why is it sooooo short

((
suffered the fate of
many serieṡ during and after the pandemic---premature cancellation, in part due to mass concentration of capital by financiers who continue (to this day) to shift these industries away from artists and fans, to pure market extraction and exploitation, far worse in some/many cases than what was experienced decades ago when the industry was known to be "brutal" on artists. It went from "brutal" to "this is what you get with late stage finance capitalism". =P
In the older days, artists published for far longer. Another issue is that magazine sales have moved online, and ad sales generally dried up and were replaced by Google's monopoly (and related firms), so instead of each publisher getting a meaningful cut for their specific publication whereby artists could have long, steady publication runs where they got to produce meaningful stories---now, the demands are such that readership must be absurdly high or else risk cancellation. It's cannibalizing the very resources that enable "big hits" to exist. Like,
One Piece (amongst other major hit series) didn't start out at "beating global best-sellers for the number 1 manga series of all-time, becoming so influential that they are now used in political movements by younger generations. That sort of thing took twenty something years. Maybe more, since I can't remember the exact year it started, whether before or after 2000. But, unfortunately, greedy rentier finance ghouls want EVERYTHING to be One Piece without enabling the very diversity and time necessary to brew such creations. They want EVERYTHING in the margins, and then they want to MILK those margins dry by whatever means. Like, they want short-term gains that are unsustainable, while also milking long-term economic rents on series, while expecting these industries to flourish during times of such economic hardship that people in many of these countries that were historically major marketplaces, are now struggling just to feed their families [such as the US, and more and more people in Japan who are ending up unhoused]. So, if we look at the economics of manga, what it takes to create GREAT series, particularly the need for heavy investment on the part of editing, collaboration, consultation, etc., and how such finance focused industries focuses on monopolizing existing capital vs investing in new capital and capital expansion/growth [as in, nurturing new growth vs. building walls around existing growth and charging exorbitant economic rents for even limited access to life-giving resources.
If we look at these situations, amongst other related ones, it begins to explain why
SO MANY series got nuked so early.
There's actually a REALLY GOOD in-depth interview with one of the better produced manga series in recent years that got axed when the artist was unable to keep up with the demands of the publisher. Like, imagine you have one of the better selling series get axed because an artist gets sick, rather than temporarily pulled from publication. Like, imagine the 4 artists behind SO SO SO many series, CLAMP, who were NOTORIOUS for going on LONG HIATUS while working on other series. Imagine if they were just NUKED in the cradle for failure to keep up with unrealistic demands! There's no telling HOW MANY of the SOCIETY ALTERING series of manga that are now considered LEGENDARY or CLASSIC or FOUNDATIONAL for particular generations would never have been given the opportunities to flourish. I should also say that this isn't a new trend. We were griping about it over two decades ago in other various industries. Japan has always had its own issues, but it seems like the comic space, at least, for a time, particular in Japan that had such a HARD CORE public integration, now is falling apart along with so much else of society---both locally, in Japan, but also internationally. Western Imperialism, Rentier Finance Capitalism, the whole slew of economic "evils" that drive good content to destruction. It's why worker-owned, controlled, and operated cooperative corporations are so damn important to righting the social economic ship. If people WANT things to change, then we have to actively wrestle power AWAY from financiers and DEMAND, nay, TAKE BACK power by any means necessary, or risk eventually, having most of these series nuked in the cradle.
Likewise, most artists don't produce masterpieces on the first run. MANY spent DECADES developing as artists and writers, fostered by the industry as a whole, who are in more and more recent generations prevented from said opportunities, thereby limiting artists ability to grow and learn, and thereby in so so many cases, resulting in a decline in the sophistication of art and artistry, and human expression. It's actually a common feature of declining societies. We saw it throughout human history that when a society was in deep decline, its artistry suffered on account of a lack of social [let alone, economic] surplus. Manga, in so many ways, is no different.
Another issue is that Western interests [specifically, the Washington Consensus] following COVID/the Pandemic, but starting before that, has become ever more concerned with the level of influence Japanese and East Asian artists/writers have had over Western Audiences, and how [in many many ways] these same Western Power Brokers have been unable to wrestle control for narrative from these Japanese and East Asian artists, or how MUCH of those alternative mediums, such as comics, animation, video games, etc., have held influential, if unintentional, impact on Western Audiences by providing alternatives to Western Dominated [and highly controlled] social narratives in media. You typically don't see the sorts of content presented in western media that is so widespread in much of these alternative spaces [except for what is left of the independent Western comic and artistry scene, which itself has seen a major resurgence of late, and which in either case, was MASSIVELY influenced by East Asian artistry, which itself was MASSIVELY influenced by Western Artistry in the form of Western Comic Books. Manga being a direct repurposing of the Pre-Code through late 20th century comics that in turn were later influenced in major degrees by those East Asian artists responding to their Western Counterparts. It's fascinating to study the history. But, unfortunately, all of us are to some degree suffering when it comes to production. The best way you can support artists and series in general is to directly share the artists' on things like Twitter along with buying the Japanese version of comics on things like Bookwalker. Particularly, if a series is at risk of cancellation, as what determines, historically, the continuation of series, is the sale of
tankōbon.