When I was looking for some information on this title, I stumbled across a three-star review on Goodreads that basically praised this book, but felt that it was a deeply depressing comment on the state of the world, but specifically Japan, a country that exports so much LGBTQIA+ content.
They’re not wrong.
It’s also a somewhat difficult read because it’s incredibly basic. I suspect this manga is incredibly important when it was first released in Japan in April of 2017 (同性婚で親子になりました from Bunkasha.) In a lot of ways it reminds me of My Brother’s Husband, in that, in the midst of some of the personal stories there are long chapter inserts that are how-tos. At one point, there is even a line-by-line instruction manual as to how to fill out the adoption papers, including directions for lesbian couples doing the same.
Unlike My Brother’s Husband, the story of Why I Adopted My Husband… is 100% autobiographical and, thus, a lot lighter. There are a couple of cute stories about how the couple broke the news to their respective parents, but largely it is meant to guide couples through getting legal recognition, which gave me huge flashbacks to life in, as my friend calls it, “the late 1900s.” When my now-wife and I were first together, we had to pay a lawyer a lot of money to try to legally cover all the things that married couples are simply granted by law once they tie the knot. Things like inheritance, hospital visitation rights, financial power of attorney, etc.
So, if you read this as an American, think of it as a kind of time capsule. In the US, adult adoption is not common, but when you hit one of those walls of texts Yagi-sensei does list out all the things you need to try to cover legally if adoption is not on the table. It is, as he notes, much more complex and messy–since much of it still depends on whether or not your family will respect your wishes (or that of your partner.) And, yeah, that? That was my wife and I in the 90s.
Is it a fun read? I mean, the chibi art is kind of cute. Yagi-sensei does not shy away from implied sex–though, obviously, there is no real smut in this manga. It’s complete in one volume and if you are fond of these kinds of autobiographical things, it is a very quick, fun read. It’s officially licensed in English (from Tokyopop), though I got my version from ComicsPlus Library. If you need/want a pirated/scanlated version, the link is provided in the first paragraph of this review as usual, although now that I investigate it further, it looks as though they don’t have any chapters yet. Here’s a link to a place where you can read the first chapter for free: https://comics.inkr.com/title/2262-why-i-adopted-my-husband-the-true-story-of-a-gay-couple-seeking-legal-recognition-in-japan.
It’s hard to recommend that you spend a lot of money on it since it’s not really much of a story? But, if my library had it, maybe yours will too!
I found myself in a comic book shop in Dupont Circle this last weekend and, being the pervert that I am, I ended up looking up AV Dan’yuu Hajimemashita / Diary of a Male Porn Star and then reading the whole thing on my phone over the next couple of days.
To be fair, I would have bought this one, but the bookstore only had volume 3.
SPOILERS
.
.
.
.
I have a weakness for manga in the autobiography sub- subgenre of slice of life. Like, I’m already so boring that I will read several volumes about a girl who learns to ride a motorcycle. And, maybe you’re thinking, “But, Lyda. This is a manga about the porn industry! It can’t possibly be boring!” I mean, sure, but also there is at least one whole series of panels about filing taxes as a porn star and the trauma our hero has about whether or not his supplemental declared income will tip off his day job that he’s doing some literal hanky-panky on the side.
Yeah, so this is the second autobiography that I’ve read where the main character draws himself as a frog. I’m sure I am missing some cultural reference. It’s possible that it’s just seen in poor taste to draw yourself as hot and so the mangaka defaults to something sort of lumpy and nondescript. In this case, the mangaka might be making a commentary about his manhood. Kaeru (frog) no (‘s) Erefante (Elephante) would be, “The Frog’s Elephant.” There are several anime (and manga) that use an elephant’s head to represent the boy bits, so I can sort of see what he’s doing here with his nom de plume. Since, as we learn, initially the work he did in the adult video business was actually just his elephant, as it were.
What’s fascinating to me about this manga is that, while there is a lot of very crass, very explicit sex talk, the manga itself isn’t really all that x-rated. It really is a kind of diary, where we learn about the job of being a porn actor.
I actually have a friend who worked in this industry (gay porn, however,) and so I found the weird little mundane details to be absolutely fascinating. Which is probably how I got through some of the more lightly homophobic moments in this. Kaeruno does not like it when his man parts touch another man’s, even when what is happening is that they’re both being serviced by a woman. People have preferences, I guess, and straight people are allowed to be straight. It’s just that it wouldn’t even have occurred to me to consider until Kaeruno points it out. It’s almost as if “the lady doth protest too much.” Kaeruno also is all very “awhooga” about boobies, too, which occasionally made me roll my eyes.
Those are the drawbacks, I’d say.
However, if you want to learn about the nitty-gritty details of being a porn star, this is the manga for you. Do I recommend it? Like, I imply above, it’s not exactly sexy. It also isn’t vanilla? It’s somewhere in between titillating and taxes.
