SAM:
I’ve been getting some of my friends into manga lately, which usually gets me going on some rants about series I love. I have been using this term to describe influential artists and authors—”The Manga Royal” family (though I’m sure it’s been used before).

So here’s the idea for the round table: the Manga Kingdom is going to consist of these positions:

King
Queen
Prince
Princess
Lady of Shojo
Lord of Shonen
Lady of Josei
Lord of Seinen
Jester (humor)
Bard (music)
Cook (cooking)

What I’d like to see from each of you is what your choices are and why.

So to start us off, here are my choices:

King: Osamu Tezuka (Obvious choice but he really did lay the groundwork for the industry (I consider him the Japanese equivalent to Walt Disney) and his work is still some of the best, even to this day.)

Queen: Rumiko Takahashi (Again another obvious choice. Well thought-out characters, enriching stories, and good humor make her an excellent choice. Again she is a very formative influence and has really made an impact. I grew up reading Ranma and can’t think of a better way to be introduced to the medium.)

Prince: Naoki Urasawa (I was just introduced to Urasawa last year but already I am a big fan. His cinematic style and very human characters are what keep bringing me back. 20th Century Boys really struck a chord with me, in terms of nostalgia. Not only that, but he redid Tezuka which is a huge achievement in my book! It’s hard to ignore sad robots!)

Princess: Ai Yazawa (She is along the same lines as Urasawa, but she captures more of the silliness and love that life brings rather than the seriousness. NANA is wonderful but I really enjoy the majority of her older work (Paradise Kiss, I’m No Angel).

Lady of Shojo: Miki Aihara (Tokyo Boys and Girls was one of the first shojo series I have read and it really defined the demographic for me.)

Lord of Shonen: Eyeshield 21 Team, Riichiro Inagaki and Yusuke Murata (They just get shonen: a wide, likeable cast of characters including a main lead who isn’t annoying and in whom you want to believe. The art also sends chills down my spine as the characters push towards their goal. Brilliant.)

Lady of Josei: I honestly don’t read any josei at all so I can’t really put a candidate down for this one.

Lord of Seinen: Mohiro Kitoh (After having read Shadow Star and Bokurano, I really understood what seinen is. He has a very dark, adult look on the world.)

Jester: Akira Toriyama (Though most of his series are action-packed, Toriyama has a great sense of humor. Dragonball is riddled with preverse jokes, Dr. Slump is fantastic, and Cowa! is funny in a cute/stupid way.)

Bard: Kiminori Wakasugi (Even though the focus of Detroit Metal City is comedy, Wakasugi offers a great look into the metal scene.)

Cook: Takashi Hashiguchi (I love that Yakitate!! Japan offers a creative spin on something as commonplace as bread, while still retaining a pretty in-depth story.)

So, yeah. There you have it.

Please send your choices and if you have any suggestions for other positions, say it loud!

ERIN:
Sorry, Sam, you’ve got a couple of the positions wrong!

Lord of Seinen: Kazuo Koike (Crying Freeman, Lady Snowblood) or Takao Saito (Golgo 13)

Lady of Shojo: Moto Hagio (They Were 11, founder of shonen-ai) or Keiko Takemiya (Andromeda Stories, To Terra, The Song of the Wind and Trees)

Lord of Shonen: Takeshi Obata (Death Note, Hikaru No Go)

Lady of Josei: Moyoco Anno (Happy Mania, Hataraki Man)

Cook: Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki (Oishinbo)

Where does Go Nagai come into it?

I think you can have multiple lords and ladies in a royal court. Also it would be funny if these were tarot cards or standard playing cards. Maybe I could learn the manga artists’ names more easily that way!

ISAAC:
Interesting. I dig most of your choices, Sam! Tezuka and Urasawa are close to my heart right now as I burn through Pluto. Like Erin, I would make a few changes:

King: Osamu Tezuka

Queen: Rumiko Takahashi

Prince: Naoki Urasawa. If you haven’t read Pluto, do so NOW. It won’t let you go.

Princess: Ai Yazawa

Lady of Shojo: Moto Hagio

Lord of Shonen: Takeshi Obata

Lord of Josei: Fumi Yoshinaga (Antique Bakery, Flower of Life). Though I adore Moyoco Anno’s work, Fumi Yoshinaga communicates emotions, relationships and the the feeling of life like no other mangaka.

Lord of Seinen: Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira, Domu, Hipira). Although we don’t have much Otomo in the States, his timeless epic Akira both initiated a generation of manga fans and redefined seinen manga.

Jester: Makoto Kobayashi (What’s Michael?, Club 9). What’s Michael? and Club 9, though hard to track down, are the funniest comics you will ever read outside of “Calvin & Hobbes” and “The Far Side.” Eiji Nonaka (Cromartie High School) and Kiyohiko Azuma (Yotsuba&!, Azumanga Daioh) are also favorites of mine.

Bard: Wakasugi Kiminori. Can I also nominate Ai Yazawa here for NANA? I know that might not be kosher.

Cook: Takashi Hashiguchi. No contest.

Great idea, Sam!

MICHELLE:
My choices aren’t too different from everyone else’s, though I’ve got a few exceptions.

King: Osamu Tezuka
Queen: Moto Hagio
Prince: Naoki Urasawa
Princess: Rumiko Takahashi

Lady of Shojo: Ai Yazawa. NANA consistently breaks my heart and I keep asking it to do it again.

Lord of Shonen: Eiichiro Oda. You just have to admire a long-running series like One Piece that maintains such consistent continuity.

