Koudansha is aggressively headhunting lately.
They got Nakaba Suzuki of Rising Impact and Kongou Bancho fame to launch successfully a new series (Seven Sins)
They got Eri Yamazaki of Themae Romae fame to run Steve Jobs in their Kiss magazine
And now they got Hiromu Arakawa of Fullmetal Alchemist fame in their bessatsu for Legend of Arslan.
With already Shingeki no Kyojin and Aku no Hana under their belt, Bessatu Magazine is starting to rival Young Jump in content.It's not just Jump, they're grabbing talents from all over the industry
Yeah. I was really suprised when Arakawa went to Shogakugan too. Though she did have that small one-shot series through Shogakukan, and also had a very niche autobiography series through a smaller publisher, but other than that she really seemed to be company loyal and always stuck with Square Enix.
With Kodansha getting her now too, I can only assume they definitely are being super aggressive. Haha. I really hope it isn't that Arakawa is just willing to go to the highest bidder though….but I seriously doubt anyone doing a serial weekly and monthly at the same time is only in it for the money, especially when they already have so much.
I always thought of Nakaba Suzuki not really getting bought by Kodansha though, but more that he just left Shogakukan. I believe he was one of the mangaka that left during Shogakukan's major screw-up phase, mainly being a huge loss of art that also caused fellow Shonen Sunday artist Makoto Raiku to jump ship. Raiku moved to Kodansha too and his Animal Land manga in Bessatsu(haha, ok, yeah they're totally head hunting) is one of my favorites. I pray it gets an anime someday.