SaturdayAM sucks. They keep getting worse.
SummerOfManga 2024 is here and I hate it.
Since I last wrote about Saturday AM, I no longer have any respect for them. They have ascended to their final form: the Rodney Dangerfield of Manga. No respect. A big reason is the way they handled the situation with Monitor Comics. To summarize, a former artist said SatAM wasn’t properly compensating their employees and they had some questionable business practices. SaturdayAM’s responses ranged between denial to acting like schoolyard bullies. It was embarrassing.
But the bigger, realer reason, was the fact that they rejected my manga; and therefore, rejected the possibility that me and Whyt Manga would ever be coworkers-turned-besties who go to the gym together every day. I said I was okay with my rejection, but truthfully, I am not. I thought my parasocial relationship with my Internet Big Bro WhytManga could eventually blossom into something deeper, but I’ve yet to make any progress on that goal. If anything, I know I’ll set myself back by saying I agree with Monitor. I guess if I really wanted a bromance with Whyt to work, I could keep my favorable opinions on Monitor to myself. But I already typed it, and backspacing is for cowards. So now, I’m upset, and I don’t know what to do with these big feelings.
Which leaves me absolutely no choice but to snark, to hide how hurt I really am. And lucky for me, Saturday AM has recently unveiled a set of teaser images for this year's Summer of Manga event. Here they are in their entirety, so you will have the proper context as I lash out - like a child who insists that he is now far too sophisticated to enjoy Barney the Dinosaur.
There’s a lot of things that I find completely laughable about this so I’ll go through it one-by-one.
1. No Trolls
It is hilarious seeing “No Trolls”, posted in earnest, by an actual publishing company, with physical books on retail shelves. But hey, I’m a good egg, so I listen when someone tells me to buzz off. I’ll have to go to Image Comics to pitch “Death Note meets Dreamwork’s Trolls”
2. Do Not Steal Character Designs
I was toying with a manga concept that would have Arodihs Sanno from Apple Black be my protagonist, but I guess its back to the ol’ drawing board. But if you’re curious what I was thinking, here’s a plot summary: The manga would show Arodihs Sanno getting his asshole destroyed by a bunch of Shonen Jump characters, just one after the other, everyone’s thick cock getting a turn on that twink ass. Now it may look like pornography, but you see, it’s actually a deep commentary about the state of international manga, and the subtext is that non-Japanese mangaka have extra hurdles to be recognized as legitimate manga. The name of my story would be Apple Blacked. (fuck you, I’m funny).
Seriously, just why in the fuck are they using “Do not steal character designs” as such a big sticking point? Has this legitimately been a problem? Does anyone outside of midwits on Furaffinity even care about this? Every good isekai features a protagonist that looks like Kirito and if you disagree you can go to hell.
Also I need to say this or else I will physically explode.
For this slide, where they make an extra-special point to emphasize DO NOT STEAL CHARACTER DESIGNS, they’re using official art of Meile from Radiant.
You know, Radiant.
The French manga by Tony Valente.
It is arguably one of the most successful international manga. It’s still running after 18 volumes, successful enough that it got 2 seasons of anime (as in, this was a cartoon in Japanese, made by a predominantly Japanese staff, that initially aired to a Japanese audience on the NHK). When debating the nature of “what makes a manga a manga?”, anyone who’s studied up on this great philosophical debate will have an opinion on Radiant.
Do you know who publishes Radiant? Ankama, which is based in France. The English version is licensed by Viz.
In other words, Radiant has fuckall to do with Saturday AM.
I have seen people get confused about this fact, and mistake Radiant for a Saturday AM manga - which is totally understandable, since they’re both in that nebulous sphere of “international manga.”
So I just wanna know.
Why.
Why are you using a character that isn’t yours to say you shouldn’t steal characters.
Is this an irony thing that’s so many layers of meta that I’m too dumb to understand? Did you just think Meile looks cool so you slapped her on your document? Could you not pay your artists to whip up something original so you googled “anime girl redhead boob” and nabbed the first transparent .png you could find? Or is this an example of a “stolen” character? Like “here’s a stolen character, don’t do this, teehee!” Be a man and recolor Sasuke to illustrate your point if that’s the case. Use a character people actually steal, instead of gaslighting more people into thinking you had anything to do with Radient.
3. “Content must be appropriate for older teens or less” and “Bigotry will be rejected”
Well, that’s pretty nebulous. I wish I knew exactly how much sex/violence we could show (here’s hoping this year we will finally see Batman fuck Yugioh).
(And yes, I am still fuming over last year’s Summer of Manga- when they insisted that “Jujutsu Kaisen meets ChainsawMan except Muslim” pitch was laden with bigotry. Somewhere in your city, there’s a Muslim guy with a Pochita keychain. If you talk to him about manga long enough, he will give you that exact manga pitch.)
Every manga/art website will have a robust ToS detailing what you can/can’t submit, so I guess this is the path being forged by a top OEL producer: screaming a nonspecific “Don’t be a bigot! DON’T BE A BIGOT!” into the void, for all of eternity (Which seems to be 100% of their social media marketing, so, I guess that’s on-brand).
