Chiisai Boku no Haru - Vol. 2 Ch. 16 - I Will

[MangaDex]

 

[Mangamoz]

Ah damn so it's gonna go into hiatus huh?

I knew the pacing felt too rushed, so that's why.

Hope the author's health issues get better, and that their company transfer goes along well.

 

[Nexxurio]

Hiatus

 

[mgRdr]

BokuYaba and Discount BokuYaba released on MangaDex on the same day?
jk, Chiisai Boku no Haru is very different from BokuYaba at this point, with its own strong points

 

[HartSkai]

Our MC is such a Chad now, he's growing up too quickly

 

[Kaduufrrj]

Get well Sensei. Is the magazine to which the manga will be transferred monthly or fortnightly?

 

[xyzzy]

If I had a nickel for every time a Weekly Shonen Sunday title transferred to Webry after a hiatus due to the weekly crunch being detrimental to the author’s health, I would have two nickels

Which is two nickels too much

 

[Kaduufrrj]

If I had a nickel for every time a Weekly Shonen Sunday title transferred to Webry after a hiatus due to the weekly crunch being detrimental to the author’s health, I would have two nickels

Which is two nickels too much

Is Webry monthly or fortnightly?

 

[Hicleric]

'tis the season to announce delays and shifts in schedules. Can't really blame them but it is a bit frustrating as a reader when I just wanna know what shenanigans are around the corner

 

[xyzzy]

Is Webry monthly or fortnightly?

Looking at the site, it’s basically Shogakukan’s equivalent to Jump+/Manga Plus. So some series are weekly, others biweekly. Some Gessan titles (another magazine) are monthly.

So in other words, it’s whatever the author is comfortable with doing.

 

[unnamederror]

hey taiyou, hey taiyou

 

[shinshom]

Hiatus now... and I was with hopes it would improve =(....

 

[Darkshade13]

I get why it won't happen, culturally speaking, but the manga industry needs some serious overhauls. The number of mangaka that end up working themselves to sickness or death is far too many. Even if someone were to say "well there's only maybe a dozen examples of medical-induced hiatus in the last year where there's been, say, 200 titles released. So that's like only 6%." it's still 6% too much. If your industry is basically forcing people to neglect or damage their health for the sake of of the product that's bad. That it's for something as inconsequential in the grand scheme of things as comics, that's a jillion times worse.

I don't think you ever hear this happening in western comics, or at least to anywhere close to the same degree. But somehow people get themselves sick because they have to do multiple all-nighters fueled by nothing more than red bull and cup ramen to get their works out on time and the industry just sort of goes "shrug. If you don't want to get sick then you just have to work harder to meet your deadlines." like it's no big deal.

 

[Gorrible]

Hiatus? damn bummer

 

[ikevinz77]

He mentioned he is getting better and the move to a digital magazine would give him a much more flexible time to work on deadlines so i guess it’s great for him

 

[mgRdr]

I don't think you ever hear this happening in western comics, or at least to anywhere close to the same degree. But somehow people get themselves sick because they have to do multiple all-nighters fueled by nothing more than red bull and cup ramen to get their works out on time and the industry just sort of goes "shrug. If you don't want to get sick then you just have to work harder to meet your deadlines." like it's no big deal.

I, like, completely disagree with the comparison to western comics industry. Manga industry, in a sense, is ultra-capitalist, in that a mangaka owns the rights to their works, but at the same time they are the ones mostly responsible for their financial success (or failure). Manga publishers do not have money freely lying around to sponsor a project they wouldn't be able to fully own, and so it is up to the mangaka to deliver a good manga in agreed-upon timeframe. Western comics industry, for the most part and to my understandig, is mostly a few big publishers who own their copyrights in their entirety. They have bigger budgets to throw at professional artists whom they can give regular 9-to-5 jobs to work on their smaller pool of copyrighted works. If you were to try implement western model, well for one it might not be too compatible with Japanese copyright laws, and I don't see corporatization of the manga industry as a better change, we would lose too much of its intrinsic qualities we came to enjoy.

 

[Darkshade13]

I, like, completely disagree with the comparison to western comics industry. Manga industry, in a sense, is ultra-capitalist, in that a mangaka owns the rights to their works, but at the same time they are the ones mostly responsible for their financial success (or failure). Manga publishers do not have money freely lying around to sponsor a project they wouldn't be able to fully own, and so it is up to the mangaka to deliver a good manga in agreed-upon timeframe. Western comics industry, for the most part and to my understandig, is mostly a few big publishers who own their copyrights in their entirety. They have bigger budgets to throw at professional artists whom they can give regular 9-to-5 jobs to work on their smaller pool of copyrighted works. If you were to try implement western model, well for one it might not be too compatible with Japanese copyright laws, and I don't see corporatization of the manga industry as a better change, we would lose too much of its intrinsic qualities we came to enjoy.

I'm mostly talking about how they manage employee workloads. The industry (which in a sense includes the artists/writers, the publishers, and the consumers) have created such an overbearing, frothing-at-the-mouth level of demand that mangaka work themselves to death (or at least through serious health issues that they should address) because they need to get a big chapter out every week or month or whatever and there's very much a sense of "if you can't keep the pace up you can just as easily be replaced by another author and their work" unless you're someone who's got the stature or clout of a massive series or string of successes. There's also often a sort of unspoken sense that if you've got something people are reading you "owe" it to them to push through your own issues and keep giving it to them. It's the downside of that collectivist mindset that allows companies to guilt the people doing work into neglecting themselves because they matter less than the success of the group or the happiness of the audience.

