Manga in Theory and Practice: How to Create Villains gives you a front-row seat as Hirohiko Araki, creator of the globally popular manga JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, shares the techniques of making a great villain, examines his own work, and breaks down the four basic structures of manga. With commentary from his editor, investigations of characters like DIO, and a study of the panel layout of The JOJOLands, this book will be a crucial part of your manga development.

Manga in Theory and Practice: How to Create Villains has a story and art by Hirohiko Araki. English translation is done by Nathan A. Collins and lettering by Mark McMurray. Published by Viz Media (August 25, 2026).

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Craft books are very nearly a dime a dozen. Whether written by established authors or as part of a purportedly easy way to get published, you can search almost any bookstore's website and come up with plenty of manuals that claim to teach you how to be a good author. The reality is that learning to write well is a lot of trial, error, and practice, but a good craft book can help you get yourself headed in the right direction. For my money, Hirohiko Araki's Manga in Theory and Practice is one of the absolute best craft books out there, because he doesn't tell you how to write, he offers suggestions that will make your work stronger and possibly put you on the path to publishing. This is all to say that when a follow up volume was announced, I was very excited.

Manga in Theory and Practice: How to Create Villains isn't quite as narrowly focused as the title suggests. Of the book's 192 pages, one chapter (the longest one, at least) is devoted to the topic of antagonists. In all fairness, it's very well done and I love knowing how Araki came up with Dio/DIO to be the perfect contrast to Jonathan and subsequent Joestars. And Araki makes some very important points about how villains can't be just awful, they have to be awful in specific ways that offset the hero's journey, and they must also be following a forward trajectory. Dio's effective because he keeps striving towards his own goals, just as all the Jojos do the same. Araki implores creators to think about how the hero and the villain balance each other out, which, if you think about the most effective bad guys you know in fiction, is a large part of what makes the protagonist/antagonist dynamic work. Long story short, I wish more authors took Araki's advice.

The rest of the book is an expansion and rehash of the first. While this doesn't mean that you can skip reading the original, it is a bit of a refresher, and Araki does a good job of reexamining some of his statements and expanding upon them. I particularly like that he includes a chapter on how editors are not your enemy, because a lot of new creators often do act like that in my experience. Araki reprints his fantastic character interview sheet and gives us a few examples of how he's used it, and he also provides examples from his own manga to illustrate how art and text work together. (And now I really want to read JOJOLands.) Whether you want to write manga, a novel, or anything else, this follow-up is an excellent craft book from a very well-read author who has a firm sense of himself. It really will help you to think about how you can become a better creator without spoon feeding you advice.