Creator Hikaru Katsuki Comments on Baby Steps Tennis Manga's Cancellation

The 47th and final volume of Hikaru Katsuki's Baby Steps tennis manga shipped in Japan on Friday. However, the series did not come to an end as Katsuki had hoped, and his publisher decided to conclude the manga before he could tell the whole story. The volume features a heartfelt message from Katsuki about the cancellation.

Hello, it's Katsuki. With this 47th volume, it's exactly 10 years. And it's become the last volume. There are various circumstances, but it's a shame that the writing of Ei-chan's life comes to an end here mainly with my lack of ability. The theme was independence, so I'm glad it reached the point of Ei-chan as a professional making his own team and finally having his world tour debut... If possible, I wanted to write the Davis Cup, but... Somehow continuing for 10 years is thanks to the staff who collaborated with all their effort, the large group of people who gladly helped with research, and more than others, you who read [the manga] until now. Thank you very, very much!! I think Ei-chan will face forward and continue on, so I also want to move forward. Well then, [see you] again somewhere....

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What. I thought it ended naturally. What a damn shame.

That sucks. I'm guessing it's doing poorly? It's always so awkward when you get these weird endings without proper closure.

It was doing great.

Oh no!

It's ok, the anime will get picked back up and he will eventually do the last arc there :)

Sales and amazon reviews were great, poll standing was shit
Editors making dumb decisions as always, but what would expect from the same editors who insist on keeping Ippo running even when fans have expressed dearly that they want it to end.

It sold nicely, I would say.
This could be more of Magazine trying to change their image of a sport themed mag. Every sport series after Days was canned really fast and they published around 10 or even more of them in this time.
They lately started to publish more romcoms/sol series and they got results with those (Runway, Gotoubun, Kanojo Okarishimasu, Juliet transfer, Tsurezure). Magazine Pocket also started to focus on light-hearted series.

I don't understand why these retards couldn't just move the series they were going to canned to their online manga apps. It solves everything, from clearing up space in the main magazine, saving paper, bringing in dough, to advertising their online manga app.

This hurts

The anime quality was absolutely terrible and not worth watching, desu.

If you can't tell your story over 10 whole years, there might be a problem with your story.

>Just fuck my hair up
Is this the worst hairstyle on a anime character?

Any chance he get picked up and transferred to another magazine?

The old folks are too set in their ways.

Sales don't matter if magazine rankings sucks. All the editors want is people buying the magazine.

0

There goes the hope of a Giant Strides sequel.

I blame it all on Nishikori's 2017 season.

>The anime quality was absolutely terrible and not worth watching, desu.
It was fine. In typical Studio Pierrot fashion, the episodes that mattered looked decent. In any case, the real hero of the anime was Minako as Natsu.

I thought it was the other way around. Publishers make money from selling tanks and magazines are basically advertisement for the tanks.

Well that's saddening, got this on my backlog to read. Anyone know what chapter picks up from the anime's last episode?

181.

>cancelling a good tennis manga after 47 volumes
Fucking retards.

It is, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Tell this to Wan Piss fags.

He's right, nip companies are unbelievably backwards. They still use fax machines in their millions in Japan.

Baby Steps was the 6th best-selling series in Magazine. What is Kodansha thinking? They don't exactly have a wealth of hits to fall back on.

>cancelling Baby Steps
What the FUCK

they are clearly retarded as fuck, Ahiru no Sora is also ending soon and their soccer manga that ran for a long time also finished and they lost Shitty Tail which was one of their top sellers

>If you can't tell your story over 10 whole years,
I might not be a fan of Baby Steps, but I could never accuse it of false advertising. The pace is right there in the title.

Only for shit tier magazines, when you sell hundreds of thousands of copies a week even baby steps level manga aren’t safe if people aren’t reading it in the magazine.
They should continue it online or somewhere else like saint seiya and prince of tennis.

You all should shut the fuck up. Baby Steps is great, but it suffers from Ippo syndrome where a match can last literally a year or two of publication.

If you look at it that way, 10 years running isn't that much, if you do it that way.

Long matches aren't a regular thing, honestly. The last match that took forever deserved its length, considering it was against Takuma.

Couldn't they just change the magazine? Can't author change the publisher?

Author only owns the IP, not the publishing rights. So no.

But for example Watari-kun manga changed publisher

So it did, interesting.