Hirune Decided to Draw Hentai After His Manga Was Cancelled
Many times, the famous page from a basketball match went viral on social media. The page is beautifully drawn and highly detailed, and many even doubt that it comes from a hentai manga, but that is the absolute truth, and the illustrator’s name is Hirune.
But who exactly is Hirune, and why doesn’t he draw regular manga if his art style is so beautiful and detailed? Well, if you’ve ever wondered this or seen someone ask about it, know that he actually tried.
Hirune Decided to Draw Hentai After His Manga Was Cancelled
Hirune is the pen name of mangaka Takuya Yagyuu. In September 2015, he published his first one-shot called Moeru Macchan Itetsuku Hama-chan in Jump SQ.
In March 2016, another one-shot by Takuya was released, this time an action-fantasy story called Kaibutsu no Tabekasu, also in Jump SQ. It seems things didn’t go well with Shueisha, as Takuya then moved to Shogakukan, where he began publishing his first series, called Memesis.
Memesis began serialization in Shounen Sunday in February 2018, and its story revolves around the characters Ash and Kijira.
The story shows two young men who spent three years fighting demons alongside the famous hero Leon. When Leon abandons them for young and beautiful women, the duo is shocked and enraged. As a result, Ash and Kijira train rigorously, determined to defeat the Demon Lord and his forces before Leon does. Motivated by resentment and jealousy, the two warriors aim to make Leon regret removing them from the group!
However, Takuya didn’t achieve success with his manga, and the publisher decided to cancel it. The manga was officially ended prematurely with only 45 chapters, and its 4th and final volume was released on April 18, 2019.
A Complete Shift to Adult Manga
After the cancellation of his first serialized manga, Takuya decided to completely change his style! He chose to dedicate himself exclusively to drawing adult manga.
Since then, we’ve seen incredibly beautiful pages like these:
But if you think this was an easy decision, you’re mistaken. He was obviously very sad about having his manga (which he worked so hard on) cancelled. Although he wanted to leave regular manga and start drawing hentai, it wasn’t a quick decision—until a certain friend gave him the push he needed.
Confessing this on Twitter, Hirune said:
“Six years ago, I was unsure about drawing my first erotic manga. I said in front of my friends: ‘What will everyone think if I draw an erotic manga? How embarrassing…’ Then they said: ‘People don’t care about you as much as you think.’ It made so much sense that I thought, ‘Ok, I’ll draw!’”
Now, just a bit of speculation, but imagine Hirune at that time: he was publishing a regular manga in a major magazine, and unfortunately, his work was cancelled. He was thinking about what the people who knew him would think if he started drawing hentai.
At that moment, one of his friends was realistic, saying that nobody cared about a small author whose manga wasn’t that well-known being cancelled.
For comparison, Hirune has two Twitter accounts: one as Takuya, his regular manga author profile, with only 3,000 followers, and another as Hirune, which has over 300,000 followers!
He wasn’t well-known before, so his friend was right—nobody would care if he started drawing hentai, and apparently, that was the best choice he made.
Currently, Hirune is 34 years old (he’ll turn 35 next month), and in 2025 he will celebrate six years of his career as a hentai mangaka.