I would even say that a surprising amount of the action in this manga isn’t the sexy stuff. It’s about Kaeruno getting to know people in the industry, coming out to his family as a porn star, and trying to balance an office job and his very incidental, random porn gigs. There’s even a subplot or two about the other porn stars he tries dating.
This one is definitely isn’t for everyone. It was a little straight for me, but I hung on because I was interested in the day-to-day stuff. It seems to be on-going. So, if you enjoy it, there is quite a bit to read.
I’m really not sure why I keep doing this to myself.
When I bought this book, I had a very telling conversation with the clerk who checked me out. They looked at this book as they were ringing it up and just sighed, “God, I hope Nagata is okay.” I was like, “Seriously, I saw this book and thought, ‘Oh thank god, she’s still alive.'” We shared a meaningful look and then all they said was, “Right?”
I mean, it’s probably good that Nagata is living her life out loud, in front of so many people. Surely, I am not the only one who got to the end ofMy Pancreas Broke But My Life Got Better, and said, “Uh, is it though?”
SPOILERS
.
.
.
.
As I believe I noted in my previous review of My Wandering Warrior Existence, it was clear to me at the end of My Alcoholic Escape From Reality that Nagata-sensei never actually dealt with her alcohol problem. She ends that book saying she’s on the road to recovery, while explaining to us in pictures she has professionally published–OUT LOUD–exactly HOW she is cheating on the strict “no alcohol” restriction of her illness. As someone who spent several years around actual recovering alcoholics, this is what one might call being an active user. You don’t get to call yourself recovering, if you’re “only drinking a little.” You’re just an active alcoholic who is better at hiding it.
In the current autobiographical book, My Pancreas Broke But My Life Got Better, Nagata-sensei’s continued drinking has finally come back to bite her in the butt–or pancreas, as the case may be.
Once again, I found this to be a difficult read.
We are supposed to be hilariously scandalized by her hospital break and, at this point, I really just can’t. None of this is remotely funny any more. I no longer even trust the little hopeful signs that things ARE improving.
I want to. I want to believe in the last part of this title, “But my life got better,” but once again Nagata-sensei continues to lie us and to herself, out loud, on the page, in black and white (well, black and white and orange.)
Witness, the very ending section where she’s talking about the pros and cons of being sober:
She’s telling us, very plainly, right here in this one panel, that this is never, ever going to last.
Look, Alcoholics Anonymous isn’t a cure-all. Meetings don’t work for everyone, neither does group therapy. But, she is saying that she avoids these Very Well Established and known to be decently successful programs so rigorously that she doesn’t even know if some of the feelings she’s having as she tries to dry out are common among other people who have gone through this exact same thing. That is a literal safety net–a community you can turn to as you struggle day to day–that she’s admittedly, intentionally avoiding.
I understand, even if Nagata-sensei doesn’t, that she suffers from extreme, severe social anxiety and that makes attending any of these sorts of social things like meetings, etc., extremely difficult. I also understand that just getting on the right meds for someone with this kind of cripplingly anxious can be difficult because you actually have to go and talk honestly to the psychiatrist about what you need.
But, then someone needs to intervene. Get her on the right meds, get her to the meetings, because I don’t know that it’s clear to her (or to the audience reading this book) that she can actually die from acute pancreatitis. Her organs could start failing and I’m not entirely convinced, after having read this, that they haven’t already started to. Some of the things she’s already going through–TMI things about her inability to control her bowels, how bloated her emaciated body looks–these are the kinds things that would be (and have been) real wake up calls to a lot of hardcore alcoholics.
And I have to wonder–because this is how she makes her money–if she isn’t feeling a certain kind of twisted pressure to avoid honest recovery. She already notes that she feels that, sober, she can’t read or even enjoy music the way she used to. I’m sure she’s also pondered the question, “What will I even write about if I get my act together?”
I kind of hate that Nagata-sensei’s popularity means that she’s become the standard for a lot of these kinds of confessional autobiographical manga. I think I noted that when I read Until I Love Myself and X-Gender, there appears to be a strong tendency to lean into the “ooooo, trainwreck!” parts of these stories because it’s worked so well, commercially, for Nagata-sensei.
She’s a commercial success, sure, but is profit going to kill her?
I honestly wonder.
I am so torn about these books. After I read the previous one, I swore off giving Nagata-sensei more money due to this exact fear. Now, I feel almost the opposite, like maybe I need to keep buying these manga so that Nagata can see that she is, in fact, a treasure.
Once again, I don’t know what to say about whether or not you should buy this book or even read it. It’s a difficult book, but not in the ways it should be. Instead, this series has become very much like watching a dear friend slip further and further away.
I honestly feel like I’m watching Nagata-sensei die.
At this point, I’m just holding her hand waiting for the inevitable.
