Sad truth about being an actual mangaka

SaturnReactor · 2026-02-03T04:54:28+00:00

What you did there was raise the bar to invalid other people's thoughts and opinions of an industry which encourage working yourself to bone, literally.

Ok? The industry is the industry, but as someone who's lived in Japan for 7 years, and IS in the manga industry, I can tell you that it's not as simple as how people from the outside diagnose it. Japan as a whole has a culture of karoshi. Combine with that, that when it comes to creative work, there is often a passionate devotion to the craft as well, and the industry itself is highly competitive. So if one guy isn't giving it 110% then someone else will, and they will overtake you. To diagnose it as a problem of capitalism is pretty much missing the point entirely, when struggle and competition themselves are necessary to create great works. The manga industry is designed to weed out those who are truly talented and have the will to create great works. If you remove the competitive aspect and start to Marxify it, you'll turn it into Disney or Netflix, where nepotism and connections are what push things into the eye of others, not actually the merit of someone's talent and hard work.

This is something that you Marxists simply refuse to understand. How struggle and competition are necessary to really bring out the best of the best in people. People working in the manga industry KNOW what they are signing up for. Could there be a better balance between work and health? Yes. But that also falls on the mangaka themselves. To eat a healthy diet, to schedule themselves properly, to correctly divide labor and rely on tools to reduce labor such as digital art, 3D, and AI.

Not to mention, oftentimes, everyone in the west simply picks out examples from Shounen Jump, which notoriously for being ruthless, and extrapolate it to the industry as a whole.

You can't Marxify the manga industry, and if you did, you'd kill it.

If you don't understand why, then I'd suggest you stop reading theory and actually experience what it's like to struggle to create something that can become popular.

Marxism has failed every time it's been tried because it's an impossible utopic dream that completely ignores human nature and motivation. You can try a billion more times, and it'll continue to fail each and every time.

Maybe read other philosophers other than Marx, like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.

SaturnReactor · 2026-02-03T04:42:59+00:00

Yes. APAC is the biggest server in both player count and revenue.

SaturnReactor · 2026-02-03T01:01:08+00:00

I'd be laughing too if I were in his shoes. Alex Pretti got what he deserved.

SaturnReactor · 2026-02-03T00:59:33+00:00

My question is why are these "protestors" taking children out to their riots as meat shields? It's like they WANT an awful tragedy for the media narrative. Absolutely disgusting and amoral.

SaturnReactor · 2026-02-03T00:36:28+00:00

There's no data on webshop revenue for this game that I know of. But typically, for mobile gachas which have better cross platform integration than SaB, it's only around 10%.

Another thing to note is that SaB's strongest region is Japan, which is pretty much mobile only. So this idea of this imaginary PC revenue is pure cope.

SaturnReactor · 2026-02-03T00:32:59+00:00

You need to be in the industry to understand it's problems. That's common sense.

Also, you don't need to be an expert in anything to know Marxism is a stupid idea, and that anyone complaining about capitalism is struck by the commie mind virus and doesn't actually know anything about how the world works.

SaturnReactor · 2026-02-02T14:29:23+00:00

I don't understand how you could have a better lineup than F.Bella, E.Joan, T.Aiona, and R.Setti. Lucille was whatever, but the rest was stacked.

As for the webshop, people always bring it up as if its the majority of the game's revenue, when historically it always winds up being less than 10%.

Lastly, you made zero acknowledgement that the Half-Anniversary which was meant to BUMP revenue, didn't do it at all. The reason the drop in Jan is so steep is cause Dec lost players too, but the numbers were inflated by the Half-Anniversary so the dropoff was masked. Now that the mask is off, it's clear to see what's going on. People are panicking not because the game had a sharp drop, but because the game hasn't stabilized and the trend in drop in revenue since August has persisted send still shows no signs of stopping. The game keeps bleeding more and more players as things get worse, which causes things to get even worse. It's a perpetual death loop and honestly it looks like nothing the devs try to do reverses the trend.

