Gege Akutami’s Jujutsu Kaisen has become one of the most popular manga and anime series in recent circulations. Their declamation has sparked a reasonable attraction in the manga community. They present a new angle on character development that challenges the Shonen manga norms.
Akutami, while serving as a judge for the Tezuka Award in 2023, shared a piece of advice that presented an alternative to the flashback narrative form. This method advocated an active and more dynamic approach that laid out character interaction over a heavy backstory course. This perspective overshadowed the narrative pattern developed by popular works such as Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto.
Characters’ Backstory Revealed Through Action and Interaction
Gege Akutami‘s directions about backstories revolve around the character’s evolution through interaction instead of elucidation. They believed that the mangaka should let the characters take up their own action. These actions would naturally construct the character’s charisma and form the storyline, without the need for many backstory lines.
They challenged the convention of popular Shonen manga through their creative mind. These conventional strategies depended more on conveying character explanations and emotions through flashbacks. Whereas their method allowed characters to uncover themselves via their action and interactions.
Their maintenance of a streamlined narrative process effectively engages the readers. In return, presenting the character becomes situationally active, which adds layers to the personality, motives, and evolution in the present time.
Akutami gave importance to ‘collision’ between characters as a mode to bring out the character’s depths leading to genuine storytelling. This has altered the dependence on hefty backstories. In their opinion, character traits and backstories can be produced by carefully creating interactions and conflicts.
Gege Akutami’s Effect on the Next Generation’s Mangaka
Akutami’s change in focus has the possibility to bring about a change in the way Shonen mangas are created. Trusting the reader’s ability to decipher, they managed to construct character motivations and emotional arcs through the evolution of the story. Their artistic style respected the audience’s intellect and boosted a thorough immersive reading experience.
Their collision method has benefitted Jujutsu Kaisen, as it has greatly reduced the drawn-out backstories from the series. Maintaining a firm narrative flow with sustaining reader investment. Their new imaginative take on character development suggested a fresh perspective on the manga designers as well as readers.
The evolving manga industry along with many innovative ideas has started to shape the new generations of mangakas. The narrative style is just not bound by the already established conventions, they are freshly molded. Gege Akutami’s creativity in this regard sets an example of how one can achieve success by allowing one’s ideas and skills to overtake.
Jujutsu Kaisen is currently available to watch on Crunchyroll.