Here on this site, I have complained MANY TIMES that I sometimes have to wonder if librarians read the manga before they decide where to shelve it. But, this is the first time I’ve had to ask myself… did the Official English language publisher read this book?
Like, at all?
SPOILERS
.
.
.
They did potential fans of Arai-sensei a great disservice, in my opinion. Because, you might think, from the title, that what this story will be about is Arai-sensei’s self-discovery. What happened at 30 that caused Arai-sensei to declare they have no gender? What does it mean to Arai-sensei to be genderless? Are they coming out as non-binary or… something else?
Whelp, spoiler, literally NONE of that is in this book.
Zero.
Nada.
Zip.
This entire manga reads like if the intimate details of Arai-sensei’s life are well known to the reader.
They are, of course…
…IN JAPAN.
Arai Shou has written a ton of books about their personal gender discovery in Japanese. In fact, I might suspect, given the title, Seibetsu ga, Nai! ~ Ryouseiguyuu no Monogatari / No Gender! A Story of Androgyny of which there are 18 volumes might be the main place to read about Arai-sensei’s personal journey. Some of which, I presume includes how, after marrying a man, their body begins changing and they discover they are intersex, specifically that they have Turners Syndrome.
Moreover, reading this series, I suspect a reader might learn that despite having top surgery and taking male hormones, Arai-sensei has come to the conclusion (currently) that they are also non-binary.
What is distressing about the English-language translation of At 30, I Realized I Had No Gender: Life Lessons From a 50-Year-Old After Two Decades of Self-Discovery is that the publisher uses the “he” pronoun to describe Arai-sensei throughout the book, saying that that’s Arai-sensei’s preference–even though, throughout the book, the narrator looks out of the panels at the reader and tells us that they feel neither male nor female and that they struggle with this, as they present as masculine. I was like, okay, it seems rare that someone who uses he/him would still consider himself non-binary, but who am I to say? I can roll. Yet, the more I read the way Arai talked about themselves confused me to the point that I actually briefly thought that either the term intersex was being used interchangeably for non-binary in Japan… or I was loosing my mind and I no longer understood what intersex or non-binary ACTUALLY meant.
It was only after watching an entire documentary about Arai-sensei did this book–the only autobiographical manga of Arai-sensei’s to be either scanlated OR to get an official publication in English–even BEGIN to make sense.
So, why this book? Why is this the first we’ve met Arai-sensei??
What was TokyoPop thinking? Why not start with Seibetsu ga, Nai! / No Gender! ??? These kinds of gender and sexual autobiographical books are extremely popular right now–witness all of the reviews I’ve been doing lately along these lines. I’m not sure there isn’t a market for an 18 volume series about an intersex person discovering 1) that they are genetically intersex, 2) that they want to express more masculinity, but not ALL of it and, instead, intentionally live in-between as a non-binary person, and 3) hooking up with their cis male gay/pansexual assistant and trying to decide if that made them a gay man or what? And eventually deciding that it didn’t matter and that, in the famous words of Chuck Tingle, love is love.
That’s fascinating stuff! I’d read the f*ck out of that. And these covers are darling!
I can only imagine that what happened in the TokyoPop boardroom is that they started looking around at the books their rivals were buying (see: any of the zillion gender/sexual minority 101 autobiographies that seem to be sweeping the 2023-4 manga market) and just GRABBED one of Arai-sensei’s at f*cking random.
I kind of wish that I hadn’t returned my copy to the library already because now that I watched a full two hours of an explanation of Arai-sensei’s life, I’d like to see where they are now. I presume that’s the appeal to Japanese audiences of At 30, I Realized I Had No Gender: Life Lessons From a 50-Year-Old After Two Decades of Self-Discovery.
Sadly, it makes almost NO SENSE whatsoever to English-speaking audiences who have not had the pleasure to meet this mangaka and their darling partner Khou… not even through pirate sites! One of the few pieces of Arai-sensei’s work that you can read is their contribution to the anthology manga, Change H. The other thing by Arai-sensei that I’ve found that’s been scanlated is Yuzu no Koto. I have not yet read either, but I honestly may recommend reading these because at least they stand alone.
If you decide want to tackle At 30…, I recommend that you watch the documentary (in Japanese, with subtitles) that I linked to above. The documentary is fascinating. Arai-sensei is frank and forthcoming about their experiences and, unlike TokyoPop, uses “S” to signify Arai-sensei’s pronoun since, if you listen to the Japanese, it’s clear that they use NO pronouns at all (which is, of course, much more possible in Japanese than it is in English.)
So a mixed bag? Not sure I’d recommend the actual manga because it’s mostly about Arai-sensei freaking out about growing old while Khou still looks very young, random bits about their already established relationship with no other context (NO CONTEXT FOR YOU!!), and make-up and clothing tips for readers who have written in desiring to pass as one gender or another or as genderfluid.
