Manga: The Complete Guide - Development

Development

Jason Thompson was a manga editor for Viz Media in 2000 when he first began wanting to craft a manga encyclopedia. At the time, there was little interest in publishing it, so Thompson remained at Viz. Thompson became the first editor in chief of the company's newly launched Shonen Jump manga anthology. The magazine was highly successful, but Thompson wanted to work on his own projects and stepped down after six issues when Viz declined his request to switch to part-time work. In 2005, Del Rey approached Thompson about his idea for a manga encyclopedia, reviving the project. It took two years to compile the book, and Thompson resigned from Viz to do so. The main difference between Thompson's original concept and the published version is that he originally intended the work to be organized by artist rather than title, and wanted to place more emphasis on manga's relationship to the more popular anime medium.

While Thompson is listed as the book's author, a group of twenty-four other writers helped craft some of the entries, brought in when Thompson "started to stress from all the workload". Thompson then read and corrected the entries if he felt they were inaccurate. The other writers included Patrick Macias, Patricia Duffield, Julie Davis, Derek Guder, Carl Gustav Horn, Hannah Santiago, Leia Weathington, Shaenon Garrity, and Mark Simmons, a Gundam expert.