Rei’s former editor Hana is always going to evaluate manga from a certain point of view, i.e., whether or not it can be serialized in a shounen magazine. As a result, she unsurprisingly doesn’t think what the girls have created is good enough to go pro. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, though. It just won’t sell. Yeah, Ai and Kokoro have a unique concept — something about an alien farming sound from an Earth full of cats to bring back to its soundless world — but how do you make a long-running series out of something like that? The manga doesn’t even have a protagonist to root for. You need a character-driven story with a definable arc — an arc that you can and will mine for hundreds of chapters. That’s what the magazines want. They gotta churn out content and lots of it, because people’s appetites for these stories are insatiable. Again, it only takes the average reader three or four seconds to scan a page, twenty or so minutes to finish an entire magazine. Sometimes, it’s better to recycle tried-and-tested concepts than come up with something new¹.

Nevertheless, Ai and Kokoro are undeterred. They really want to impress this woman. She’s a veteran within the industry, so her words certainly carry some weight. I just wonder why they feel this is necessary. After all, she did say that the girls’ initial draft was pretty good for hobbyists. They might not be able to go pro with it, but are they trying to go pro? Hasn’t Rei always insisted that the girls should only pursue manga as a hobby and nothing more? Of course, their teacher is being overly cautious, because she’s projecting her fear of failure onto her students. Even so, I guess I’m not understanding the girls’ desperation at this very moment. They literally run off and spend the next hour revising their manga to better fit what Hana is looking for. But why? I echo Hana’s thoughts when she wonders if Ai actually wants to go pro or not.

Rei is annoyed when she eventually finds the girls at Hana’s table. She quickly tells them that they need to get ready to head back home to the island. In the brief moment that she has left at Comitia, Ai visits other tables and sees all of the other manga — manga that, like hers, would stand no chance of being serialized. Some use too much color. Some are too racy. Some are too focused on one subject and one subject only (one guy really, really likes electrical poles…). Some are just artbooks and thus have no story whatsoever. As a result, we’re back to square one: what do Ai and the rest of the girls really want? They’re just a high school club, right? They have their social media account, which gets modest engagement. They sold out earlier today even if it was with Hikaru’s influence. Isn’t that enough? Or does Ai really have greater ambitions?

Rei is still annoyed even on the plane ride home, which I find a bit ridiculous. After all, she’s the adult here. She needs to set a good example and not pout for hours and hours. But I guess we need one more quick flashback before we can have any sort of breakthrough. Just narrative pacing things… The flashback is nothing we haven’t seen before, though. It’s more like a recap of Rei’s traumatic struggles, i.e., she finally got her manga serialized, but she quickly learned that going pro wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Even now, she looks back at the experience as “going through hell.” But there’s no guarantee that Ai would feel the same way or even experience the same hardships.

You should absolutely have no illusions about any industry or career you go into. Nothing is as glamorous as they make it sound unless you luck out and end up in the top 1%. Otherwise, go in with your eyes fully open, and always be prepared for disappointment. You should also prepare a plan B. Always set a deadline, e.g., “I will pursue this passion of mine until such and such date, and then I will pivot if I still haven’t made it big.” You think this would be obvious, but the number of failed streamers out there suggests otherwise… but I digress.

It’s undeniable, however, that a lot of people have found joy and happiness in the manga industry, so I do ultimately think that Rei’s fear — her overprotectiveness of her students — is somewhat unreasonable. Your job as a teacher — or just any adult in the position to mentor and guide younger people — is to simply educate them, i.e., give them all of the knowledge and tools they need to succeed. What they choose to do with what you’ve given them, however, is unquestionably their choice to make. And therein lies the problem: Rei has never opened up to her students, especially Ai, about her own personal failures as a mangaka. Maybe she’s ashamed of her short-lived career, but she hasn’t given them all the knowledge that she has.

This is why I’m somewhat disappointed that teacher and student never get to have that much-needed conversation. Of course, the story isn’t over yet. The studio behind the show just recently announced that Draw This, Then Die! will get at least a second season. The girls’ journey with manga will continue later at some unspecified date. Even so, I still wish Rei would open up to Ai. But instead, Rei asks Ai if she really wants to go pro, to which the girl replies that she simply wants to continue drawing what she loves. Well, Rei is seemingly satisfied with that answer. Fine, but that’s it? She has firsthand knowledge of what it’s like to go pro. It’s only one data point, mind you, but it’s still an invaluable data point from an adult they can clearly trust. She even admits to herself that Ai probably won’t end up like her — that Ai doesn’t have the same misguided expectations that she did when she first started out. But I still really think it would be useful for the girls to learn about their dear teacher’s own experiences. Is that really such a crazy position to hold?

The emotional climax of the series is something completely different instead. We get one more flashback, but this time, a younger Ai — still just a third grader — encountered Rei by the pier, surrounded by cans of beer. At that point, the woman had given up on her career in manga. Hell, she deliberately moved to this island to become a teacher. She still had her regrets, of course. But Ai had just recently used the lessons from Rei’s own manga to make friends earlier that day, so she decided to employ those same lessons to cheer Rei up. She didn’t realize, of course, that the crying woman was the author of her favorite manga. Hell, I wonder if she even remembers this incident now. I guess this scene works as a capstone to the entire series — or rather, the first season — because the story does that thing that all authors love: coming full circle.

Even though Rei never made it big professionally, her efforts weren’t for naught. We should be so blessed if anything we create even manages to touch the heart of a single person (wish I could say the same about my blog). To this day, Rei still has young Ai’s letter. Her experiences with Ai and the rest of the club even spark her first idea for a manga in a long, long time. Maybe that’s why she’s so protective of the girl. This ending is heartwarming enough, I suppose. I just can’t help but wonder if these two will ever have the talk. But like with a lot of manga series, we’ll just put that off til later. For now, it’s time to say “See ya later” to the girls and Ai’s ever-expanding cast of imaginary friends.

¹I’ve been binging Black Clover — I’ve watched over 100 episodes in less than a week, to be exact — and lemme tell ya, that show doesn’t have a single creative bone in it. But it sells, because it has everything people want in terms of a “comfort food” shounen. Brash protagonist screaming about never giving up, screaming about making friends and having fun together, screaming about reaching the top (being the wizard king) despite literally having no magical aptitude, female love interests that are one-dimensionally tsundere, a rival character who gets no development beyond being literally a rival, a completely staid royals vs commoner class discrimination, jerkass characters redeeming themselves through some of the dumbest reasonings ever, and so on and so forth. It’s absolute slop. But it’s slop just the way you like it. It’s like going down to the greasy spoon for another artery-clogging meal. You don’t give a shit that you’ve had the same damn thing before. That’s why you’re here! I don’t personally enjoy Black Clover, but I can totally see why so many do.