It’s not a great introduction to the idea of being born intersex, the documentary does a much better job a that.
Because if this is your only introduction to Arai-sensei, they don’t come off great?
Like, this “hurt myself” line is a bit disturbing if you have no context.
I feel like I need to apologize to my regular readers. I have not been reading a lot of smut this year. What can I say? I’ve been stuck hanging out at the local library and this what happens…
Despite the fact that I have literally read dozens of manga about manga, both fictionalized and autobiographical, I’m still often very sucked into these kinds of stories.
I suspect that one reason is that, more often than not, I can see a hint of my own creative journey in them. For those of you who don’t already know, I make my living as a fiction writer. Not unlike becoming a mangaka, becoming a published author is a weird, highly-competitive, often heartbreaking career. A lot of people want this job, but not many of us actually make it–and those of us who do (to varying definitions of “success”)–have a lot of ups and downs… usually more of the latter than former.
In this way, I’m probably uniquely well-suited to appreciate stories like Kakukaku Shikajika / Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist’s Journey, so bear that in mind as you read this review. Because, honestly, in many ways, if you’ve read one, you’ve basically read them all.
Hagashimura-sensei, however, is a skilled enough storyteller to be aware that she needs to have a twist on the usual formula in order to standout. So, Kakukaku Shikajika (which literally translates as So-and-So and Such-and-Such), is framed as a kind of love letter to a teacher, Hidaka Kenzou, who she would would refer to as ‘sensei’ for the rest of her life. She gives you much of what you may have come to expect from this kind of memoir, but the story basically begins with Akiko’s introduction to Hidaka and his strange little seaside studio, and it ends with his death.
The series, I should note, is complete in 5 volumes.
And, it’s a very compelling story.
Hidaka’s devotion to fine art and, eventually, to Akiko, is as strange, brash, and honest as Hagashimura-sensei portrays him. Hidaka just a good dude, in that way that your cranky, yelling uncle can be a good dude, you know? And, kind of like with an uncle like that, Akiko doesn’t QUITE know what to do with his affection. In fact, a large part of the series is Akiko coming to terms with the fact that she lied to, ignored, and ultimately sort of mistreated a guy who was really just trying to look out for her in the best way he knew how.
Her excuse, which I think is valid, is that Akiko came of age in a time when admitting to wanting to be a mangaka was a little like me announcing I was going to write science fiction in the 1980s. Like, science fiction for me (and manga for her), at that time, was seen as something that only really maladjusted NERDS were into and no one (and especially not one’s parents or mentors) could fathom how anyone would actually make money doing such malarky.
Because of this stigma, Akiko ends up going to university for Fine Art. Her sensei, Hidaka, assumes that this is her dream and so, unwittingly, ends up pressuring her to be his kind of artist, that is to say “serious.” Eventually, she realizes that, no, she just doesn’t have the passion for that. What she really, really wants to do is the “crass” art of manga writing and drawing.
I think this sort of decision can be somewhat universal? Like, it’s the moment that some of us have had when we realize that there are jobs and there are VOCATIONS. I’ve had lots and lots of jobs (some of them, like Akiko, even after I’d broken into publishing), but writing has always been my VOCATION, my passion. In a lot of ways, this is her struggle: realizing that sometimes we’re just called to do weird things. The universe comes knocking and says, “Yes, this twisted road is the one for you.”
Once Akiko starts devoting her time and energy to this “lesser” art, she feels more and more guilty about not doing the kind of art Hidaka wanted her to. Once she starts getting published in more and more places that people read, she eventually has to confess the truth to him. Turns out, he’s more than fine with her choice, but, fundamentally, their relationship has already broken down at this point. Plus, as we all know from the six dozen other manga about manga we’ve all read, being a mangaka requires an insane (to the point of being health-damaging) amount of overtime.
The story itself, then, is bittersweet.
Even when Hidaka reaches out to her when he’s been diagnosed with lung cancer, Akiko is not able to drop everything to spend the time that’s likely needed to repair their relationship. To be fair to her, it’s not just her career at this point, that’s keeping her in Osaka, but also her child, whom she raising alone after a divorce.
As an aside? Apparently, she wrote a whole manga about this child? I say this because it’s sort of just presented in the series as matter-of-course that we know how this kid came along and how she feels about it all, but I really had no idea, not having read that particular manga (which MIGHT be Mama wa Tenparist, which apparently translates as Mama at Wit’s End, which also seems highly relatable.)
That’s the thing about Higashimura-sensei. She writes characters and is herself a character who is very relatable. Even coming to this with no interest in manga creation or publishing, I think a reader could enjoy this just as a slice-of-life story? There are moments, when Higashimura-sensei jumps around in the chronology of the narrative in a way that you can only do when the readers understands that this is Real Life, but, generally, it reads far more like a story than a lot of others.
