Japanese manga artist Kazumata Oguri, whose comedy series Hanasaka Tenshi Tenten-kun was serialized in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump and adapted into an anime, recently talked about what it was like writing for the magazine during the 90s.
In a personal blog post published via note on July 17, Oguri says that around the time his series’ anime adaptation entered its second season, he found his health steadily deteriorating due to autonomic dysfunction and chronic sleep deprivation. Once he started to experience symptoms like eye twitching and temporary loss of vision, he consulted with his editor (a “Mr. M”) about going on hiatus with the manga, suspecting the stress and fatigue were causing his problems.
However, Oguri says his editor would not allow him to take a break. Since he saw more successful peers around him like One Piece author Eiichiro Oda go on hiatuses, Oguri committed himself to making his manga more popular so that he may be granted a break too.
He subsequently succeeded in doing so, ranking No. 2 in Jump’s reader survey charts thanks to a clever cliffhanger he came up with out of desperation. Oguri’s manga came second only to One Piece, but the author confessed that this was a “one time miracle” that was only possible due to Yoshihiro Togashi’s Hunter x Hunter being on hiatus that same week.
Moreover, after this peak, Oguri says he was faced with waning popularity and two failed story arcs, which came as a big blow to him emotionally. Throughout the whole ordeal, he was still not allowed to go on hiatus.
While it’s known that mangaka in Japan, particularly those writing for weekly publications, face grueling working conditions and even power harassment (which authors have increasingly been speaking out about), certain accounts from Oguri seem to suggest things at Jump were quite different depending on the author’s assigned editor. For example, he mentions being envious of Naruto author Masashi Kishimoto, who was allowed to submit his storyboards in parts, as he completed them, while Oguri himself was forced to submit only full storyboards.
Ultimately, the author says he faced intensifying medical issues and trouble at his studio, which he plans to write about in detail in future blog entries on his note profile.
