As much as I enjoy manga and the many stories that have come out of it, there are things that bother me about the industry. Some of you may know about the horror stories surrounding Eiichiro Oda’s work schedule. An interesting blog post by a mangaka went in a direction that got me thinking - can you feel guilty about making and enjoying manga?

Shuho Sato, the mangaka I’m referring to, has an enlightening series of articles called “Sato’s Road to Manga.” In entry #41, he points out what we should realize about manga, no matter how much discussions and arguments we have at the end of the day.

“At its core, manga is nothing more than ‘entertainment.’”, Sato says.

He then goes on about how guilty he is for using real-life tragic stories as plot elements for his series, Umizaru, back in the day. Sato felt as if he was shaming readers by profiting off of those stories. It makes you wonder how many mangaka lost a sense of meaning at any point during their success.

A few months ago, I attended an event at my local Kinokuniya, which was hosted by Kodansha Comics. They talked about how Attack on Titan gave the manga industry life. That it gave a much-needed resurgence. One of the presenters even mentions how Hajime Isayama’s editor is telling him to keep drawing the series past Volume 20. Isayama went from a nobody on a unknown magazine to the mangaka that’s arguably defined today’s generation of manga readers. If you thought Oda has pressure, Isayama may have it much worse as he has to satisfy fans’ hunger for the “next big thing.”

With that said, the manga industry is run in a mass production style. The world, for the most part, has been gradually going away from that direction. When I buy manga, should I feel bad that I’m supporting a process that sort of feels like a sweat shop? My mother used to work in one to raise my sister and I. That robbed her of opportunities to learn English and possibly gain more meaningful employment. Yes, some people chose to suffer because they had to, but there’s always other choices out there if some folks were more willing to point them out.

A while back, I read a psychology article about why meat eaters condone eating meat. It is argued that meat eaters deny certain animals of feeling pain. You know they are living creatures, but you would argue that they might not have souls or something like that. Sometimes, mangaka feel like cattle being used to satisfy fans. Part of me believes this is proliferated by the popularity of scanlations because of what the internet model teaches young readers who aren’t aware of the industry. It’s only when they are shown being human (i.e. Oda being hospitalized) that people remember that they live, breathe, eat, and sleep (rarely) too.

Everyone against scans says to support the manga industry. Buy books! Read our legal online magazines! You’re robbing us of money! All of this to make people feel guilty for reading scanlations. You also have scanlators blaming aggregators for taking their stuff. While there is no excuse for certain individuals, others may not be that fortunate. I wonder if this whole digital movement is karma for an industry that reflects a country that’s behind the global times.

The popularity of a manga can feel like a lose-lose situation for creators under the publishers’ web because of outside factors affecting the industry. Which evil isn’t as bad as the other? There is one truth to remember though - we tend to enjoy manga because of the characters and the stories that make them go. Who drives those two forces? It’s usually the mangaka. Any penny for them helps in this economy! Though it feels like cognitive dissonance since you’re encouraging a broken system to continue.

Sometimes, I wonder if mangaka weren’t so isolated and got to see the facial expressions of fans who do think manga is more than just entertainment, then maybe some wouldn’t feel bad. They get fan letters, sure, but seeing people who say the right things can be a lot more powerful than words themselves.

Maybe once manga self-publishing really takes off, I wouldn’t feel so bad. But hey, it’s fun to have a guilty pleasure now and then, isn’t it?

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