The art is, of course, quite good. According to some source I read (possibly the Wikipedia page) several of the volumes include extra sketchbook pages to show off her finer art. I will admit that after having checked the first one out from the library, I failed to figure out how to use my new St. Paul Public Library card (I am a more regular user of a different system, Ramsey County), got frustrated, and just read the scanlations. Because I read online through the pirates, I’m not sure I saw all the art, though I may have.
At any rate, I do recommend this one, if you’re up for more memoir.
The back of this manga describes itself as a “poetic memoir,” though I feel like the term semi-autobiographical might also apply. It’s basically the lightly fictionalized story of Mizuki-sensei‘s early life in the remote coastal city of Sakaiminato and the woman, whom he nicknames Nonnonba, who tells him many of the stories of yokai that would become fundamental to his later works. One of the obviously fictional bits is that Mizuki-sensei has conversations with and interactions with yokai and that sort of spooky, but lighthearted tone left me unprepared for some of the more serious turns in this 408-page manga.
SPOILERS
.
.
.
.
Let’s go right into it, shall we?
Even though one of the early color spreads mentions a character that we’re introduced to much later in the volume, Miwa, as having been “sold,” I was fully unprepared for a primary school age girl to be very matter-of-factly sent into a geisha house in Kobe. It is both explicit that Miwa, whom Shigeru has befriended, is just old enough to consider sending to school, but also that this is slavery. They refer to the man who at first appears to be her father as a “slaver,” and there is a scene where he is clearly in the business of selling other women and girls into sex slavery.
And, the story gets more hardcore because Shigeru doesn’t want this life for his friend, but he’s basically talked out of trying to rescue her by saying that it would be too “troublesome” for both himself and Miwa. He is counseled to hold his peace and let her go.
And so he does.
Miwa, like, I dunno, ten?
And, that’s the story the book ends with–this absolutely horrific story that’s told with a gentle sort of melancholy of a friendship lost to fate. Like, I dunno, the inevitability of a favorite pet’s death or something.
God it sucks to be a woman in Japan. Because the only other girl near Shigeru’s age that we meet is his cousin, Chigusa, who is dying (and eventually succumbs) to tuberculosis.
Oof.
The only thing about Chigusa’s story that is nice is that it inspires an incredible spread of Shigeru’s imaginative flight with her into the ‘hundred thousand worlds,’ a Buddhist afterlife.
Meanwhile, Shigeru and all the young men in his life are having these wonderfully raucous lives where they’re playing at being soldiers, taunting each other into haunted houses, and generally skipping school to get up to no good while interacting with the local yokai. All of which, while violent in places, seems delightfully wild and free.
Ah, a boy’s life is the life for me.
Alas, the book reads a whole lot differently as a woman. It’s still well worth the read–the art, while very stylized, is very detailed and fantastic–but I think female readers should be cautioned to be braced for impact. Just don’t attach to any of the young female characters and you’ll be all right. Nonnonba, herself, is fantastic character and, I can spoil for you, makes it the final reel, as it were. So, if you want to invest in her story, you absolutely can.
The monster art is pretty fantastic, and, if you like autobiographical manga, I absolutely recommend this one–unlike a lot of manga artist’s autobiographies, this one really doesn’t tell the story of Shigeru’s art, more his foundational childhood memories, particularly of yokai.
Unfortunately, no one has scanlated this one, so if you want to read it, I recommend checking your local library or taking the plunge and buying the MASSIVE official English-language volume. I will say that if you’re on the fence, there are several lovely stories in here including one in which thanks to Shigeru’s highly-educated, but weirdly incompetent father, the family ends up harboring a knife-wielding bank robber that I would say is fully worth the price. Amazon has it listed around $12 US, which is a good deal considering how many pages this volume is.
This manga is a classic and an award-winner for good reason…. I just wasn’t prepped for life as a young girl in Japan in the 1930s.
Another autobiographical manga, this one by Hiranishi Meiri about that one prefect, short-lived romance that ruined all further chances of finding love.
There are a lot of reasons I ended up feeling ‘meh’ about Kanojo ga Dekinai Onna / The Girl Who Can’t Get a Girlfriend, but this message that love has to be perfect (or god forbid, it’s somehow more noble to love one special person and no one else for the whole rest of your life) has always struck me as kinda bullsh*t, even a bit toxic and damaging.
SPOILERS
..
.
.
So yeah.
It always feels awkward critiquing an autobiographical manga. Like, this is Mieri’s lived experience. I honestly and fully respect that. She has every right to feel how she does for the reasons she does. She went to a lot of effort to commit her story to paper. She’s also insanely brave to then have this very personal story published for all the world to see. That is very admirable and not something I could do. (Fiction, yes. My inner life and inner secrets, hell no!)
