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The Not so Chosen One wrote:

and then having people like you expect us to not say anything, no matter how justified the reasons are for his hiatuses.

Yes, we can expect people like you to not say anything. It's called "being respectful" & "not being self-entitled". Trust me, I get it. I'm a fan of Kazushi Hagiwara, who hasn't made a new chapter of Bastard!! since 2010, & Masami Kurumada, who also has moved into "inconsistent volume-length runs, due to medical problems", yet I respect both of them & don't complain about how they aren't continuing to just make more manga just appease people like me.

I'd rather these mangaka have healthy lives than literally kill themselves trying to continue drawing manga consistently, just so that needy fans can be pleased. The manga industry, especially the weekly publications, are simply put a self-destructive slog for the mangaka themselves, so when someone becomes so successful that they gain the ability & right to work on their own terms & at their own pace, I celebrate them for that, because they deserve it. I don't want any of them dying like Osamu Tezuka did, who literally begged his nurse that he be allowed to continue drawing as his final words.

Quote:

He could outsource the drawing, since his art has been so bad given his health reasons, that anyone he could bring in to draw the manga could only be an improvement

The whole "Togashi's art now sucks!" thing only applies to the original serialized version of his later chapters, as he does go through the extra work to properly finish them up for the collected volumes. Sure, you could argue that maybe his style in general isn't what it once was & has changed with time, but that's simply personal opinion whether you like it or not at that point, not a definitive fact that he's gotten worse at drawing.

Could Togashi hire someone else to draw for him? Sure, but I can't actually recall anything like that ever happening when it came to a manga, at least with a highly successful one. Sure, other people have made sequels/continuations to another person's work, usually after they passed away, but manga has always been unique to comics in that once someone starts a series, they're the only ones to ever really continue making it. It's why Kentaro Miura's staff may not ever continue making more Berserk.

Last edited by v1cious on Wed May 25, 2022 1:58 pm; edited 2 times in total

Zeino wrote:

Look, Togashi. I know you do Hunter x Hunter now whenever you just feel like it. But it be nice if you could do it at a consistent rate.

If your wife was the creator of Sailor Moon, would you spend your free time worrying about a grueling schedule? I think it's time for Hunter X Hunter fans to accept that he's just not hungry anymore, literally and metaphorically.

Be happy he's still alive and cares for his fans enough to post something, that he has not forgotten and still loves what he does. I blown away by some of the comments on here. Understand the struggle of dealing with debilitating pain is like. Togashi owes you nothing.
I'm just thrilled he's set a Twitter up and is doing alright.

MushroomMan674 wrote:

The love for this man and his manga is incredible. Literally made a Twitter account and a tweet today, and he's already up to nearly 1M followers and god knows how many retweets and likes.

One can only hope that the insane growth he's getting tells him how much we love his story. Maybe it'll convince him to consider considering vetting for and hiring assistant artists (like Miura did). Maybe also asking for a quarterly release schedule, rather than weekly once he can release stuff.

lossthief wrote:

Zeino wrote:

But I've never seen it fully confirmed one way or another beyond rumors. I think it's more likely that he just doesn't want to ever again suffer the sheer burnout that he got at the end of Yu Yu Hakusho,

Then you apparently haven't been looking very far, because Togashi has been remarkably public about his health problems over the years, especially about his back issues. Multiple times in his own author comments he mentioned severe, debilitating back pain. To quote some of his comments from HxH chapters in 2016:

Quote:

The worst part of back pain is that it's only after it gets a little better that you can go to the hospital

Quote:

Stuck in bed -> crawl on all fours -> Find help -> Struggle to get up and go to the hospital

Along with those are multiple comments about being bedridden and unable to even sit up to use the toilet. At the start of one hiatus, he said outright that the break was for him to undergo back surgery.

So yeah, I think it's a whole hell of a lot more likely that over a decade of chronic, debilitating pain and disability are the cause of Togashi's output, not him only working on it "when he feels like it."

Then he should either end it or get assistants (like Miura did).

Casval Rem Deikun wrote:

Be happy he's still alive and cares for his fans enough to post something, that he has not forgotten and still loves what he does. I blown away by some of the comments on here. Understand the struggle of dealing with debilitating pain is like. Togashi owes you nothing.
I'm just thrilled he's set a Twitter up and is doing alright.

I understand not constantly complaining. I do, because I don't. There's other stuff to read and watch. He's dealing with severe chronic back pain. He can release whenever he can.