4. The various changes from previous years
Here’s the big changes I’ve noticed for this years Summer of Manga:
There is now a cash prize
Artists can submit pre-existing webcomics
Minimum age is now 16
Let’s compare with the rules from last year (Taken from the web archive- all previous Summer of Manga pages are now mysteriously removed from their website):
I am guessing the blowback from Monitor Comics was so huge that now Saturday AM is emphasizing BIG CASH PRIZE!!!! and is quietly memory-holing the previous contests. The fact that they’ll accept pre-existing webcomics and entries from 16-year-olds smells like a desperate attempt to cast a wider net for unsuspecting artists.
Lowering the applicant age to accept entries from kids is weird. Yes there’s the stipulation that it’s only for a “website feature”. Still weird. This is giving me “army recruiter at a football game” vibes. Or maybe its skeeving me out because that capitalist pressure to “Make It” starts while we’re still young. Or maybe-I’ve saved the best speculation for last- maybe with SaturdayAM specifically being so culty, hyping up these promises of Big Mangaka Dreams, it’ll be even easier to manipulate a younger audience into being locked into their system.
It’s true that most manga publishers in Japan will also accept entries regardless of age, there’s manga contests specifically for high schoolers, there’s artists who debut while they’re in high school. My thoughts on that are better saved for another post, but to summarize, I hate that too. I’m not just dogging on Saturday AM for this. Saturday AM has big goals of improving the manga industry, suddenly being more inclusive to child labor feels a bit antithetical to that goal.
And while they’re cleaning up their website to hide old Summer of Manga pages, they should really tune up their FAQ. Check this out:
Well, now its considerably skeevier that Saturday AM lowered their application age.
Coda: My zetsubou.
I went through the cycle of grief with Saturday AM. When Monitor first dropped that twitter thread, it confirmed a lot of my suspicions - as a fan of Saturday AM I could tell they were operating on a tight budget, and anyone in this was doing it for the love of the game. Which is true of most artistic fields. I didn’t realize the depth of how bad things were, so I hoped Monitor would inspire Saturday AM for the better. I hoped Saturday AM would change. I hoped this would be a wake-up call and things would turn around. I looked at my WhytManga locket and prayed this would just be a bump in the road.
But, nope!
Since Monitor dropped his twitter thread, things have gotten arguably worse- as in, SatAM gets more insular and culty and the online pettiness is amplified. It is wild seeing this much unprofessional behavior from such a big publisher.
But if you look at the grand scheme, this is the best position they’ve ever been in. There’s now a little over 70 libraries in the world that you can walk into and rent a copy of Apple Black. Pretty recently, that number was 0.
And yet.
Here’s Whyt Manga on Apple Black’s Worldcat page clarifying some things about his super special, precious OC’s.
Dude, come on. Why are you kicking down the door at a library cataloguing website to specify this shit? It reeks of “I know my comic sucked when it started but I swear it gets better!” You’d think once someone reaches this level they’d be beyond this self-conscious mindset, but, sure, tell me more about your “seasons.”
This contrast is why Saturday AM as an entity is such a perfect lolcow. They are undeniably successful, yet act like the biggest crybabies who never graduated from their Deviantart “donut steel OC’S” phase. They are perfectly in the uncanny valley/gap moé of online bafoonery: massive success, adoring fans, but no one’s ever loved them enough to tell them “Don’t feed the trolls.” Typically anyone mentally stunted to Feed the Trolls is a closer to Chris-chan on the autism spectrum, so laughing at that feels kinda shitty. It is punching down.
And I do feel kind of bad laughing at Saturday AM, sometimes, sometimes their public blowups feel so emotionally immature that I do feel bad for ever laughing at them. For the record, the only time I've publicly snarked on Saturday AM is here on this blog, as my pettiness is typically kept between myself and my friends. I’m not going to go on their page and leave a mean comment. That’s rude. They blow up enough without me (or anyone) interfering, and I’d prefer to observe from the sidelines.
But when I feel bad I remember that I once lived next to one of those 70-some libraries with Apple Black, so, fuck ‘em.
Their pissbaby behavior has ushered in a golden (heh) era of laughing at jerks online, at least in my tiny circle. Go on their Twitter and see how far you can get before they’re crying about The Trolls. I guarantee you will hit such a post within 30 seconds. And that is funny. I will not be convinced otherwise.
And yet, like any golden era, it must come to an end.
I am afraid that this recent Summer of Manga being more kid-friendly has the potential to murder my joy/schadenfreude. Because involving children in their scheme is definitely A Line That Shouldn’t Be Crossed. The reason the phrase “please, think of the children” has proliferated for so long is because as a society we, should, think of the children. It is in the interest of our survival as a species to think of the children.
