Lately I've been busy, dinner meetings have piled up so I've been drinking more, and unpleasant things have kept coming — I'm pretty worn down.
When that happens I usually adjust how I use time — watch parenting YouTube, read books, exercise — distract myself and wait for time to pass until my condition comes back.
This slump somehow feels like it'll last through the end of this month (March 2024).
In the middle of that I was devouring manga that soothes the spirit — and I finally watched the anime Chiikawa for the first time recently.
Bottom line: I fell hard. Too cute. I bought the LINE stickers right away.
I'd thought it was just another soft fluffy character thing — it was nowhere near that level. The next day I was asking everyone around me, "Isn't Chiikawa insane?"
When I went back to Osaka the other day and stopped at a goods store thinking of buying a birthday present for a friend, they had Chiikawa figures, so I bought some. For myself, of course — and I gave one to my mom too. Embarrassing to take them to the register. (Mom didn't know Chiikawa, but afterward she had it sitting on the tissue box.)
For my friend I went to Maruzen afterward and bought a ballpoint pen as a present. They were happy.
After that, while reading manga by Sensei Oshikiri Rensuke, the mangaka Sensei Seino Tohru came up.
I knew him as "ah, the guy who draws that Akabane manga," and vaguely imagined it was some warm, human-interest Akabane comic — but I started reading right away.
From volume 1 it was insanely funny. I cracked up.
Right around the date of writing this blog, news of Dragon Ball's Sensei Toriyama Akira's death came out, and I felt again how great manga and anime culture is worldwide.
Even at this age (28), I rewatch the whole Dragon Ball anime about once every six months.
And while Japanese manga that hit big — especially Weekly Shonen Jump titles — sometimes go global, Japan has so many deeper, more interesting manga beyond that.
With Sensei Oshikiri, works that got anime like High Score Girl may be translated overseas and known to some core fans — but his other works are enormously fun too, and those probably aren't recognized.
Sometimes I feel a slight disconnect with the "Japanese manga/anime culture is amazing!" talk.
Precisely because Japanese manga and anime really, truly are amazing — there are so many other titles that are just as interesting as the ones the world already knows.
That's not a veteran-fan posture of looking down on casual fans — I simply felt how lucky I am to have been born in Japan and to enjoy Japanese manga in Japanese.
For example, Sensei Iwaaki Hitoshi's Parasyte is probably popular worldwide — but when I first read Historie I got even more hooked than with Parasyte, and thought: Parasyte alone is already that good, and he can still write manga this interesting? A genius.
I also finally properly read the globally huge hit Attack on Titan over the past half year or so — and there's context only Japanese people can feel. Being able to read it in the original made me grateful from the bottom of my heart.
Blue Giant, another huge hit — recently Blue Giant Explorer wrapped and it moved into Blue Giant Momentum — and reading that series too, I kept being shocked at how enormous the power of manga is.
Sensei Hanazawa Kengo's I Am a Hero is one of my favorites — it was filmed so it may be well known — but Boys on the Run is something I binge-reread whenever I'm low, and Ressentiment is also a masterpiece.
Others I love — Sensei Fukumitsu Shigeyuki, Sensei Shibuya Chokkaku, Sensei Ohashi Hiroyuki, Sensei Koizumi Tomohiro — are probably not that well known, and from an overseas view their appeal may not come through. Same with Sensei Seino Tohru.
(p.s. By the way I don't particularly announce that I'm into manga — if asked "what's your favorite manga?" I answer "Hunter × Hunter" — but if someone said "Do you know Fukumitsu Shigeyuki?" I'd happily talk about his manga all day. Obviously I love Hunter × Hunter to death too.)
I've been supported by an enormous amount of manga I can't fit here.
Tezuka's Black Jack actually changed my life — I aimed for medical school and took the exams. Lack of effort, I failed, left that path, and went another way — but still.
And of course this applies not only to manga but to every culture in every country.
In music, for example — jazz, gospel, rap, things that came out of Black culture — there's always a depth that lands more fully in their context.
This isn't a ranking of who loves the thing more. I want to stress that again. Please take this as me just listing manga I like. I have zero intention of saying overseas fans don't get it. Manga this good should spread even more.
For what it's worth, I love American vintage goods too — at home I collect company goods from Coca-Cola, FedEx, Lee (jeans), and for animation Popeye and Tom and Jerry, with enormous affection.
I don't think I lose to American collectors in that affection — but of course there are parts of the enjoyment rooted in that context that only locals truly know.
Exactly like Sensei Seino Tohru's Tokyo-to Kita-ku Akabane — even people who don't live in Akabane find it this funny, and people who do live there must feel something even deeper.
Manga too — and culture you can feel in a Japanese context — I strongly felt I want to explore more of it. (While cracking up at Sensei Seino's Tokyo-to Kita-ku Akabane.)
And while I was worn down, manga — and culture itself — gave me energy and became the spark that made me suddenly want to write this blog, when I couldn't get motivated about anything. That's incredible.
p.s.
If you're reading this and you're a manga fan whose tastes might match mine — want to talk? I've never even drunk in Akabane, so want to grab a drink?
As an Akabane memory: for university entrance exams I came up from Osaka and somehow stayed at a hotel in Akabane, and I remember being stunned by the scale difference between Tokyo and Osaka — "Whoa, even a slightly outlying Tokyo area like Akabane is as lively as Osaka's Kyobashi." (My memory is fuzzy, so I don't know if that's accurate. I only used Kyobashi for transfers and never drank there, so it might be more than Kyobashi — or the reverse.)
Also, I'm not the type who talks deep lore and theories about manga and authors — more like "that scene hit hard," "that was so funny," at that level.
Lately on my favorite YouTube channel "Bakido Channel" there was a video of them talking about Black Jack from fuzzy memory, and that's exactly how I want to talk.
That video is so funny I've already watched it about ten times. The Bakido Channel staff and Gunpii-san are truly wonderful people. The content is way too entertaining.
© 2024 ZUUHE