It's Packed

Eight days have passed since the doujinshi "I Hate Tokyo" began. This means eight people have published their work. As the editor-in-chief, I have been looking at everyone's submitted drafts, and this autumn evening, one piece of work is released into the vast ocean of the internet every day, like the spawning of a sea anemone. Even though it should be the same as the work I viewed in a protected environment, it is I who feels a little nervous, while the work itself drifts innocently through the sea.

That said, this sea is not desolate. Because people who have decided to read properly are paying out of their own pockets to enter the same sea, it is warmer and has fewer waves than the open ocean. Mr. Hayashi, who is also an editor-in-chief, has often explained the value of paying properly for work on the internet.

Just the other day, while I was cleaning up, I found a notebook from 2001. Reading it, I can see that I really had no money. I wrote things like "I'll auction off anything that looks like it has value" or "I don't want to be pushed around by not being able to pay 1,000 yen." Back then, I couldn't even buy my son a school bag, so I bought one for about 1,000 yen from someone in Hokkaido on an auction site. So, while there are people who can pay the 300 yen for this "I Hate Tokyo" magazine without a second thought, there are definitely people who are working hard to pay it.

You can write whatever you want in free articles. No money is generated there. However, receiving money means that at that moment, it is a business, it is professional, and there is responsibility. Responsibility does not mean the responsibility to "satisfy the person who paid." It means the responsibility to "produce something I can be satisfied with." I believe that is the compensation, and I hope that becomes the norm on the internet as well.

This time, what I felt about the works gathered for this "I Hate Tokyo" is that they are "properly and firmly packed." They are not bottom-heavy, they are not paper-mâché, and they are certainly not like common souvenirs where the contents are tiny and everything else is just packaging to make it look bigger. I like things that are packed. The sweets I make are also packed tight. The packaging is also snug.

I will say it again: "I Hate Tokyo" is packed. There are only eight people so far, but it is already packed just right. Each shape is tight, fluffy, slightly sharp-angled, and there are sweet ones and some that are a bit spicy. All of them fit together nicely. Sure, there are people who only like spicy things, and people who like round, fluffy things. You might buy it because you were drawn to the spicy ones and then be told, "there are sweet ones mixed in," or vice versa. But that's just how this thing is.

It's like at a snack party, where you might have Alfort chocolates, seaweed rice crackers, and dried squid. They look different at first glance, but they all have a "sea" theme, don't they? (By the way, the pattern on the Alfort chocolate is a ship.)

In the same way, I personally think of this doujinshi as a kind of "note assortment," and this is something written with "I Hate Tokyo" as the angle. You might read it and think, "you don't hate it at all," but "hate" is just the angle, so it is by no means a Tokyo-hating magazine. In fact, looking at the works released so far, there is a lot of love. In that sense, Tokyo is pop and catchy. It's completely annoying. No, there are still more works to come, so I hope you will keep watching over us.

"I Hate Tokyo" is 300 yen for all works, one-time purchase (not a monthly subscription). There are 13 more works to come, so please enjoy them in real-time.