However, Mieri is not my friend. I am experiencing her real life story as a reader. Even though she lived through and worked hard on all of this, I’m not obligated to find her dating problems interesting or meaningful to me.
Even if we are both butch lesbians.
You may very well counter with: well, if you didn’t like it, then don’t review it! Two things: first, when I started this blog, I committed to reviewing everything I read no matter how embarrassingly smutty or whether or not I liked it. I didn’t actually ever expect to gain a readership of any size, so these reviews were for me. In many ways, they still are. But, more importantly, I, myself, find it helpful in deciding what to read next reading both good and bad reviews. The reviewer’s dislikes might be my likes, for instance. Or, maybe, if they’ve described their issues well enough, I might be able to discern that what they dislike would be similar to my dislikes and so I can chose to not waste my time on it.
But, my not liking (or finding ‘meh’) a manga is in no way meant to be some kind of edict that EVERYONE needs to dislike the story for the same reasons I did.
Okay, enough disclaimer.
Here’s the basics of the story: Mieri is a late bloomer. She goes through a lot of life thinking that she’s probably straight, even though all her crushes so far have been on fictional female characters.
Relatable.
In college, Mieri meets Jay, who is exactly her type. She even SMELLS good.
It’s at this point Mieri discovers one of her lifelong problems: she’s a butch who likes other butches. This section is, for me, probably the most interesting. As someone who grew up in the Late Jurassic, I’m kind of disappointed (and yet not entirely surprised) to discover that lesbians are still dividing up this way. In what is becoming typical of these kinds of queer autobiographical manga, there is a chart explaining very basic 101-level information. First there is a description of types of lesbians: butch, chapstick (in-between), and femme. Then, there’s the pairings–femme/femme, butch/femme, and (rare pair) butch/butch. If you are like me, you probably immediately noticed no pairings for chapstick lesbians. They exist, but they are apparently hanging off the org chart.
This is immediately where I start to go… mmmm. Because if you’re identifying a problem in your life as “the choices are so narrow, I have nowhere to fit!” and you don’t even list out all the possible choices, I begin to wonder if the problem is your unwillingness to see all the possibilities.
This concern continues because, going back to Jay, we see Mieri attempting to figure out how to flirt and failing miserably. Again, this part is very relatable and, in its way, funny. Except that because Mieri thinks that the dating pairings are so rigid–specifically butch/femme–she starts trying to become a femme for Jay. To the point of wearing wigs.
Then, Jay gets a girlfriend who is… you guessed it, butch.
At this point Mieri resolves to be more authentic and just devote her life to trying to find the butch girlfriend of her dreams. Which, despite where you might think this is going, she has a bit of a rocky patch, but then does. Mieri finds Ash on a dating app. They date and it’s great?
Eventually, Mieri who has been going to university in America has to return. Ash and Mieri are nervous about this and what will happen to their relationship, but Ash gives Mieri a promise ring and they resolve to try to have a long-distance relationship. Ash finds someone else and breaks up with Mieri.
The ending also follows the pattern of autobiographical manga in which there is a spiral down into depression. Then, a slow discovery that if you love yourself, you may never find love, but at least you love yourself and that’s f*cking something.
The story is fine. The art is very cute. I actually sort of envision myself internally, much as Mieri draws herself, so that’s fun for me. My problem is that this story just doesn’t feel big enough to be worth it. I mean, this is unfair. But, many people have a first love that goes south for one reason or another and have to get over it. Tons of people have long-distance relationships that blow up exactly like this and so Mieri’s version of it doesn’t feel like it even rises to the level of My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness‘s “And I was so desperate that I hired a prostitute” which is, at least, an outlandish response to all of the problems of dating other women.
Again, this is unfair of me and I know it.
I feel like I’m asking Mieri to be more desperate or more broken, and this is a real person’s life, not entertainment, per se. I will note that it *is* marketed as entertainment, but, normally, a story doesn’t have to be horrible for me to be entertained. I love slice-of-life fiction where people just live their lives, so it’s not as though I expect everything to be high-stakes and high-octane.
It’s not that I got to the end of this manga and said, “Girl, get over yourself.” I absolutely have been through this kind of emotional ringer, Likewise, I know plenty of other people who have clung to the heartache of a first lost love and the pain is REAL. In many ways, the problem, for me at least, is that the story is so common that I got to the end and just thought, “Well, okay. Good for you,” which is just strangely unsatisfying.
And, as I started this review with, I also think that being so focused on the first love for so long is the kind of story I’d like to see get less press, be less spotlighted. It perpetuates the myth that there’s only one person out there for all of us. I hate that idea, and it has never been true in my life. Love is a verb. You have to work at it with whoever you pick and, yeah, that one person was special, but there are a lot of people out there who are also special and also for you. It’s not “settling” to find someone who doesn’t hit every single button, it’s expanding your tastes, your horizons.
