Having your work serialized in the manga industry is often the dream of any artist, but behind the printed pages lies a real financial nightmare. Veteran creator Anetarou has reignited a heated debate by bluntly exposing why drawing independent adult material ended up being her true economic salvation, allowing her to comfortably survive while her professional colleagues drowned in debt under the umbrella of a publisher traditional.

The numbers the author shared are truly terrifying for any aspiring mangaka. While in the independent doujinshi market creators can comfortably pocket between fifty and eighty percent of their total sales profits, signing an official contract reduces those royalties to a meager five to ten percent. To make matters worse, Anetarou explained that the grueling storyboards or names are never paid by the magazines. Once your series is approved, you are forced to massively go into debt to hire assistants and buy expensive equipment, receiving barely 120 euros per finished page, which leaves artists practically in poverty after paying their team’s salaries.

Although her path is not the most “correct” according to Japan’s conservative high standards, this decision allowed her to travel the world attending international conventions with money generated exclusively by her risqué art. The illustrator made it clear that the vast majority of Japanese creatives don’t aim to become millionaires, they simply want to generate enough income to keep publishing without going bankrupt. Knowing that new employees and executives at publishers receive training and stable salaries without assuming any financial risk, she continues to advise new generations to bet on the profitability of the independent format.

Considering that adult content artists on digital platforms usually earn much more money than base authors of titans like Weekly Shonen Jump, do you think the traditional Japanese system will eventually collapse if it doesn’t start offering fairer and safer payments to its emerging talents?