But I ended up wanting to draw manga for myself, without thinking about anyone's reactions. This system proved encouraging for me, and I learned a lot by being aware of readers reactions. So I went ahead and did what I had always wanted to do: "If I ever manage to have a long serialization in Jump, I will end it on my own terms." I knew that Jump dropped a manga after 10 weeks if the readers' surveys proved it to be unpopular, and I knew this when I started working for them. I didn't have the strength, physically and mentally, to keep doing the same thing over and over. My attempts to deconstruct the characters were, of course, turned down by Jump. All I could do at this point was to start deconstructing the characters, or go on repeating the same storylines over and over until the readers got bored. It saddens me to say this, but I had explored every possible direction for the YYH characters that I could in the context of a professional publication. I had already started to think that no matter what anyone says, no matter how messy the finished pages are, I just wanted to draw this by myself, and I had no reason not to go through with it. This might mean I fail as a professional, but I was satisfied. The latter two were finished in half a day before my deadline, as a reader guessed and criticized in a letter. Sensui, the scene where Yusuke meets Raizen, I drew most of those alone. Both the characters and the backgrounds were messy. As a result, those chapters ended up horrible. I don't know if anyone will understand, but when I was stressed because I wasn't satisfied with my manga, the only way for me to relieve this stress was to draw all my manga by myself. ![]() All of these instances were when my stress levels were at their highest. A few times during the run of YYH, I finished my manuscripts all by myself. But I was never able to throw away my ideal of being able to draw manga without help from other people. I felt that if I were honest with myself, my art would never be able to compete with something like this. This is because back when I had just had my debut, my editor at the time had shown me a manga page by Hagiwara Kazushi (Bastard!!). I believe that anyone who draws has a desire to attract people with their art, but this is an ambition that I had suppressed for a long time. ![]() Because I had stopped overworking my body, and started to relieve my stress, I was feeling stressed that I couldn't draw manga in a way that satisfied me. But also around this time, I realized I was starting to experience a different kind of stress. I fell even more behind, and at the point where Sensui and Yusuke were fighting, this reached its first peak. One-shots are scary." I also began to use some time before going to bed to relieve stress. If I die, I want it to be when I'm having fun or when I'm drawing manga for fun. Around this time, my feelings about writing manga as a profession began to change. ![]() But I tried to get some sleep every night. I immediately began to fall behind on my schedule. I thought, "I probably won't be able to keep regular hours, but if I sleep as much as I want to, when I want to, how much would I be able to produce?" I tried it out. This was when I seriously started to think about the pace of production for manga. But my HP (as they say in RPGs) was gradually but surely falling, and around the time that I wrote a 31-page one-shot and simultaneously had to do color pages, my heart began to hurt every time I went without sleep - and then it began to hurt more and more often. Other than that all I had time for were occasional naps, and I'd indulge in my hobbies by sleeping less. From when YYH began serialization up until the start of the Dark Tournament, I had half a day off every week in which I caught up on sleep. ![]() Point 1 was caused by Point 3 not being fulfilled for too long. Most of my 50 reasons fall into this category. Point 3 is out of the question for a professional manga writer basically I wanted to indulge in my hobbies, rest, and sleep as much as I could.
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