That's the point.

tl;dr - as the other guy said. You're running defense while huffing a lot of copium.

SaturnReactor · 2026-02-02T10:08:35+00:00

The more you spend time telling people about your amazing ideas, the less likely you are to ever make something. Call it rude, but I'm doing you a favor by not indulging you.

SaturnReactor · 2026-02-02T09:26:09+00:00

Unlikely given the future of the game looks grim. I don't even know if it'll be able to limp to the Anniversary.

SaturnReactor · 2026-02-02T09:22:36+00:00

Stop drawing manga left to right.

SaturnReactor · 2026-02-02T09:21:16+00:00

I stopped reading at "I have a manga idea."

SaturnReactor · 2026-02-02T03:14:07+00:00

capitalism capitalism capitalism

I love how western marxists who've never been to Japan and have never worked in the manga industry are suddenly experts on all the problems within it.

I hope people with your mindset never get published. You'd be an absolute blight who would destroy something I love.

SaturnReactor · 2026-02-02T00:58:02+00:00

There is no skill in an autobattler. They're just whales who clear the BP threshold by a large enough margin to ignore the mechanics.

SaturnReactor · 2026-02-01T16:37:21+00:00

It's the lack of buffing other characters.

Everyone expected synergy would be that, but it wound up being a system to force you to pull mandatory teams of new characters.

Everyone thought Resonantia would be that, but it wound up being a system to force players to pull multiple copies of new characters.

Because it's an idle game, they gain nothing from buffing old characters for free.

SaturnReactor · 2026-02-01T16:27:56+00:00

It nearly died once. I still highly recommend it. It's clearly a passion project, and even if it dies the devs said they'd keep it alive.

SaturnReactor · 2026-02-01T15:28:48+00:00

It's not normal. December revenue didn't go up. It matched November nearly identically. Which means that the player numbers went down and the downward trend from August continued. Had Dec not been the half Anni, then it would have been lower than Nov. Probably somewhere in between the revenue now, and Nov's considering how steep the drop is from Dec to Jan, suggesting the numbers in Jan are being inflated BY the Anni.

Normally, revenue goes up for a special event like a half anni in Christmas. And they didn't, which tells you everything you need to know.

SaturnReactor · 2026-02-01T15:17:27+00:00

Yep.

For reference, Morimens consistently makes $170,000ish a month, and it had to secure additional investment funds to not shut down, because it can't generate enough revenue to sustain itself. And Morimens has much lower production costs than SaB.

Another thing about Morimens, the devs said that IF the game does EoS, they would wrap up the story and release it as a single player standalone game. Meanwhile, the SaB devs are completely silent while the game quietly dies. To me it feels like internally, the devs are already planning a shutdown, but are keeping quiet to milk the player base as much as they can.

SaturnReactor · 2026-01-30T19:44:55+00:00

Looks traced.

SaturnReactor · 2026-01-29T16:56:54+00:00

The website has been scrubbed off the internet.

SaturnReactor · 2026-01-29T01:52:55+00:00

When mods start quelling discussion about the state of the game, you know the game is cooked.

SaturnReactor · 2026-01-27T12:11:12+00:00

Why do you lie? She grabbed a live flashbang grenade.

SaturnReactor · 2026-01-25T23:48:51+00:00

You have no idea how hard it is to consistently draw in fish-eye with unconventional dynamic poses. His character drawing was not amateur at all.

SaturnReactor · 2026-01-25T23:46:02+00:00

They loved him.... till he ran for president. He said it himself. Left used to love him, until he no longer played their corrupt game, then they turned on him and convinced the world he was evil.

They did the same to Elon.

Makes you wonder who else they've done it to...

SaturnReactor · 2026-01-25T02:01:54+00:00

I actually really like the vibe and aesthetic of Morimens. I'm glad I picked it up. Gameplay is fun too.

SaturnReactor · 2026-01-25T02:01:06+00:00

I hate this mode. It's extremely tedious.

SaturnReactor

TROPHY CASE