Gintama Creator Gets No Money From Adaptations

If you live in the US and just celebrated Thanksgiving, I wish you guys a belated Happy Thanksgiving. If you happen to be living elsewhere and is, will be, or just finished whatever Holiday you have in your local area, Happy Holidays. Or otherwise, a good morning, afternoon, or evening, depending on your time zone.

I myself recently finished my Holiday and I got plenty of time to kill before I get back to my ever-so-busy-real-life routine, I decided to make a few videos over the weekend and catch up on some things.

For this video I want to talk about a common misconception regarding manga and anime in which the creator ends up being incredibly rich if his or her title becomes a major hit. Be it Akira Toriyama from Dragon Ball, Kentaro Miura from Berserk, Hirohiko Araki from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, or in this particular case, Hideaki Sorachi, the creator of Gintama.

Before we move on a full disclosure: I have never read a single chapter of the Gintama manga, nor have I watched any of its adaptations. Gintama is one of the many anime franchises that is going on for so long, like One Piece and Bleach, I don't want to invest my time on it. I'm already investing my time on Dragon Ball Super, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and the Gundam franchise, to name a few. So I just can't get into Gintama. That being said, I hear it is a very good series and given that it's still around since 2003, it's quite popular.

 

According to the website RocketNews24, a Japanese Twitter user by the name of "beasty_baby" posted a scanned image from the 51st volume of the Gintama manga where author Hideaki Sorachi answered a question from a female fan if Sorachi received any money from the Gintama movies. Sorachi answered and I quote:

To tell the naked truth, regardless of how many people watch the film or how much the gross earnings are, not a single yen goes to the author. We are only paid an upfront license fee. The amount we’re paid is peanuts in comparison to the overall box office gross. The majority of the profits go to filthy unscrupulous companies such as Shueisha and Sunrise. Releasing individual manga volumes is way more profitable.
 
But the reason why I slog to fulfill these film adaptations, to the extent that I’m peeing blood, is because there is a place in this world that is more wonderful than a mansion at Roppongi Hills. And that place, ma’am, is in your heart.

If Gintama can reach the hearts of the masses, I wouldn’t mind living in a hill made of cardboard. The authors are the only ones who harbour such honest intentions with their creations.

So ma’am, if you’re feeling sorry for us, don’t just watch the movies, but also buy our books so that we can live at Roppongi Hills with the publishing royalties.

So to summarize, no. Apart from being paid a license fee, Sorachi doesn't get a single penny from the movies and most of it goes to Shueisha, the publisher for the Gintama manga, which also includes Dragon Ball and One Piece, and Sunrise, the animation studio for the Gintama anime, and is best known for the Gundam franchise.

From Sorachi's account, it's clear here that manga authors don't make up as much profit from adaptations of their works as the companies do. Even in the United States, those who write for Marvel and DC don't become millionaires from their stories of Green Arrow or the Inhumans, or whatever. Most of the profits goes to the comic book publisher and the writers either get a set salary, or an incredibly small amount of the comic book sale.

If the manga or comic book creator does his or her own publishing, then of course that person gets most of the profits, provided the work is a major best seller. But I honestly don't know anybody who had a successful manga or comic book that was self-published by the author. The one thing I can think of is Image Comics, the publisher behind popular works like Spawn and The Walking Dead, as their creators retain full control over the direction of their stories. I am not sure, however, if that also means the same when it comes to revenue from comic book sales.

Another would be the Doujinshi Community, where authors produce fan-made works and these are often self-published. Unfortunately, Doujinshi is only allowed in Japan, and everyone else can't publish one themselves without being slapped with copyright infringement. Plus, I don't know of any Doujinshi work that is extremely popular among anime and manga fans. Personally, I would love to publish a Doujinshi based on Avatar: The Last Airbender, where Aang gets a brutal beating by a Mary Sue villain, because he pulled a Deus Ex Machina to defeat Ozai in his story, which I absolutely hate about at the end of that series. But I cannot do that without Nickelodeon breathing down my neck, so the only place it can go through is my own headcanon.

So what does all this mean? It means no matter how many times you watch an anime movie in theaters, or if you get the entire DVD or Blu-Ray box set, not a single penny goes to the author of that series if it's based on a manga, unless its an entirely original anime work, such as Kabaneri of The Iron Fortress, for example, or the Studio Ghibli films. If you wish to support your favorite anime that is based on a manga series, or novel, or any of the sort, buy the original content. You love Dragon Ball Super, for example, and want to support Akira Toriyama, you buy the original Dragon Ball manga written and drawn by Toriyama.

It's understandable that a lot of people don't have access to the manga and would go with the adaptations instead, as they are easier to get. Even Sorachi is aware of this. Which is why he is blessed with anybody who do took their time, money and effort to purhase the Gintama mangas. So again, if you can, buy the mangas to support your favorite series. It's definitely far better than say, use Kickstarter or something like that.