Massive
success is sometimes accompanied by unbearable pressure that ends up breaking
artists. Just when the animated adaptation of Gachiakuta was
crowned one of the big winners at the recent Crunchyroll Anime Awards, its
creator decided to turn off the microphone forever. Kei Urana deactivated all
her official accounts just hours after her work took home Best New Series, Best
Character Design, and Best Background Art, leaving thousands of fans truly
bewildered in the midst of what was supposed to be a huge celebration.
A
victory tainted by toxicity
The reason
behind this drastic decision has a name and surname: the constant harassment of
a sector of the international public. All the accumulated tension exploded when
the author shared the video of a follower who imitated the hairstyle of the
character Jabber using some vegetables in a comical way. Although for Urana it
was a simple act of harmless humor, a group of users began to attack her
accusing her of cultural insensitivity. Added to this were the incessant
complaints of people who demanded that she change the skin tone of her
protagonists or validate love theories invented by the community itself, a
level of scrutiny that ended up exhausting the cartoonist's patience.
The
final goodbye to protect his work
Before
disappearing from the digital map, the mangaka left a couple of quite clear
messages about her frustration. Through her profiles, she explained that the
level of chaos on the internet was simply hindering her creative process,
pointing out with great sadness that no matter what she said or how she tried
to explain herself, her words were always useless in the face of aggression.
Seeing that his attempts to maintain a close and friendly relationship with his
audience only generated headaches, he chose to close that door definitively and
say goodbye so that he could concentrate one hundred percent on the future of
the manga.
This
unfortunate situation reminds us of the enormous damage that excessive
obsession can cause on Japanese creatives, who often end up distancing
themselves from their own audience to protect their mental and artistic
stability. Knowing that the demands of foreign spectators tend to become more
and more aggressive when a work gains worldwide popularity.
