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Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Do So Many Manga Artists Have Health Problems?
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2589 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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Another great example, though one that's not known of outside of Japan (understandably) would be artist Norihiro Nakajima, While making over-the-top baseball manga Team Astro for Shonen Jump during the 70s, he constantly pushed himself to his limits, with both his son & even Shinji Hiramatsu (who was one of his assistants) revealing that Nakajima suffered from hair loss, hives, his hands swelling up, & vomiting, and he was even once forced Shueisha to literally stop the presses so that he wouldn't miss a deadline (he then had to sign an affidavit promising to never do that again). Nakajima would continue drawing manga after finishing Team Astro in 1976 until he had a cerebral hemorrhage in 1985, upon which he was forced to retire, outside of two shorts he managed to make in 1989 & 1998, before passing away in 2014 of colon cancer at 64. While on the one hand it is remarkable how much Nakajima was willing to push himself to continue drawing manga for people to read, finding out about how much be actually suffered because of the pure grind the manga industry can put its mangaka through is also very sobering. I'm glad that mangaka are slowly being allowed more leniency in general today. |
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Shay Guy
 Posts: 2168 |
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I'll be honest, the only reason I've even heard of this is reading your writings on Ring ni Kakero. |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2589 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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And I first heard of it when Jason Thompson mentioned it at the start of his House of 1,000 Manga article about Saint Seiya way back when, here on ANN! Life is just a giant circle, at times. |
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MagicPolly
 Posts: 1601 |
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Some stories that come out about mangaka are really scary. Last year when Kaori Yuki was hospitalized she said she was in danger of losing her life at one point. Kazuya Minekura said she didn't think that continuing to draw manga was a good idea after she lost part of her jawbone in surgery since it's lead to many other complications.
I guess they just have a devotion to their art, but it's really more concerning than anything to see these stories. And Kaori Yuki just started a new manga this year too. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5423 |
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Aside from deadlines, another major issue seems to be that the bulk of the work, or in some cases the entire work, where I can imagine having more assistants can leave the most important jobs, story and storyboarding to the creator and the burden of backgrounds and inking can be lessened by more hands. Though nowadays some Mangaka, maybe even a lot going by Re:Creators, use graphic tablets which can only make working conditions worse as you now have the add issue of staring ta screen all day, and those pens aren't easy on the fingers too if you have small hands.
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Zimmer
Posts: 187 |
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The self entitlement some people have when a series takes even a week off is insufferable.
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zztop
Posts: 647 |
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Could the seasonal breaks method used by Korean webtoons help in alleviating the overwork and health issues faced by Japanese mangaka?
Where in Korea, their webtoons will usually release weekly but then stop on break for several months after so many chapters, for the creators to rest/plan out their next plotting moves/etc. |
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LadonTree
Posts: 24 |
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Hunter X Hunter immediately comes to mind...
Manga writers have it rough, with creative work, deadlines, and the culture of overwork see in Japan. Hope the feel more comfortable taking time off in modern times. You can't do your best work if your health is poor, so no point sacrificing health to rush out work. |
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SHD
Posts: 1752 |
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I don't think it's necessarily about their devotion to their art, but more like... needing to put food on the table.  Such is the life of underpaid freelancers. (As a translator, I know this from experience...) Artists who just want to draw can self-publish on pixiv/etc. and many of them do, although a lot of them do so out of necessity, not having a contract with a magazine/platform where they could earn a bit from their work. But mangaka who make their living from their manga can't really afford to just take time off and not work. Even if they have a partner, that partner needs to earn very well to be able to counterbalance such a loss of regular income.
This is also one reason why there are no breaks like with webtoons - that would necessarily mean the mangaka not getting paid for however long the break is. Also, correct me if I'm wrong here, but from what I know most webtoon artists are either not working on a single series at any given time, webtoons are not their primary way of making money (obviously I'm not talking about the huge breakout hits, those are always different), or they have a partner/family/etc. that can support them financially even during times when they're not actively working. But also - from what I know, these webtoons are not created week-by-week in real time, and so webtoon artists prepare for these breaks by working ahead like crazy, and then spend a lot of the breaks by, again, working ahead so that the platform has enough chapters to release. Another problem with breaks is that the market is very saturated at this point, and I understand the fear editors (and I assume artists) have of losing the audience's interest if a series just disappears for months. From the magazine's POV it's potential loss of readership as well (someone who's only buying Mag X for one or two particular manga series may just stop buying if one of them goes on a break, and say "eh, I'll just buy the tankoubons"), and then if they try to "replace" a series on break with something similar that would keep readers there, they risk cannibalization... I wonder if this is going to change with the rise of digital platforms, where readers have much more freedom in what they read and when.
Graphic tablets do make things easier, at least going by what mangaka say/imply. For one, staring at a screen is honestly not all that worse than staring at piece paper from a point-blank distance in unnatural lighting, your eyes are going to strain either way. Two, tablets and software do make creating art faster - if you mess up something you can easily fix it instead of having to start over, "coloring"/patterns are easier to apply, compositions are easier to create and modify, even backgrounds and settings are much easier to create, especially with something like Procreate, etc. I'm not saying it makes art easier to create, but it saves one a ton of manual work. I follow many mangaka on Twitter who regularly share their art creation processes, and I don't think there's more than a tiny handful who don't use tablets regularly. I don't think they'd use tablets if they found them worse than the traditional methods. |
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Meongantuk
 Posts: 355 |
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A lot of Japanese webcomics also use the seasonal format. While they do help, it takes time (for months to literal years) to prepare, even then there's no guarantee your readers still follow your work after long hiatus or the contract will still allow you to continue. Also Webtoon publishers/studios are often contracted the artist for one season unless the work is popular enough or based on popular properties. So the break isn't necessarily enough to mitigate the workload... Not really a problem for the studios since they usually just replace the broken artists anyway. |
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Tenbyakugon
 Posts: 794 Location: Ohio, United States |
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The reason for the very most of the world’s major health problems is sedentary work.
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Covnam
 Posts: 3746 |
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As much as I want the next chapter "now now now, gimme gimme gimme", weekly series should probably be limited to only 3 out of 4 weeks per month without any changes to page count or pay to give them more time to work and rest. Make it flexible too so they can take the off week as needed.
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Scion Drake
Posts: 950 |
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Thinking about this compared to how western comics are made, while I hear plenty of trouble comic artists go through, I can't think or recall any instance of an actual overworking.
Its interesting. We really should look into these publishing schedules and try to figure out a healthier way so artists aren't so constantly overworked. At very least more vacation time and longer breaks. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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The rookie artist adapting the “reincarnated as a Phoenix” (Fushichou e no Tensei) light novel quit after only 5 chapters citing physical/mental health issues (“心身の不調により終了”, although this wording was later removed from their site and I think they deleted their tweets about it too). The manga was cancelled and never had a volume release.
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