Personally I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. I’ve been told often that many don’t like my manga because I don’t update that often or I’m not worthy of attention since I don’t update on a fixed schedule. I’m thrown away regularly for this same reason. Some have encouraged me wondering how I could have stayed with this for so long, almost 10 years. It hasn’t been a manga for that long, but it has been around for almost 10 years in one form or another. Some can see it for what it really is: a work of art, nothing more, nothing less. First off let me say that I am not angry. I am quite depressed, though. It’s hard to be misunderstood, something the great Vincent Van Gogh knew all too well. I can take it, but I can at least explain myself. Let me get to the bottom of just why I can’t update on a regular schedule along with just what it is I am doing. I’ve never said that I was going to update on a fixed schedule, and I probably never will. I wish I could… boy do I wish I could.

When I started the manga itself I was a sophomore in high school. It was 1999. School was rough. I was in a public high school, but a really good one. It worked you extremely hard at times. I had to work at my family’s business more out of necessity than to actually make money and then I had homework. It never changed even throughout college. The job changed, however. I began working at a screen printing shop owned by my brother, so I was going to college full time and then working full time. I had college paid for. I made exceptional grades while in high school, so I didn’t have any problems paying for college, hell I even got paid about an average of $1000 a quarter back leftover from my scholarships to do whatever I wanted with. Why did I work full-time then? A thousand a quarter usually went to paying my mom back which I insisted on doing. I had to pay insurance myself and buy my own vehicle. My parents didn’t do that for me. I earned the money for my vehicle and paid my own bills with the money I made at my job. I didn’t have much free time, but I made do. I got pages completed through both of those stages of my life rather slowly, but I got them completed.

Now I’m out of college, but I’m still working full-time, sometimes overtime. Summer is the busiest time of the year in the screen printing business. Why do I do it? I have to pay bills still. I don’t make a living drawing these manga pages. I don’t expect to. This summer hasn’t been a good one in my life. We’re losing the house right from under us due to a banker using a loophole in the law, taking our mortgage and our house away from us. Where are we to live? I don’t know. Has it been taxing my brain ever since I found out? Yes. Does it reflect my mood and my ability to chug out manga pages? You betcha. That’s not the worst of it. Three weeks ago my father suffers a heart attack and goes to the hospital. It wasn’t a normal heart attack caused from poor diet and clogged arteries. No. It was caused from a side effect of Lipitor that caused his kidneys to fail, filling his body up with fluids. The fluids built up around his heart and caused it to do what it did. What made it worse was that his regular doctor didn’t seem to care. Now he’s practically an invalid without a fully functioning heart and kidneys. What’s even worse is that he’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. I might not even have a father in a few years. He’ll just be an empty shell sitting there like a vegetable, a fate worse than death. Does that thought and his current condition inhibit my production of manga pages currently? Yes it sure does. We’re losing our home, and my father is an invalid. He still has his mind currently and is showing signs that he will be better than he is now, getting better by the day. We’re hoping soon he’ll be able to do things for himself again at least for a while until Alzheimer’s takes him completely. I’ve only told one person online of everything that is going on until now and that is Jeff. Seung is a lot like me. He’s persuing to be a doctor and doesn’t have much time to devote to the project (probably less time than I do), but he does what he can. I really appreciate that.

But is frequent page production really important? It is necessary to tell the story effectively, and I apologize to Jeff and Seung for not doing so, but that is all I think that I should apologize to for that. They’ve wrote the majority of this story, and it’s being told slowly, sometimes a month between pages or several as it was when I was working on my final portfolio before graduation. I’ve always been fascinated with sequential art. I’ve always considered it an artform. It should be recognized as more than a children’s pasttime with colorful pages full of a bunch of deformed steroid-pumped men in tights but as another method of storytelling like prose and cinema are. That aspect drew me to japanese manga and then anime because that is how the japanese in general perceive sequential art. I don’t do any sort of illustrations except the manga pages here. Some aren’t satisfied with doing just manga pages. They have to have regular illustrations or digital paintings also to satisfy their craving to produce artwork. I just need my manga. If there are four panels on the page I see it as 4 different regular illustrations on one page, and treat it as such. I use it as a method to improve myself and to show my improvement. Some of the earlier pages are of questionable quality, but I assure you that’s the best I could do back when I did it. I might not have been satisfied with the outcome of all pages, but I did do my best on each one. That’s all that matters, right? I try my hardest on each page, and enjoy it just as much as I did when I did the first page. Will I update on a fixed schedule? Probably not, but that’s alright with me, Jeff, and Seung as they know why I do this. Now you do. Please except why I do this as for what it is. Thank you.