However, how does he owe his fans nothing? That's makes no sense. Without a loyal audience to spend money and love one's work, one doesn't get the benefits of their work. Respect is a two way street, is it not. We should respect him and his situation. He should also respect the audience that still cares about him and his work. Clearly he thinks so, that's why he created a twitter to personally update his fans.

He doesn't need to release weekly, when he's up to it either. A quarterly schedule would be easier on him. A team of assistants, that he can oversee and review their work, would make sense. To ease his burden, since he still clearly wants to do the work despite his pain. I want more, but I'm not going to praise a dude for killing himself when he's got the pull and means to help himself. That's a horrible example and precedent that only perpetuates the terrible job culture in Japan.

So yeah, I want HxH to continue and clearly so does Togashi. I don't want the dude to suffer while doing so. It'd be healthier for him to just end it, but he doesn't want to. As long as he doesn't end it, and keeps putting out greatness, people will question why he doesn't take steps to make working easier for himself.

HeWhoSlapsAll wrote:

One can only hope that the insane growth he's getting tells him how much we love his story. Maybe it'll convince him to consider considering vetting for and hiring assistant artists (like Miura did). Maybe also asking for a quarterly release schedule, rather than weekly once he can release stuff.

Togashi is under no obligations to hire assistants. Reading some of the selfish replies in this thread makes me wish Togashi didn't bring it back because his "fans" don't deserve it.
.

HeWhoSlapsAll wrote:

However, how does he owe his fans nothing?

He's been making manga since 1986, serialized manga since 1989, & has produced two of the most iconic Shonen Jump properties of all time, Yu Yu Hakusho & Hunter x Hunter, in the process... And yet he STILL "owes his fans"?

That's selfish thinking, because he's given the fans more than enough; anything else he gives at this point is a gift. If there's anything fans are "owed", it's official English releases of his other two serialized works, Ten de Showaru Cupid & Level E, as well as his collection of one-shots Okami Nante Kowakunai!! (which I will now always translate as "I Ain't Afriad of No Wolf!!"). If you want to complain to someone when it comes to Yoshihiro Togashi, then complain to Viz for seemingly refusing to release the remainder of Togashi's catalog, instead preferring to literally not release anything in the four years since Hunter x Hunter last went on hiatus. As a fan of his works, wouldn't you be pleased with simply MORE of his manga, even if it's not more HxH?

Togashi himself doesn't owe anything anything, because he's already long made his mark in history. To assume that he still does just shows that, in some people's minds, he'll NEVER stop owing fans, because they'll never be content with what they got.

Lord Geo wrote:

If there's anything fans are "owed", it's official English releases of his other two serialized works, Ten de Showaru Cupid & Level E, as well as his collection of one-shots Okami Nante Kowakunai!! (which I will now always translate as "I Ain't Afriad of No Wolf!!"). If you want to complain to someone when it comes to Yoshihiro Togashi, then complain to Viz for seemingly refusing to release the remainder of Togashi's catalog,

Was there ever a Japanese re-release for them? I only know of Level E through the anime from 11 years ago but if that one did then sure, there's a reason to complain, especially when Viz have licensed other older manga and using recent re-release editions for them.

lossthief wrote:

Zeino wrote:

But I've never seen it fully confirmed one way or another beyond rumors. I think it's more likely that he just doesn't want to ever again suffer the sheer burnout that he got at the end of Yu Yu Hakusho,

Then you apparently haven't been looking very far, because Togashi has been remarkably public about his health problems over the years, especially about his back issues. Multiple times in his own author comments he mentioned severe, debilitating back pain. To quote some of his comments from HxH chapters in 2016:

Quote:

The worst part of back pain is that it's only after it gets a little better that you can go to the hospital

Quote:

Stuck in bed -> crawl on all fours -> Find help -> Struggle to get up and go to the hospital

Along with those are multiple comments about being bedridden and unable to even sit up to use the toilet. At the start of one hiatus, he said outright that the break was for him to undergo back surgery.

So yeah, I think it's a whole hell of a lot more likely that over a decade of chronic, debilitating pain and disability are the cause of Togashi's output, not him only working on it "when he feels like it."

I’ll also add, as someone who suffers from exponentially less severe chronic pain, that even just thinking when you’re always in pain is harder. Like, most days I average a 3-4 on a 10-point pain scale - never entirely unaware of it, usually able to complete daily activities. If it gets a bit worse than that, it takes active effort to think about anything else, even daydreaming. Being awake and alert is physically exhausting. Sleep is worse because of the pain, even on fairly good days by my standards.

