My Manga Diet – April 2022

I’ve been doing literally nothing with this blog lately, and while I wanna write, I don’t think I quite have my spark yet. So in the meantime, let’s talk about some of the manga I’ve been reading and enjoying lately.

Ove the past year and a half or so, I’ve gotten really really invested into manga. I’ve always loved manga – my first real manga was the Megaman NT Warrior series I’d get from my local library as a kid – but I never took collecting these stories seriously until I read Goodnight Punpun online. Yes, that’s a story I want to talk about here, no I wont get into it now; suffice it to say that I felt a need to collect it after experiencing it through a screen. I’d read Berserk in much the same way, and now that I’d had two stories that directly impacted my life, I felt it was only right to collect them.

And now, here I am, my shelves overladen with manga of all sorts, shapes, sizes, and printings, and I’m only just starting. It’s a hobby I never expected to really get into, and yet now that I’m here just this sheer weight of good stories is both overwhelming and comforting. To be able to fid parts of myself in so many stories that I can hold in my hands really take me back to those heady times as a teenager, where every anime and every book felt different and fresh and new and exciting. Like morning dew on the grass: a simple yet elegant truth.

So, what have I been reading?

Sweat and Soap

I really can’t start my list without mentioning this one. While I finished it about a month and a half ago, I still can’t stop singing the praises of this one. I never pegged myself as a romance guy before I read Sweat and Soap, yet honestly its’ opened by eyes to a genre that I now find really endearing. Long story short: Sweat and Soap is a romance about two adults who work for a soap company. Let’s get this out of the way: not being in high school already removes 90% of the issues I have with most romance anime/manga, and the fact that they communicate, don’t have any love triangles, and have a great support system of family and friends is just the icing on the cake.

Kotaro and Asako have a very organic, grounded-feeling romance, despite it being started in a somewhat comedic fashion. They have to learn to trust one another, they have to work with each other’s weaknesses and strengths, they learn how to communicate in ways that work with one another and have to remind each other of their commitment to one another. In a lot of ways, their struggle to be true to themselves and one another reminds me of my own relationship with my girlfriend over the past four years, and how people who love each other have to learn to speak each other’s language.

The story doesn’t make light of their emotions, neither does it make the emotions the only focus: they still have work deadlines to deal with, old friends to catch up with, family to talk to, hobbies to enjoy, and a life to live. And isn’t that the point of a committed relationship? Living life with the person you love?

After the Rain

Yeah, another romance manga. But this one has an age gap! Now, put away your pitchforks, this isn’t what you’re thinking. In fact, it took me a while to read this one, because I feared the same thing. Let’s square that away right quick: while After the Rain is about a 17-year old girl who has a crush on her 45-year old manager, they do not end up together. In fact, After the Rain is much less about romance and much more about how people can help to complete one another without the need for a romantic entanglement.

Tachibana, the female lead, is a former high school track star. While still known and respected by the girls in her school, an injury led her to abandoning track, and instead filling her after school time with working at a local diner. Kondo is the manager of said diner: a divorcee who spends as much time with his son as he can, he’s known for being kind-hearted yet clumsy and a little wishy-washy. A former author, he hasn’t written anything in a long time, and moreover seems to have abandoned that dream alongside his past marriage.

What After the Rain does so well is that it brings these characters together with the premise of a schoolgirl’s crush, and instead uses their interactions to show how much they bring out the best in each other. I don’t want to spoil the story for those of you who want to read it, and you should, but suffice it to say that Tachibana and Kondo end their story for the better, on paths that they’ve chosen for themselves. They’re better people because of what they’ve chosen, not in spite of it. A peace of their own, and one that’s well earned.

Golden Kamuy

Alright alright, so the first non-romance on this list, and I haven’t even finished it yet, but boy do I have to talk about this one. Let me frank: I haven’t read something that makes me feel as much like I’m on an adventure since I caught up to Hunter x Hunter. Even comparing it to the anime I’ve watched, it reminds me so much of that sheet energy and anticipation that I had when watching JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure for the first time, and then some!

What do we got here? A cross-country adventure? Check. A ton of awesome fights? Check. Interesting and fun characters? In spades. The main premise is a former soldier and a girl from an indigenous tribe searching for escaped convicts because the guy who stole gold from the girl’s village a long time ago tattooed the map to said gold on the backs of these convicts and so they’re tracking them down to find the treasure.

You already had me at treasure hunt, but what Golden Kamuy does so well is balancing the tension of those serious moments with just sheer insanity, like a corporal who collects ears, a guy who literally gets off from the idea of being killed, and outsmarting a group of yakuza who were pretending to be Ainu due to the power of embroidery. It’s a tale that just keeps spinning off more and more and yet is still maintaining that standard of quality. It’s also wrapping up soon, so there’s no better time to check it out!

Tokyo Ghoul

So, confession time: I never really sat down and read Tokyo Ghoul until this year. I’d tried a couple of times and couldn’t get past the first volume without feeling really bad for the main character. A few years and a Berserk later and here I am on volume 6 eagerly eating up the story.

What can I say? The worldbuilding is so amazing, managing to bridge that gap between the fantastic and the mundane in such a grounded way. From ghoul society to the way humans interact with them, there’s clearly been a ton of thought that went into putting this world together, and I love how that comes out in the characters! They go through some real struggles and real tough decisions in this story, and the way that the main character navigates it all while still needing to balance who he wants to be is really compelling to read.

They’re even managing to do a chosen one archetype without him feeling like a chosen one, and I love that. Kaneki is really interesting in the way he’s leaning to grow: initially I thought of him as barely better than say, Ganta from Deadman Wonderland, but he’s really starting to come into his own in the story. I’m really looking forward to finishing it out!

And, that’s all I’ve got for right now. I’m still reading a ton of stuff (I feel a big desire to discuss Teppu at some point), but right now I need to get back to work. Hopefully sometime soon I’ll have another post, and more musings to share as I ease back into writing. Hope to see you around the blog!