Mieri, for the love of god, try dating a chapstick lesbian. Maybe you’ll discover that nearly butch is butch enough.
Still, give it a try if it sounds interesting. Then come back and tell me your take. That way, the next person might have a couple of opinions to chose from.
My wife is now on the board of the Friends of the Library. She doesn’t drive, so I was stuck hanging out, waiting for her meeting to end for several hours last night. During that time, I managed to read two sets of autobiographical manga about nonbinary manga artists: X-Gender/Seibetsu X by Miyazaki Asuka and Until I Love Myself: The Journey of a Nonbinary Manga Artist by Pesuyama Poppy.
SPOILERS
.
.
.
.
CONTENT WARNING: Sexual Harassment and Discussions of Suicide
Where to even begin….
I think the best place to start is to remind longtime readers of one of the other autobiographical series I’ve read. I would like to call back to mind My Wandering Warrior Existence by Nagata Kabi because my experience with that book extends to these. After awhile, the “ooooo trainwreck!!” prurient interest that every human gets from listening to the truly crazy (initially humorous) stories of that one disaster friend quickly (for me at least) fades to, “Are they okay? Really?? Maybe consider therapy now?”
Good news, at least Pesuyama-sensei, does, in fact, seek therapy and seems to have benefited greatly from it. I think the clue is in the title of their two-volume series. Officially, it’s translated as Until I Love Myself, but the Japanese is Jibun no Karada o Yurusu Made/女の体をゆるすまで which could be translated “Until I Forgive My Own Body,” which is a much more accurate title, in terms of what the story is ABOUT.
The manga is only tangentially about being nonbinary.
The main focus of Pesuyama-sensei’s journey to love themselves revolves around several incidents of sexual harassment in the workplace. The workplace in question being a manga artist’s studio where they worked as an assistant. The story begins in the now, seven years after, with them reaching out via Skype text to their abuser.
Pesuyama’s nonbinary identity is presented as an established fact. It’s something they know about themselves and have always known and not what the journey is truly about, except in the ways in which the abuse they faced made them hate the body they were born with.
Over the course of the two volumes, we learn that Pesuyama is AFAB, but identifies as nonbinary trans masc, in the parlance of the West. In the second volume, there is more discussion of how Pesuyama came to realize their identity. Apparently, there is/was a show on Sky Perfect TV in Japan called “Oodles of…” and it would feature various things like “Oodles of drug addicts,” and “Oodles of male porn stars” and the host, J Chihara, would interview these folks. A pivotal moment in Pesyama’s life was watching the episode which featured “onabe,” trans men. (As an aside, I have a similar moment in my past when Phil Donahue had an episode about lesbian nuns!) Pesuyama was particularly impressed to discovered all of the options just three trans men offered–some of the men had bottom surgery, some did not, some continued to legally live as women, some did not, some were attracted to women, some to women and men, and some just to men. The one who was bi even talked about still having a vagina and having PIV sex with men.
What is notable about Pesuyama’s manga is the extent to which I left the volumes feeling really okay about their life, as it exists, in reality. Given that this is an autobiography, that’s sort of what one hopes for at the end, you know? A sense that this person has been through A LOT but has come out the other side OKAY.
Unlike so many of these queer autobiographies, I got the very strong impression that Pesuyama-sensei has FRIENDS, lovers, a supportive mother, a good therapist, and even a VERY GOOD editor, someone who really wants to take care of how their story gets told and that the reaction to it causes no further harm.
Meanwhile, X-Gender left me feeling a lot less sure about Miyazaki-sensei.
Both mangaka talk very openly about the pressure to write a manga about intensely personal things and how artificial that is to maintain, particularly if their manga becomes popular while it is being serialized. It’s clear to me that Miyazaki’s editor did not have their emotional health in mind. X-Gender is structured the opposite of Until I Love Myself. The first volume is entirely about Miyazaki-sensei’s coming out, if you will, chronicling their understanding of their gender and sexuality. The second is… f*cking dark, is what it is. In part, I think, because Miyazaki wrapped up all talk about their gender that they wanted to explore and was left with “but people want more, so write whatever.”
But, I’ll get to that.
I can fully understand why Miyazaki’s publisher pressured them to continue, however. The first volume is delightfully awful in that way that watching people go on a series of increasingly BAD DATES always is. As they say from the start, Miyazaki has always been confused about gender, but they KNOW they like women. So, at first, they just desperately try to fit into Japanese lesbian culture.
And it is, no surprise, an absolute sh*tshow. Especially since they get a lot of very questionable advice…
I mean, even as someone who fully identifies as a cis lesbian, I can tell you that my own experience trying to be a “professional lesbian, seeking same” led me to feel very much like an amateur lesbian, a fake. Moreover, it turns out, “we all sleep with women” is a VERY BROAD category as a thing to have in common and I realized early on that I had a lot more to talk about with nerds, geeks and otaku than I did with the average softball or rugby playing , tofu pup grilling lesbian, you know?