On most versions of the ten-point scale I’ve seen that try and put some kind of context to the numbers (because chronic pain sufferers tend to UNDERRATE our pain, since we’re used to functioning with a little bit of constant misery and sure this is bad but getting bitten by a bear is probably worse,) once you get around an 8 it becomes actively difficult to listen or talk - it’s just that much harder to focus, and depending on where your pain is talking may well exacerbate it. Togashi reports 10s in more than one note, and that one about it needing to get LESS SEVERE to go to the hospital. Now, no one’s fully standardized those descriptions even in English, I have no idea what if any descriptions would accompany those numbers in Japan, but that first one? A 10, easy. All of the notes I’ve seen him discuss his health in, I’d rank in the 9-10 range. So even hiring assistants to work on it may not be feasible, because even with extensive notes he’d still need to approve or critique a page and that isn’t always doable with that severe pain.

I hope he’s returning because he got a treatment plan that’s working and has figured out a stable way to do something he clearly loves. I do not blame him for being unable to work, even in a more supervisory role, when the pain he’s reporting is ‘I can’t even move a centimeter’ bad. (From another note.)

ATastySub wrote:

“Critical of an author’s behavior” is not what you’re doing. You’re complaining that a man has the audacity to be suffering from crippling pain and not putting you first. That’s plain old shitty entitlement where your enjoyment is above humanity. You are not entitled to eternal consumption. There are plenty of other things for you to devour while believing yourself the center of the universe. Stories go unfinished all the time for a variety of reasons, and if you supposedly give a damn about them and care for them then you understand that’s a part of storytelling. Seeing these kind of reactions for an announcement when he *is continuing that work* makes me wonder why he bothers at all, because this is so callous and cruel for no reason. The amount that he loves his work and still continues to do it when he can is testament that he’s able to overlook or more likely, in spite of, seeing such terrible things said about him for the mere crime of making something people like. It’s frankly amazing that you say you can’t respect someone while saying.

Yeah, I'm not the center of the universe, so your condescending temper tantrum pointing that out doesn't have any effect at all. He has a responsibility with his fans about the story he's telling, specially if he's writing some serialized like manga. He could cancel it; he could outsource the drawing, but he's still giving us four chapters every four years. Sure, he won't respond to whatever complaints me or other fans have around his schedule, but they're very legitimate when even his editors have presented him with options to continue the story that he doesn't want to take, yet they still cater to him.

ATastySub wrote:

as if someone saying that has any respect to give.

You're right, I can't respect authors like these.

HueyLion wrote:

Just please...please don't let this turn into a "Berserk" situation.

It will.Hell,after Miura died,why should I even care whether HxH will end or not?it won't change the fact that Berserk will never end,so I decided to just stop caring about HxH anymore.

The Not so Chosen One wrote:

He has a responsibility with his fans about the story he's telling

No. He owes us nothing.

If you pay for the product, you are owed whatever you paid for. That's it. Don't confuse your desires for his obligations.

It sucks that he can't make Hunter x Hunter at the rate he, his publisher, and his fans would all like him to be able to. But that's just how it is.

I'm sure some have gotten so frustrated with the hiatuses that they've lost interest. And they're not in the wrong. But neither is he.

He just tweeted 40 minutes ago and it already has more than 160k likes. Likely going to break 2m followers in the next few hours.

This comment thread really says a lot, doesn't it Rolling Eyes

Last edited by TheRahi00 on Thu May 26, 2022 2:34 am; edited 1 time in total

The Not so Chosen One wrote:

He has a responsibility with his fans about the story he's telling

Literally, what are you even talking about, holy shit. What is this made up responsibility that you are talking about ? He could announce today that the manga is over, and nothing would change. He doesn't owe us anything, we don't owe him anything, this relationship has no rules like that.

Also, the people here (and elsewhere) that talk about how Togashi should just give his work to someone else, are legit insane. I have (!) to assume that none of the people who say such things are artists, because there is no way you'd say something like that otherwise. You are really asking an artist to give away their story, their art, their characters, their everything to someone else just so they can continue ? That's just ridiculous. I'm an artist, and know many artists, and I can't think of anyone who would be willing to do that, especially when it's such a personal project. Of course getting assistants to help is a different topic, but even here, I can 100% respect and understand it, if he wants to do everything on his own, and he has every right to. It's really sad that this even needs to be said. I've heard and seen fans entitlement before, but I'll never get used to it. The sheer audacity is just baffling.

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NEWS: Yoshihiro Togashi Teases Hunter x Hunter Manga's Return with 4 New Chapters