There’s something even more important than cool characters and a great story, and this contestant completely forgot about it.


With the country’s gigantic anime and manga industry, it’s no surprise that many people in Japan dream of becoming comic artists. Really, all you need to become a star is a pencil and a dream, right?

Well, not exactly. Going pro also requires earning the recognition and respect of a publisher. Luckily, though, those same publishers themselves are always looking for fresh talent, and so they often sponsor contests in which contestants submit short manga they’ve created. Winning a prize in these competitions has helped many successful manga artists get their foot in the door of the industry, and few awards are more prestigious than the ones handed out by Shueisha in the manga contest for Weekly Shonen Jump, Japan’s largest comic anthology.

Judges for the contest’s current iteration have narrowed things down to five finalists, one of which, titled Dragon-Eating Newspaper Reporter, is shown in this tweet from Hayahiro Uki (who’s already a manga artists himself).

Dragon-Eating Newspaper Reporter starts with main character Shina, a regional reporter, covering a story about a winter festival, but while he’s on-site a dragon appears. The contest’s judges praised its exciting action scenes and cool character designs, but felt the artist could have done a better job crafting the story and characters. Dragon-Eating Newspaper Reporter’s creator’s biggest problem, though, is that he forgot to include his name with his application.

As shown circled in red in the tweet, Weekly Shonen Jump lists the author of Dragon-Eating Newspaper Reporter as “author unknown.” That’s not a too-clever-for-its-own-good pen name, either, as the lower circled area reads:

“We are trying to contact the contestant who submitted this manga. Anyone with information is asked to contact our editing department by telephone at 03-3230-6233.”

Aside from the contest still being ongoing, with Dragon-Eating Newspaper Reporter still in contention for the grand prize, the mystery author has already secured a prize of 50,000 yen (US$470) for being chosen as one of the final five. So embarrassing as it may be to admit to the slipup, it’s really in the artist’s best interest to come forward, though if and when he does turn pro, his editors might want to make sure they assign him a good proofreader.

Source: Twitter/@hayhironau via Hachima Kiko

Follow Casey on Twitter, where he once doodled a character from Dracula X at the bottom of a test paper in high school instead of realizing there was still half a test to take on the other side.