Japanese Fans Reveal Their Top Manga Creators Of 2019

Manga continues to be one of the highest selling types of books in the medium of fiction today, with millions of copies sold in Japan, the United States, and nearly every other country around the world. Recently, the website Charapedia decided to create a unique poll where it tried to decipher who were the “hottest” manga artists/creators of 2019. While some of the results may be predictable, there are certainly others that you may find surprising.

The Twitter Account, AOTWiki, shared the results of the poll that break down the top 20 manga artists of the year so far:

The top five rankings are as follows:

1.) Sakuchi Hideaki – Gintama

2.) Aoyama Gosho – Detective Conan

3.) Eiichiro Oda – One Piece

4.) Iishida Sui – Tokyo Ghoul

5.) Rumiko Takahashi – Boundary RINNE

While Detective Conan and One Piece’s creators certainly make sense for two of the top three artists that made the list, some folks may be surprised to see that Gintama’s Hideaki was voted to the number one spot. This may be spurned on since the series is approaching its conclusion, with the franchise coming to a close this year. Certainly, to honor the anime/manga series, its no surprise that fans would take this last opportunity to shine a spotlight on it, with One Piece and Detective Conan showing no signs of ending any time soon.

Being a manga artist is an exceptionally hard profession, where even if you are able to “make it”, you still have to produce a number of hours that seems completely unsustainable to the average man on the street. So difficult is the profession that the medium is having exceptional difficulty in finding new recruits to take the spots of those retiring from the industry. Whether or not the medium will be able to sustain itself indefinitely is still up in the air, but readers certainly have enough manga to choose from as of today!

Do you agree with this ranking of the top 20 anime creators in the industry today? Were there any artists that you feel were unjustly left off the list entirely? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics and anime!

Gintama was originally created by Hideaki Sorachi for Weekly Shonen Jump in 2003. The series is set in an Edo period Japan that’s been invaded by aliens known as Amanto. After the shogun surrenders, humans then are forced to live alongside these invaders. The series follows a samurai Gintoki Sakata, who picks up odd jobs with his friends Shinpachi and Kagura to pay the rent for their Yorozuya home base. After ending its run in Weekly Shonen Jump (and had fans thinking the series would end forever), the series continued for a few chapters in Jump GIGA magazine to wrap things up.