I won’t grandstand with “well, now that there’s children involved, we have permission to Go Ham” and turn laughing at jerks online into a John Wicke murder fantasy. Because that shit is cringe. It’s way more annoying than the standard feminine hand-wringing that’s traditionally coupled with “please think of the children.” There’s enough outrage to go around for SatAM mistreating artists, and there’s children in far worse conditions if we’re going to rally for Childrens Wellbeing in Society. My pointing out the oddity of SatAM suddenly accepting underage submissions is more about them revealing their desperation for easily-exploitable talent. I hope I’ve made myself clear.
And SaturdayAM accepting younger artists changes their dynamic. Nevermind the potential for how they could mistreat a younger applicant (which will most certainly happen, so, hopefully these kids who are really into manga all have good parents who love them and will step in before anything bad happens). Set it aside and think selfishly. I’m thinking of me, the viewer, the incel 4channer who delights in snarking at SatAM’s social media feed. It’s all fun and games laughing at thinskinned lolcows and picking apart bad art- but I take no joy in laughing at “bad kids art”, I don’t want to interact with children, I keep my online spaces 18+. When they trot out their Summer of Manga lineup, now you have to have a mental switch for when they discuss the kids table. It’s a version of “watch your language, there’s children present” that absolutely did not exist a year ago.
But that’s just speculation at this point - so I’ll stop myself on this topic. I’ll end by saying a venue suddenly getting more child-inclusive has never made it better (or, “You kids get off my lawn.”)
However, I am still looking forward to the Summer of Manga event, because I’ve made some predictions. Last year I made a shindanmaker that generates elevator pitches for Saturday AM. I’m curious if my scrappy little generator will have guessed any of the pitches. I’ll beef it up by adding more series (thus, increasing the odds of this happening), because if this happens, it will be very funny.
Although, one of the more subtle differences for this years Summer of Manga: there seems to be way less emphasis on their “series meets series” pitches. They’re missing their usual robust explanation of “ this is why the Elevator Pitch is So Important.” Things are definitely changing.
Thanks to my “How to get published at Saturday AM” post, I got a few private messages saying this talked them out of ever applying for Saturday AM. And in that post, I went out of my way to not mention Monitor- since when I wrote it, I was still optimistic SatAM could turn it around (and like I said, I now fully side with Monitor).
I’m thinking of the scale of impact, here. Monitor has a way stronger case against Saturday AM. He has a way bigger audience, he has evidence, Saturday AM has even responded to him in one of their magazines. Meanwhile, my dinky little substack post just repeated what you could find on Saturday AM’s Youtube channel - and this information was enough of a red flag to discourage a few potential writers/mangaka from applying. I can’t imagine how many people were turned off from SatAM when hearing someone who, well, has a more substantial case against them.
And to counter-balance that: this year there’s going to be dumb kids who pick up Clock Striker from their library, think its cool, and send in an application.
So who knows what’s next. But I’ll be eagerly watching from the sidelines. The ongoing online drama from Saturday AM is way more interesting than any comic they’ve ever published.
If anyone thought it was inappropriate that I was joking about Arodihs Sanno taking dick, relax! He’s old enough to apply for Summer of Manga.
Read Monitor Comic’s twitter thread about “a certain publisher” here.
My previous post about Saturday AM is here. You can find my Shindanmaker that generates Saturday AM elevator pitches here.
In the “2. Do Not Steal Character Designs” section I vaguely plagiarized a joke from The Asterisks War Sucks (specifically google searching a character by typing “Pink hair anime boob”). All of my writing aims to be like Golden Witch but that was a little more on-the-nose.
If you’ve read this far, you need to read
. I just plugged a lot but that is the plug I will urge you to click.Coda to the coda: I deliberately did not go into detail about the racial dynamics faced by Saturday AM, as these add an extra layer of complexity that are better suited for another post. Most of their online posts about the Trolls pertain to people being unnecessarily harsh because they’re a Black-owned business or draw Black manga characters. If I brought this up, it would be incomplete without a discussion on the way victimhood is used as online social currency. And that is a tricky subject.
I’ll bulletpoint summarize how I feel:
Saturday AM does gets shit because they’re Black. I am not denying that.
I think they draw too much attention to this fact, and dwell in this negativity too much.
Constantly highlighting The Trolls is foolish, no matter what The Trolls are doing.
Many (many) critiques lobbed at SatAM are wrongly conflated with racism.
I’m here with good news. You can dislike Saturday AM and not be a racist. This makes no difference to whoever’s running their Twitter (see point 4), but I am fully ready for all of my critique to be handwaved with “You’re a racist.”
So I’ll make it easy on Saturday AM fans/PR department (they’re paid the same, so I see no difference). I will say clearly and directly that I am racist. Go ahead and quote me on that. I’ll even prove it:
After seeing the erroneous claim that the Clock Striker chick is “Shonen Manga’s First Black Female Protagonist” (SMFBFP) it made me snap. This is simply not true, but they keep repeating it, they want all of the praise and accolades for something false. This gaslighting was making me pretty nutty. So, I built a time machine so I could go back in time and erase all of the other Black Female Protagonists of Shonen Manga, therefore rightly making Clock Striker the first. I have committed Black erasure, therefore making me a racist. There. You’re welcome. Enjoy your SMFBFP.
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