I just visit his Instagram and surprisingly nobody throwing shit at the comments. Good to see people want him to continue.
I agree, while I believe that tracing is lowkey much, I feel as though he should just take a break and come back after some time. I don't think he was being malicious, but that he was genuinely just tired, and instead of being upfront he decided to take an easy way out.
Which, I hope some people can actually understand. Like most manga artists have an entire team helping them out, but this is one guy... He admitted he's wrong, he's gotten penalized, take a break and come back when he's feeling better.
Yeah, doing this weekly without any breaks explains the situation. I can totally relate with the stressing of being art-blocked and being desperately in need of some pose inspiration. His only mistake was copying them too closely.
Since he openly apologized and knows his mistake, it can be overlooked. We know so many others done some worse bs are still in the industry. He could comeback after a good rest.
You know what? He is so good at this that I'm sure the fans are ready to overlook this petty mistake. He should just take time and continue posting new chapters on his blog.