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NEWS: Shueisha Cancels Publication of act-age Manga


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BrainBlow



Joined: 22 Apr 2013
Posts: 364
PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2020 7:13 am Reply with quote
Ushio wrote:
OH&S wrote:
It's over.

Just focusing on the WSJ side of things, this is a heavy blow for the magazine and everyone involved with the franchise. WSJ needed this series to succeed due to how much of a deviation it was from their atypical shounen series with its female MC and story centered on acting and showbiz.

The series was pretty good as well and an anime adaptation was well within reach after its stage play was announced. This could have lasted 300+ chapters had it been paced right and it was almost guaranteed to be successful. The writer would have been set for life from royalties alone.

All of it squandered.

And for what? Copping a feel on some underage girls while riding a bike he mentioned several times in the author's comment section in the WSJ ToC?

I can't even begin to understand his thought process.



Your exaggerating how popular Act-Age was.

Last 10 ranked chapters

13th out of 18
8th out of 15
3rd out of 15 (One Piece and Dr Stone not ranked)
11th out of 14
13th out of 15
15th out of 17
13th out of 17
11th out of 16
14th out of 17
8th out of 15

Rankings don't measure actual popularity. They are entirely up to the head editor. Tankobon sales are what's important, and Act-Age was doing well.
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Azure-Wind91



Joined: 31 Jul 2013
Posts: 198
Location: South Carolina
PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2020 7:15 am Reply with quote
WSJ shouldn't have to apologize for canceling the series. It was Matsuki's fault it's being canceled. He should be the one apologizing...y'know after he apologizes for what got him in trouble in the first place. Actually did he apologize yet?
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OH&S



Joined: 15 Jul 2013
Posts: 306
Location: Sydney, Australia
PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2020 7:23 am Reply with quote
@dark13 and @Serinox:

I'll admit that I forgot about Medaka Box (let alone the recently concluded The Promised Neverland) but even Medaka had a deuteragonist in Zenkichi. Also I never claimed that having a female MC was "unique". But the combination of female MC and acting is absolutely a deviation from the WSJ norm of the past 10-12 years minimum.

Ushio wrote:
Your exaggerating how popular Act-Age was.


I didn't say anything about its popularity. The only thing I'm exaggerating is how popular it could have been.
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kgw



Joined: 22 Jul 2004
Posts: 1048
Location: Spain, EU
PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2020 7:29 am Reply with quote
I feel bad for the cancelation, but what's done, is done.

Good luck for Shiro Usazaki's next work.

Hey, on the other hand, maybe they can retake Courtains' up, I am off.
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darkchibi07



Joined: 15 Oct 2003
Posts: 5459
PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2020 7:31 am Reply with quote
dark13 wrote:
ah Think you for correcting Smile me but that does show the Act age protagonist wasn't that unique of a concept for weekly shonen jump since they have done it before.


Still, having leading female protagonists are rare as hell on Weekly Shounen Jump, and I would prefer it becomes more of a common thing rather than once-in-a-blue-moon moment.
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uchuushelf



Joined: 30 Jun 2017
Posts: 7
PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2020 7:42 am Reply with quote
Might be worth noting that Viz's Shonen Jump app won't be posting the final chapter either. They've removed the countdown from the series page: https://www.viz.com/shonenjump/chapters/act-age
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el_morris



Joined: 09 May 2018
Posts: 180
Location: Tijuana, México
PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2020 7:51 am Reply with quote
I feel bad for Shiro Usazaki, who's job has suddenly cutted off for the actions of other person, in this case the writer of the manga she was working on. I hope she gets another opportunity, her art is very good.
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I_Drive_DSM



Joined: 11 Feb 2008
Posts: 217
PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2020 8:12 am Reply with quote
Mirvana wrote:
I am interested in how they identified him specifically though. Usually when I think of security cameras in public areas I don't think of a clear/crisp image unless you're literally right on it. Like is his bike pretty distinguishable/unique or something (does Japan have licence plates on bikes...?) At least from what's in the article, it almost looks like if he hadn't molested the 2nd girl, he might not have been caught at all.


Bikes are not required to be tagged, but bikes are generally distinguishable by their construction, ex: a man's bike will be larger, while a bike for a lady often is not only a little smaller but many women carry rear bike seats for kids and such.

Having spent time in Japan, one of the things I came to realize is how much little privacy you can have in larger more congested areas like Tokyo. Think about how Japan is as a whole. Vehicles are for the most part smaller meaning many roads are smaller than say their counterparts in the US, but this also lends itself to more tightly congested paths and throughways in congested urban areas. A camera placed at the corner of a street is going to 'see' a lot more than putting the same camera on an American street corner, as congestion overall is higher.

Another occurrence is Japan is quite often reactionary to crime - typically positive - and the overall accumulation of it results in more surveillance. If say there is an uptick in personal property theft in a particular area neighborhoods and wards will often install more cameras in an area, say on lamp posts or similar. On the same vein though it can be difficult to implement surveillance in areas that really need it. Think molestation on trains. Something like over half of women in Tokyo have reported that they have been victim of some sort of molestation on a train. You can put a camera in cars, but it would be very difficult to see every bit of it (many trains in Tokyo now have women-only cars at peak transit times; a basic move I was glad to see implemented).

