In fact, in Han's view, the Hoshimori Group itself didn't have any fundamental problems.
The real issue lay with the handful of high-level executives who controlled the company's shares. These men, mostly in their sixties and seventies, were deeply arrogant, and their attitudes toward the manga artists under the Group had remained unchanged for decades.
In Japan, there are no creators who remain at the peak forever. But new peak creators will always emerge, one after another, leading the next era.
Yet these executives treated contracted manga artists as disposable resources, use them while they are valuable, then discard them once their usefulness runs out.
And that assessment wasn't entirely wrong.
It was extremely rare for a manga artist in Japan to remain popular for more than ten years. Most successful artists peaked after one or two major works and gradually faded out of the industry.
Otherwise, Rei's proposal to serialize two manga simultaneously would never have been rejected back then.
At its core, those executives believed that Rei would become ordinary after Hikaru no Go, just like so many others before him. Naturally, they saw no reason to grant him any special privileges.
But now…
You let Rei carve his own path through original animation, and then you still expect him to obediently bring his new work back to the manga group for serialization?
The difficulty of that was obvious.
In Han's view, Rei wouldn't necessarily cut off cooperation with the Hoshimori Group after Hunter × Hunter ended.
However, times had changed.
Now that Rei had proven he could succeed independently in the animation market, any future cooperation would inevitably come with conditions. If he ever needed the Group's support again, he would certainly demand a much larger share in revenue splits, profits, and copyrights.
It would be naïve for the executives to expect to continue cooperating with Rei under the same old contract terms.
"This is work, after all. Of course, I'll go see Rei and convey the executives' intentions to him," Misaki said calmly.
"I understand," Han replied with a faint smile. "Just report Rei's response truthfully."
"Everyone acts according to their own interests. Whatever choice Rei makes, I can accept it. As for those executives…" Han paused. "They'll have to accept it as well. Leave the rest to me."
Misaki glanced at Han, nodded, and said nothing more.
No wonder her mother, such a willful person, always softened her tone when speaking of him.
Han was clearly taking the troublesome part upon himself.
Misaki only needed to go through the formalities with Rei.
The next day, when Misaki proposed serializing Arcane as a manga under the Hoshimori Group, Rei rejected it within two seconds.
Of course, he wasn't considering revenue alone.
Cooperating with the Hoshimori Group meant sharing profits, but their global distribution channels could potentially propel the work to international success. From a purely financial perspective, it wouldn't necessarily be a loss.
The real problem was that Arcane was not a work designed for manga form.
It was a highly mature animated script, one that relied on the synergy of visuals, music, pacing, and voice acting to deliver its full emotional impact.
Translating it into manga would inevitably dilute that experience.
"I understand," Misaki said softly. "I'll convey your decision to the executives."
"?" Rei froze for a moment.
He hadn't expected her to back down so easily.
"What are you surprised about?" Misaki smiled. "If I were in your position, I'd make the same choice."
"I never thought you were foolish, and I wasn't trying to trick you. Your answer is completely reasonable."
She looked at him quietly.
"Do well, Rei."
"Make this work even more successful than One-Punch Man."
Then her expression turned serious.
"No matter what big moves you make in the animation industry, remember this: you stepped onto the stage animation world as a manga artist."
"Never forget that."
"And never treat Hunter × Hunter lightly. It must remain your most important work."
"Don't let it become a regret. Maintain the seriousness it deserves."
"Naturally," Rei replied.
"At the current stage, Hunter × Hunter's popularity is slightly lower than One-Punch Man's, simply because it hasn't been animated yet. But I guarantee that in the future, its historical status, in the hearts of fans and within the animation industry, will surpass One-Punch Man."
In Rei's previous life, One-Punch Man surpassed Hunter × Hunter in pure commercial value.
But in terms of reputation and significance within the manga industry, Hunter × Hunter stood on an entirely different level.
Rei believed that wouldn't change, even in this Japan.
The two works belonged to different eras. Many highly profitable internet-era manga were undeniably high quality, but they also benefited from the dividends of global digital distribution.
The following day, Wednesday of the first week of February arrived.
The latest issue of Hunter × Hunter officially went on sale alongside the new volume of Dream Comic Journal.
In this week's chapter, Leorio and Kurapika, who had been absent for several months, finally reappeared and began preparations to reunite with Gon and Killua.
The story quietly entered a new arc.
The Phantom Troupe Arc.
For current readers of Hunter × Hunter, most of them had yet to realize what this truly meant.
A host of manga groups, critics, and industry organizations in Japan did not initially find this development particularly remarkable.
Although Hunter × Hunter clearly possessed enormous potential, its weekly votes in Dream Comic Journal had merely stabilized at over one million.
However, because the manga had been serialized for too short a time, its average volume sales had not yet broken the ten-million threshold.
In the Japanese manga industry, a work's true standing is ultimately determined by its average volume sales performance, not short-term popularity.
Among the six major manga journals in Japan, there were currently sixteen ongoing series with average volume sales exceeding ten million copies.
At the very top of the industry stood Echoes of the End, the number-one ranked work serialized in Monogatari Comic.
Together with Burning Sin and The Last Dragonborn, it formed the three pillar works of Monogatari Comic Journal.
These three series ranked 1st, 3rd, and 6th, respectively, in average volume sales among all currently serialized manga in Japan, with figures of 19.4 million, 16.8 million, and 14 million copies per volume.
Ranked second was the flagship title of Koken Manga, the fantasy-horror combat series Paradise of the Dead, with an average of 17.5 million copies per volume.
As for Source War Chronicle, which had long dominated weekly votes in Dream Comic Journal and was currently ranked second in popularity, it placed fourth overall, with average volume sales of 15.5 million copies per volume.
At this stage, Hunter × Hunter was clearly in a phase of explosive popularity growth.
But no matter how quickly popularity rose, average volume sales could only accumulate gradually. A few months of strong sales could not easily surpass the cumulative results of works serialized steadily for several years.
Thus, in the current Japanese manga market, Hunter × Hunter's average volume sales ranked 17th overall just the previous week, at 9.9 million copies per volume.
Then, the day after the latest issue of Hunter × Hunter went on sale, the Hoshimori Group officially announced the news across Japan.
Hunter × Hunter had officially surpassed ten million average volume sales, becoming the fastest manga in Japanese history to reach this milestone.
At the same time, the announcement confirmed that the manga had entered a brand-new storyline arc, The Phantom Troupe Arc.
Of course, even after becoming the seventeenth currently serialized manga to exceed ten million average volume sales, most industry observers believed that Hunter × Hunter would still require one to two more years of accumulation before it could realistically challenge the top ten, or even top five, rankings.
From an industry perspective, this was already considered extraordinarily fast.
However, Rei did not see it that way at all.
His planned serialization timeline for Hunter × Hunter was never meant to stretch that long, so how could he afford to wait?
Rei understood better than anyone that Hunter × Hunter was about to truly take off after entering this arc.
Everything before the Phantom Troupe Arc had functioned primarily as world-building and an introduction to the Nen ability system.
Only with this arc would the full appeal of Nen, its strategy, brutality, and emotional weight, begin to emerge.
From this point onward, the manga's discussion volume, popularity, and influence would expand at a pace far exceeding its current growth.
Yet at this moment, no one in the Japanese manga industry had realized it.
...
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