though the 37-year-old had been working from an internet cafe at the time, he would tell himself that if he couldn’t publish the work that he wanted to, he’d have rather just stayed at the cafe.
The mangaka would state;
Screw that. It’s my manga, I’m making it how I want.
Hajime Isayama certainly immortalized himself with his hit series, Attack on Titan. But there must’ve been inspiration from where the 37-year-old got the idea to write the series. During an interview with Mangaborg back in 2014, he revealed just where his inspiration came from.
The hidden influences behind Hajime Isayama’s Attack on Titan creation
Hajime Isayama, during an interview with Mangaborg, revealed that he did not expect his Attack on Titan series to be much of a hit. Given how difficult it was for Manga artists to make it in the field and how his series completely strayed from what was generally popular with readers, he only expected to make enough to feed himself with his manga.
But to his surprise, Attack on Titan would become a worldwide hit and an instant classic among fans. During the interview, when asked where he found the idea for the series, Isayama stated;
As manga artist friends of mine in their 40s tell me, manga magazines used to be full of apocalyptic stories until pretty recently, and I do think I’ve been influenced by those manga
I came up with the original idea for the one-shot called “Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan)” that won me my first-ever prize, and then I didn’t think about it for a while. After that until I was 22 or 23 or so, when my editor asked me to consider making that old one-shot into a long-term series, at which point I spent half a year coming up with the details of that whole world.
Despite the success that the series has garnered, Isayama revealed that he still feels like the Attack on Titan series was pretty shallow in comparison to the sci-fi universes that his older artist friends shared.
You can stream Attack on Titan on Crunchyroll and Hulu.