I remember when I was in Kyoto for a while I was watching a nightly news story and there was a rash of bikes being stolen in the area. The perp was ID'ed as he was wearing a maintenance vest, but he didn't think to cover up any names or logos. He'd walk up to a bike corral, take the bike, and then be seen on half a dozen cameras in the area in various capacities.
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FireChick
Subscriber



Joined: 26 Mar 2006
Posts: 2385
Location: United States
PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2020 8:53 am Reply with quote
I can't say I'm surprised this happened, given what the author did. It was inevitable, really. I feel bad for the artist, but it's good to know WSJ is taking this somewhat seriously and that Usazaki is getting support from them to a degree. She deserves so much better, and I hope her next work gets her the recognition she deserves.
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
Posts: 1752
PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2020 8:53 am Reply with quote
BrainBlow wrote:
Rankings don't measure actual popularity. They are entirely up to the head editor. Tankobon sales are what's important, and Act-Age was doing well.

Clearly not well enough for Shueisha to keep the series. If enough money had been riding on the manga and related potential projects they would have put it on "indefinite" hiatus, bring it back once things have quieted down, and pretend nothing ever happened (see: Rurouni Kenshin). But if they were willing to cancel it after 12 volumes, it suggests that they had no particular plans for it... so in the end it wasn't popular enough to make an effort to keep it going.

This is sad news for fans of the manga, and of course the poor artist who had nothing to do with the whole thing. Hopefully she'll come out of this with her reputation unharmed, and find new projects.
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Narutofreak1412



Joined: 22 Feb 2015
Posts: 338
PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2020 9:04 am Reply with quote
This is really unfortunate, especially for Shiro Usazaki sensei and Shueisha. I really was hoping they would be able to continue the series with a different writer after a few months break :<
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Nayrael



Joined: 05 Dec 2010
Posts: 23
PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2020 9:10 am Reply with quote
SHD wrote:
BrainBlow wrote:
Rankings don't measure actual popularity. They are entirely up to the head editor. Tankobon sales are what's important, and Act-Age was doing well.

Clearly not well enough for Shueisha to keep the series. If enough money had been riding on the manga and related potential projects they would have put it on "indefinite" hiatus, bring it back once things have quieted down, and pretend nothing ever happened (see: Rurouni Kenshin). But if they were willing to cancel it after 12 volumes, it suggests that they had no particular plans for it... so in the end it wasn't popular enough to make an effort to keep it going.


It did pretty well: ToC rankings were not the bets but they weren't bad, Tankobon sales have to be taken into consideration, it was nominated for awards, and there were expectations that an Anime adaptation could greatly boost it's popularity.
But it's success would not protect it.

Unlike the American publishing houses, the Publisher does NOT own the works they publish. So even if they wanted to continue it, the big question is if they really could: if the writer owns Act-Age, there's not much they can do. Since they said that they came to the conclusion they could not continue it after talking with the illustrator, it's possible that the arrested writer really is the owner of the story.

Also, reputation is extremely important in Japan (much more so than in the west where it's ignored if the profit is good). Avoiding that bad rep is another reason for cancelling it.
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Beatdigga



Joined: 26 Oct 2003
Posts: 4352
Location: New York
PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2020 9:29 am Reply with quote
You know, this is a pretty fast turnaround, which is one of the positives of SJ being so competitive. There’s probably at least 10 people chomping at the bit for the open slot.
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LegitPancake



Joined: 26 Jun 2017
Posts: 1291
Location: Texas, USA
PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2020 9:45 am Reply with quote
I wonder what’s been happening in the last two months in mid June that this happened. Why did he just now get arrested and why didn’t we hear about it sooner? Maybe it took the authorities that long to identify him in the cameras? Just wondering...
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2530
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2020 9:50 am Reply with quote
SHD wrote:
If enough money had been riding on the manga and related potential projects they would have put it on "indefinite" hiatus, bring it back once things have quieted down, and pretend nothing ever happened (see: Rurouni Kenshin).


While they both involve inexcusable actions, Tatsuya Matsuki & Nobuhiro Watsuki are very different situations. Watsuki was already a legend when he was caught, with Rurouni Kenshin being what helped keep Jump afloat after Dragon Ball & Slam Dunk both ended; Kenshin was literally the last "Golden Age" manga to end, after all. Also, Kenshin: Hokkaido Arc runs in Jump Square, an offshoot magazine that doesn't have as much mainstream notoriety in Japan, so Shueisha (unfortunately) had two excuses it could make when it came to Watsuki's punishment: Kenshin was "too big" to just kill off (it still is getting multimedia stuff, after all), and it's current manga was in a smaller magazine that fewer people read. Sad to have to say, but it's true.

Matsuki, on the other hand, is essentially a nobody. Act-Age is his first ever serialization, & it ran in Weekly Shonen Jump itself. There's no possible way Shueisha could give Matsuki the Watsuki treatment in this circumstance, since Matsuki didn't have even a sliver of the clout Watsuki had earned, and this was the main magazine itself, which everyone in Japan knew of; there was no sweeping this under the rug. I see Matsuki getting the Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro (& Takeshi!) treatment here, i.e. the manga gets cancelled immediately (which has now happened), & Matsuki is essentially banned from working with Shonen Jump. if he wants to continue writing manga, if any artist would even be willing to work with him anymore, he'll have to deal with magazines meant specifically for adults that don't get anywhere near the readership Shonen Jump gets. He likely won't ever be allowed anywhere near a magazine for younger readers ever again.

Yes, Shimabukuro did return to Shonen Jump with Toriko, but that was after SIX YEARS of banishment (during which all he did was a short & forgotten series in Super Jump & a quick & dirty finish to Takeshi), and even then he needed Eiichiro Oda to vouch that he had changed before he could even get given a second chance. I highly doubt Matsuki is BFFs with the biggest & most respected mangaka in Jump today, so he may never be given a second chance, in this case.
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