Lady of Josei: Chica Umino. I love the sense of both humor and nostalgia in her series Honey and Clover.

Lord of Seinen: I am going with Isaac on this one. Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira is nothing short of amazing.

Jester: Kazune Kawahara. Though it’s not particularly known as a comedy, I find something to giggle about in every volume of High School Debut that I read.

Bard: Ai Yazawa again. I’ve read some other series about musicians but NANA really gets into the spirit of the band’s music not to mention their struggles to remain true to themselves even after the record label’s demands begin to influence their work.

Cook: Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki, the team behind Oishinbo.

Traveling theatrical troupe: I completely invented this category so I could include my personal favorite manga group–CLAMP. They’re good at reinventing themselves and definitely bring the drama, so I’d say it applies!

CONNIE:
What a great idea, Sam! Let’s see…

King – Osamu Tezuka: Too perfect.

Queen – Moyoco Anno: Men, women, children, girls, boys, everything from historical drama to fantasy to high school romance to romance at the office and in everyday life… she’s a master of all things manga.

Prince – Naoki Urasawa: He’s just a good choice.

Princess – Ai Yazawa: Also a good choice.

Lad(ies) of Shojo – CLAMP. Which is sort of cheating, since it’s more than one person, and their recent series are shounen/seinen, but all their old shojo is still classic.

Lord of Shonen – Hirohiko Araki (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure) – He gets the 100-volume, six-story, consistently awesome for twenty years position.

Lady of Josei – Fumi Yoshinaga – I’m going to agree with Isaac here.

Lord of Seinen – Kazuo Koike (Offered, Wounded Man): I have to agree with Erin on this one. He’s just too insane not to tip my hat to.

Jester (humor) – Ai Morinaga (The Gorgeous Life of Strawberry-chan, My Heavenly Hockey Club, Duck Prince, Your & My Secret): She’s just consistently funny. I’ve never been disappointed with one of her series.

Bard (music) – Kyoko Ariyoshi (Swan): Nobody can make me hear music like her, even though Swan’s more about the dancing than the music. I almost chose Akira Hiramoto (Me and The Devil Blues), since he’s also very awesome.

Cook (cooking) – Shinji Saijyo (Iron Wok Jan): I like the idea that my food will be delicious as well as served by a bragging, sneering, demonic-looking chef that hates everyone.

SAM:
Connie, great choices for cooking and shonen!

CHLOE:
Pah! My choice have all been already brought up- well, most of them, that is.

King – Osamu Tezuka
Queen – Keiko Takemiya
Prince – Naoki Urasawa

Princess[es] – I’m actually going to put CLAMP here. They’re too broad for shojo; they pack the kind of storytelling versatility that makes them full on manga monarchs.

Lady of Shojo – Yuu Watase. Seriously. It may be soapy, overdramatic and overdone but it’s hard to argue with both the scope, influence and enormous popularity of her series. This is shojo at its most, well, shojo.

Lord of Shonen – Jyoji Morikawa – 88 volumes of Hajime no Ippo later, I’m hard-pressed to imagine a series with a more enduring legacy among generations of Japanese boys (and men!)

Lady of Josei – Going to have to side with the Moyoco Anno crowd here.

Lord of Seinen – Naoki Urasawa. Monster? Pluto? Billy Bat? Enough said.

Jester (humor) – Koji Aihara and Kentaro Takekuma. I dare you to read Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga and not die laughing.

Bard (music) – Harold Sakuishi. BECK is really something to behold.

Cook (cooking) – Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki. Oishinbo all the way for this category.

ERIN:

Lord of Josei: Fumi Yoshinaga

Hmmm…. Maybe because the gender-reversal in Ooku, she should be Lord of Josei!

GRANT:
King: Can’t argue with Tezuka.

Queen(s!): I gotta go with CLAMP on this one. Everything they touch seems to draw oohs and ahs. Gorgeous art and iconic characters leap from their minds all the time. Now, if only they’d finish X…

Princess: Hiromu Arakawa’s work on Fullmetal Alchemist is head and shoulders above most shonen titles I have come across. I know she hasn’t produced many titles (and I haven’t touched Juushin Enbu (editor’s note: being released as Hero Tales by Yen Press) to see if it’s any good), but her work on FMA is simply astounding in both art and storytelling.

Lady of Shojo: I really, really want to put Kaori Yuki in. Sadly, her other manga don’t hold up to Angel Sanctuary. So, actually, nevermind.

Lord of Seinen: Kentaro Miura, even though he just put Berserk on another seasonal hiatus. He supposedly uses no assistants, continually produces two-page spreads that induce arthritis simply by looking at them, and hasn’t lost the main thread of his story even after all of these years. If Kouta Hirano had an extra decade of manga excellence under his belt, he would be a contender. Until he can do something other than Hellsing, he’s still unproven.

Jester (humor): Kiyohiko Azuma. It’s not the usual over-the-top method, but Yotsuba&! is a wonderful piece of simple humor. It may not draw much more than a chuckle, although it will leave you smiling most of the time. Azumanga Daioh is wonderful, too.

Bard (music): Harold Sakuishi. Even though BECK does not teach you how to actually play guitar, Sakuishi shows how music can be a transformative influence on every aspect of a young person’s life.

MICHELLE:
Thanks everyone for your contributions! Looks like Tezuka will never budge from his position as king, and though many of the same names popped up in the top tier, there’s no clear indication of who should reign in which spot. Perhaps we have ourselves an oligarchy instead!

Now we’d like to hear from you, the readers! Disagree with our picks? Have an argument in support of your particular favorite manga artist? Chime in and let us know!