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It's less about that and more about the expectations put on them. Active exercise isn't that common in Japan beyond the walk to and from the train station for work. I work a desk job and am healthy. With the right work-life balance, a good amount of sleep nightly, and a decent diet you can have sedentary jobs without dying at age 50.Their job have them sitting still all day, moving 1 arm mostly. I get the feel mangakas and anime workers crunch or just edge out your average japanese worker by a few hours(days?). Do they get any exercise? Do they have time for it?
It goes without saying, any job where u sit still all day you're gonna have to do some real exercise each day to keep your body going.
The real hindrance to a Mangaka's life, IMHO, is that they usually sleep very little. There is a lot of scientific data indicating how much prolonged periods of lack of sleep can affect your life and life expectancy. It increases your risks for nearly heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and dementia. Oda doesn't even live with his family due to his insane work schedule. Being a Mangaka is also just a really quirky job. There's a reason you only ever see the one single photo of Oda; It's a Mangaka thing to never have your picture taken. The only one I know of who goes against these trends is Araki (Jojo) who commonly has his picture taken, but he also has admitted his fetish is watching women get bitten by mosquitos, so he's an outlier in more than one category. Also, a lot of Mangaka are known to be chain smokers. Not exactly a Mangaka, but if you ever get a chance to tour Ghibli, you can see how many cigarettes creative workers have traditionally gone through in a day.
Another thing people don't seem to understand are breaks. Manga breaks rarely consist of the Mangaka taking their kids to Disney World or traveling. It's usually them playing catch up, or hitting the storyboard harder to work through a tough plot point. It's really bizarre how they manage to keep a fairly steady high quality of material with such stringent schedules in a creative space. Think about how the west handles media; we're mostly past the times where shows come out every year due to increased production times, sporatic writer strikes due to QOL and pay concerns, environmental factors that limit filming, etc.. Hell, if you take our faster paced authors, they release on their own schedule. Stephen King produces decent quality material fairly quickly but he at least gets to stick to deadlines he sets with his publisher. The writer of the series from my avatar image (Dungeon Crawler Carl) releases content really quickly on his Patreon, but that still has no built in expectation of weekly releases.
Mangaka are treated almost like agile software developers, except when I don't finish what I needed to finish as a software developer, I just tell my product guy that it'll be next week. Oda and other Mangaka don't have that luxury. They likely have a few "get out of jail free" cards per year, but they're mostly expected to produce. It's completely counter to the rest of Japanese culture where doing anything takes FOREVER.
(I'm not directing this part at the person I'm quoting in any way) I always find it ironic when people who are likely unemployed or would call in sick due to a tummy ache act like they're entitled to the free weekly chapter that they are reading before its official release in its home country. I have been critical of Oda before on various points and enamored with him at other points but regardless of my feelings at any point I have an immense amount of respect for the dude's ability to dedicate his life to his work and fans despite the fact that he has enough money saved up (and royalties in the future) to do whatever the hell he wants.
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I swear you typed this as I was typing it. Like minds. Lol.I think that the reason is not only the sitting jobs, when I think of it majority of mangakas are smokers or heavy smokers
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The breaks have become more frequent as time goes on largely due to this. This forum is more tame than the subreddit on their expectations of chapter releases (believe it or not). My theory on that is a lot of us have been reading these forums or actively participating in them for nearly 20 years, which would put most of us into our 30s and 40s. When I was 25 I could literally go 4-5 nights in a row of sleeping 1-2 hours a night and get through the week with Red Bull and McDonalds. Now in my late 30s if I even so much as glance at a Big Mac I can feel my belly fat jiggle, and my chest tense up. Lol. If I don't get at least 7 hours of sleep I feel like a zombie and the day is almost wasted in non-productivity. Mangaka spend their whole lives borrowing from their future by not sleeping enough, not eating healthy, smoking, and being stationary, and we act surprised when they drop dead at 60 in a country where the life expectancy is beyond 80.Mangaka work/life balance is non-existent. Its a high pressure, physically demanding job with barely any downtime that wears at you over time.