I don't think you need to switch to a system whereby publishers own the rights to the characters a la Marvel or DC and the writers and artists are like freelancers or contract workers. But they need to do something that stops the sort of socially-mandated overwork mindset that lets all these mangaka seriously impact their health in the name of their work. Whether it's subsidizing additional assistants to help lighten the individual workload, setting page limits for weekly/bi-weekly/monthly series (as much as we whinge when a monthly series puts out a 15-20 page chapter, I can't imagine how much some artists are killing themselves putting out 50+ pages a month in a highly detailed art style), mandated seasonal breaks (like a TV series, publish for 9-10 months a year and have a couple of months where the series goes on break with backup-filler series. Hell, use those spots to test run new artists and ideas to see if any of them catch on and are worth getting a major serialization spot.) or even just mandated health checks that take some of the responsibility (and shame) out of the person's hands so that they can figure out if someone is having serious issues before the spiral.

Obviously it all costs money and time and I'm sure the industry would rather take a "this is fine. it's not that big of a deal" attitude like they always have because it's easier to ignore the problem than it is to fix it.

Just as an example, this is a piece from a couple years ago about the state of the working conditions in the manga industry in the wake of the death of the author of Berserk:

https://www.cbr.com/manga-industry-burnout/

That is insane. True it's probably not like that everywhere. But it shouldn't be like that anywhere. The price we pay for quality entertainment from creative people should never be as high as their very lives.

 

[buffalosauce]

I'm mostly talking about how they manage employee workloads. The industry (which in a sense includes the artists/writers, the publishers, and the consumers) have created such an overbearing, frothing-at-the-mouth level of demand that mangaka work themselves to death (or at least through serious health issues that they should address) because they need to get a big chapter out every week or month or whatever and there's very much a sense of "if you can't keep the pace up you can just as easily be replaced by another author and their work" unless you're someone who's got the stature or clout of a massive series or string of successes. There's also often a sort of unspoken sense that if you've got something people are reading you "owe" it to them to push through your own issues and keep giving it to them. It's the downside of that collectivist mindset that allows companies to guilt the people doing work into neglecting themselves because they matter less than the success of the group or the happiness of the audience.

I don't think you need to switch to a system whereby publishers own the rights to the characters a la Marvel or DC and the writers and artists are like freelancers or contract workers. But they need to do something that stops the sort of socially-mandated overwork mindset that lets all these mangaka seriously impact their health in the name of their work. Whether it's subsidizing additional assistants to help lighten the individual workload, setting page limits for weekly/bi-weekly/monthly series (as much as we whinge when a monthly series puts out a 15-20 page chapter, I can't imagine how much some artists are killing themselves putting out 50+ pages a month in a highly detailed art style), mandated seasonal breaks (like a TV series, publish for 9-10 months a year and have a couple of months where the series goes on break with backup-filler series. Hell, use those spots to test run new artists and ideas to see if any of them catch on and are worth getting a major serialization spot.) or even just mandated health checks that take some of the responsibility (and shame) out of the person's hands so that they can figure out if someone is having serious issues before the spiral.

Obviously it all costs money and time and I'm sure the industry would rather take a "this is fine. it's not that big of a deal" attitude like they always have because it's easier to ignore the problem than it is to fix it.

Just as an example, this is a piece from a couple years ago about the state of the working conditions in the manga industry in the wake of the death of the author of Berserk:

https://www.cbr.com/manga-industry-burnout/

That is insane. True it's probably not like that everywhere. But it shouldn't be like that anywhere. The price we pay for quality entertainment from creative people should never be as high as their very lives.

i fully agree with you on all points. there's no entertainment product that is worth human suffering. i wish more fans cared about the treatment of the people who create the things they like. for me, how could i call myself someone's fan (be it a mangaka, pop star, streamer, actor, athlete, whatever) and not care about that person's wellbeing? it sucks so much enjoyment out of something to know that the person doing it is miserable.

 

[ARealCoolGuy]

Manga industry, in a sense, is ultra-capitalist, in that a mangaka owns the rights to their works, but at the same time they are the ones mostly responsible for their financial success (or failure)...

True, unlike with western comics such as superman, there can't be a discussion on Dragonball with mentioning its creator Akira Toriyama. However you seem oddly sympathetic to the publisher when they're the main cause of the Authors' poor health. They may not have money lying around for any old project, but that 'agreed upon time frame' is horrifically and dangerously short. These time frames only encourage the reckless behaviour of the author's to meet the deadline, not to even mention the fact that it seem the publisher's are quite happy to allow the authors to ruin themselves so long as they continue getting what they want.

You may then argue that the author can just go to a different publisher since they may still own their work (somewhat dubious, but let's assume that is the case), but it's well known how Japan operates; if an author left or got dropped, another publication is not going to pick them up (bar the series being something like one piece, or dragonball). So leaving for better working conditions is going to work, but only in so far that you'll have nothing but free time because you're unemployed.

So publishers both sides of the pond suck, and while the consumers are getting slop here and Japan's publisher's seem to have finer tastes, good taste seemingly comes at the cost of their authors lives.

 

[themanthemyth]

bro is fr crying