World Trigger - Volume 19 Extras Part 4/4

From Hiatus to Return

Thank you very much for buying World Trigger volume 19. World Trigger entered a long-term hiatus between the 2016 50th Issue of Weekly Shounen Jump and the 2018 47th Issue (according to Wikipedia), and during that time I received a lot of encouragement and letters worrying over me from the fans, so I thought I would explain the course of events from hiatus to return to transfer here.

The reason for the hiatus is because I damaged my neck, but in the first place I believe it was due to how I recklessly took on too much work (besides the weekly manuscript) without considering my capacity, and then not being able to properly cut corners (conserve energy) on those subsidiary jobs.

After I damaged my neck, for a time I was given a week’s rest every 4 to 5 issues to deal with it, but the symptoms gradually grew worse. A high quality pain penetrated through the painkillers and spread from my neck to my back and head, there were more times when I couldn’t get up, manuscripts were delayed, and the result was that I entered a dark downward spiral where I had to push myself even further, drinking energy drinks every 2 hours to force my body to move in the style of a doping enemy from a sports manga to do my work. Perhaps because of that, I was becoming more and more worn down mentally, my eyes were spinning and in the end I was having trouble speaking.

Sensing my evil aura, my editor put a stop to it, and it was decided I would go on an indefinite hiatus.

According to my manager, it seems I have a habit of acting cool in front of my editor, and there were several times when I would say ‘I. Can. Do. It. Somehow. Probably.’ Even though I was kind of on the verge of death. So if my editor hadn’t stopped me here then there was the chance it could have gotten even worse. Nice work, editor.

For about a month after starting the hiatus, I pretty much lived on my back. From the 2nd month, I was able to get up for about 4, 5 hours a day, and from the 3rd month I could move around for about half a day.

Because I became unable to ride inside anything after damaging my neck (I would get dizzy after about 15 minutes from the pain in my neck), it was about 6 months into the hiatus that I could be properly looked at in a hospital.

I went to several different hospitals, but all the doctors said the same things: ‘if you continue the treatment and keep resting, you will keep getting better’, ‘for now, it’s important not to push yourself in the future. If yo push yourself you will of course get worse’, ‘it’s an occupational disease, the kind that follows you for life, so if you can I recommend you transfer to a job that’s easier on your neck’. Telling my editor left us feeling pretty down: ‘I can’t really imagine weekly serialisation that won’t make you push yourself…’ ‘Yeah…’.

I couldn’t keep making trouble for Jump, and it would soon be 1 year into the hiatus, it may be impossible to restart serialisation…

As I thought that, one day, I heard from my editor: ‘Ashihara-san, how do you feel about transferring?’

According to him, the problem with weekly serialisation is its killer schedule that doesn’t allow for ‘resting for a day because you’re really not feeling well’. If it’s the web-based ‘Jump+’, each work can be given its own deadline, so you can serialise at whatever pace you’d like. Besides that, transferring to a monthly magazine would also allow a certain amount of adjustment on the number of pages to be drawn that month. Since the worst case scenario would be ‘pushing myself too hard I had to stop writing World Trigger’, so it might be better to match how I’m feeling and draw at a pace of ‘I can manage this’. Well, it wasn’t something to be decided immediately, so if I could just consider this an option…

The more I heard, the better it sounded, and it was something I was very grateful for. But it worried me, considering my social standing as a trash author who had been on hiatus for close to a year.

I was quite attached to Jump, and ‘doing my best at the best magazine in Japan’ was also my motivation, so I was conflicted on what it would be like if I left Jump. But there was the fundamental problem of how many more years it would take me to recover enough to serialise weekly, and whether I could even recover to that extent in the first place, and furthermore I wanted to allow all the readers who still haven’t forgotten World Trigger even after over a year to read the continuation as soon as possible, so in the end I asked my editor to request a transfer.

‘If you request it, I will do my best to allow you to transfer to where you want’, I was told, so I discussed where to transfer with my manager.

Personally, I was still hung up on the paper medium, and due to the reasons of even I knowing about the works serialised in it and that it’s easy to buy it from places like convenience stores, I requested ‘Jump SQ’. Both Jump and SQ editorial departments went to great efforts, and a lot happened after as well, until the transfer was decided. I was able to safely restart serialisation.

I would like to once again thank the editorial department of Weekly Shounen Jump, the editorial department of Jump SQ, my editors from both departments, and all the readers who encouraged me even during the hiatus. Thank you very much.

Since the chapter I restart serialisation on (chapter 165) is the first in about 2 years, for an instant I considered whether to start it in a special way, but I felt it would seem unnatural when it’s made into a manga volume, so I deliberately went ahead as normal.

From now on, the pace would slow down from when it was a weekly serialisation, but I think I will be able to put out a manga volume at regular intervals. My neck currently have recovered to the point that I can live normally, but I have been told by the SQ editorial department that I am ‘strictly prohibited from pushing myself’, so if the published pages decrease, I would be grateful if you can consider it as ‘playing it safe this month’.

Also, since I want to repay Jump SQ for picking up ‘World Trigger’, if you have the time and a bit more than 600 yen a month, I would be very happy if you can subscribe to Jump SQ. If you are already subscribed, I look forward to your readership.

I will do my best.

~Ashihara Daisuke

As the last part of the extras from volume 19, I also want to take this chance to mention some of the edits made from the magazine version. There were no plot-relevant changes this time, mostly some minor differences in clothing patterns etc. (and now that we know the clothes in the magazine isn’t always decided by Ashihara and he would change it if he thinks it’s necessary, I wonder if he has headcanons for everyone’s fashion choices as well).

But one funny change I want to point out is this from ch162:

Reiji wasn’t wearing a seatbelt in the magazine, and I guess Ashihara didn’t want him to break the law lol

The other kind of major change (in my perspective at least) are these radar panels from ch165 and ch167:

Both of these radars now show LOW, matching Yuzuru’s HIGH in ch171. Showing us that radar is capable of showing whether someone is above or below you, though that’s still not very helpful in an urban environment as the top panel shows.

An earlier Q&A has said that elevation can’t be displayed on radar, so either this is the first time we’ve had a retcon, radar got beefed up without it being noted in story (yet), an operator added that through process of elimination, there’s some other reason, or Ashihara just forgot. Since this is World Trigger, any of these are possible.

As always, credit goes to this wonderful site that records all changes from magazine to manga volume. Please check here if you want to know about all the minor changes as well.

In conclusion, for all of you who wanted to know about the specific details of Ashihara’s illness, here it is.