My Hero Academia creator Horikoshi's thank you post exposes the terrible conditions of the manga industry

My Hero Academia author Kohei Horikoshi's health problems have been something that most fans have been aware of, and recent chapters of the manga, with fewer pages, were a big giveaway. The author has now shared a post that highlights how he has been working with his editor, and why there are several chapters that are shorter than others. This situation has shed even more light on the way manga authors are treated in the industry.

The shorter chapters, along with the uneven quality of the final My Hero Academia arc, hinted that something wasn't right with Kohei Horikoshi recently. While a lot of fans have different opinions regarding the final arc of the series, most people just want the author to enjoy good health and not be overworked like he has been recently.

Disclaimer: This article contains minor spoilers for My Hero Academia.

---

My Hero Academia author Kohei Horikoshi shed some light on mangakas' struggling conditions

My Hero Academia author Kohei Horikoshi recently released a post to thank his fans, readers, and people around him for their support in recent years while also addressing the pages of his recent chapters in the manga. As readers of the series should know by now, some of the recent chapters have been quite short, with some of them even lasting only seven pages.

In that post, Horikoshi addresses the elephant in the room, expresses how he has been pushed to do more pages, and his relationship with his editor, Imamura. While this helped fans understand what was going on behind the scenes of the My Hero Academia manga, it also revealed a bit more about something a lot of people were already aware of: that manga authors are constantly pushed to the brink of exhaustion by their publishing companies.

"Talking to the higher ups of the editorial department on a regular basis so that we can decide on the number of pages for each chapter in advance, allowing MHA to be included in the magazine," he said, translated to English by Twitter user @RukasuMHA.

The My Hero Academia author then went on to speak about the efforts of his editor and continued:

"What I'm trying to say is that both Imamura-san and the editorial department are giving their all to make sure that MHA comes out in the best possible way. If it weren't for their efforts, maybe it wouldn't be possible for the serialization to continue. So I want to take this opportunity to thank them. Thank you very much."

While a lot of fans want the series to end on a high note, everybody agrees that that shouldn't have to come at the expense of Horikoshi's health. This is a scenario that has been far too common for authors in the industry and doesn't seem to stop at any given moment.

---

The struggles of the manga industry

Manga authors being overworked and having health problems because of it is a very common situation in the industry. The biggest example in recent years could be Berserk's Kentaro Miura, who worked so hard during his run that that played a role in his death. Yoshihiro Togashi, the author of Hunter X Hunter, has also had a lot of back problems that have kept him from publishing chapters on a somewhat regular basis.

Perhaps a similar case to Kohei Horikoshi is Black Clover's Yuki Tabata, who had health issues while writing and drawing for Shonen Jump and recently left the magazine. He is now going to have a different publication schedule in another company, which is better suited to his health conditions.

This could also explain why newer and younger manga authors are no longer doing long-running series like One Piece, Bleach, or Naruto. This explains why authors like Jujutsu Kaisen's Gege Akutami or Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man's Tatsuki Fujimoto want to end their series somewhat quickly and move from one project to another.

Most fans agree that Horikoshi's health, or any other author's, shouldn't have to be sacrificed in order to make a great manga. Furthermore, they believe that if the most popular authors' health begins to deteriorate, that is only going to hurt the industry as a whole.