So, this volume, the reader gets taken along for the very bumpy ride as Miyazaki-sensei tries out various IRL meet-ups, lesbian clubs, and online dating apps. At each one, they learn more and more about themselves, their preferences, etc.
Like Pesuyama, Miyazaki is not fond of the bits they were born with, which also happens to be AFAB.
This part of the manga reminds me a whole lot of Genderqueer: A Memoir an American graphic novel, because Miyazaki goes into a lot of detail about their sexual fantasies and desire to have a dick. However, they define the concept of “x gender” in a way that I think many people in the West would tend to more precisely label gender fluid (or, as above, genderqueer). They see themselves as both male and female at the same time and they will dress accordingly, ala they like femme make-up and skirts, but also feel masculine on the inside and have deep body dysphoria including keeping their hair short and boyish. Of course, all of this is acceptable as nonbinary–since that’s a very broad spectrum. I was just struck by how similar this story is to the one told in Genderqueer: A Memoir.
Like Nagaya-sensei of My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, et. al., there are a lot of things, unrelated to gender or sexuality, that are going on with Miyazaki-sensei.
For one, it takes them until the end of the first volume to talk about their struggles with OCD. They are also a big proponent of Antinatalism, which, in essence, means they feel they should never have been born. This leads Miyazaki to research and apply for immigration to countries where assisted suicide is an option. Miyazaki talks a lot about their father’s slow, painful death due to cancer and this seems to have generally affected their worldview and mental health in a way that is NOT examined in either volume in a way that had me closing volume two and whispering, “Please talk to a therapist.” They appear to be medicated for their OCD, but their suicidal thoughts and impulses seem to be treated as a political stance and, therefor, normal and healthy.
Which, I guess, who am I to judge? But, for me, this part was really dark in a very unpleasant way.
But, I will say that if you struggle with suicide or suicidal thoughts in any way, I can not in good conscience recommend this book to you.
Both manga have very crude “gag” style art. This seems very typical of almost all the autobiographical manga I’ve read to date. Miyazaki has written manga in other styles, including having a one-shot published in Afternoon Four Season Prize, and a one-volume manga called Remasters! Pesuyama has another 2 volume manga called Jitsuroku: Naku made Bokorarete Hajimete Koi ni Ochimashita, which is translated in Until I Love Myself as I was Beaten Until I Fell in Love, which is an autobiographical telling of an S&M love affair. (No one has scanlated any of these.)
So the verdict is pretty simple. I can recommend both volumes of Until I Love Myself (with the caveat of only if you can stomach real life stories of sexual harassment) and the fist volume, of Gender X.
It is nice to see manga with these themes, however. As I often tell my wife, I feel like Japan, generally, seems very far behind the West in terms of understanding and accepting gender and sexual minorities (and omg, THAT should frighten you, as we have a LONG ways to go yet!) Gay marriage is still not legal there, except as adult adoption. Gender X was published in 2020 and seems to be so much a first of its kind that there are whole sections of the manga devoted to EXPLAINING HOW PERIODS WORK as well as pages of definition of queer terms. Until I Love Myself was also published in 2020, but since it focuses more on the abuse recovery, it has a lot less Gender 101.
I really need to stop giving Nagata-sensei my money. At least until she writes a manga called, “My Life-Changing Experience: Getting Therapy.”
SPOILERS
.
.
.
.
I bought My Wandering Warrior Existence at my local manga shop, Next Chapter Books. The person behind the counter who sold the manga to me said, upon seeing the title, “Oh! I love Nagata-sensei” and I need you to know that without hesitation I replied, “I do, too.” I suspect that if, by some miracle of chance, I was introduced to Nagata-sensei on some fantasy trip to Japan, I would adore her. She seems like my kind of people–funny in a self deprecating way, a bit nerdy, and… I’m pretty sure, neuro-divergent and on the ace/aro spectrum.
However, lately, there’s something about Nagata’s autobiographical books that I’m finding difficult to read.
I actually read this volume several weeks ago, but I didn’t know how to talk about it.
I’ve made myself a very strict policy with this review site that basically goes: if I read a manga (or even watch an anime with a corresponding manga,) I will review it. I started this blog as a place to keep track of what I read. I’d like to keep up that original spirit, even though my audience has, I think, grown beyond that. In particular, I feel like this site has become one of the places where readers can see reviews of the things that other sites might not touch with a ten-foot pole, like my whole Mermaid Yaoi and Sub ‘verse round-ups. Because, if I read it–even if it’s WEIRD and/or porn-y AF–I will review it. I’d like to think this is part of the charm of MangaKast, at any rate.
That being said, Nagata-sensei is writing about her actual life.
It’s difficult to critique a narrative when it’s essentially someone’s lived experience, only illustrated and made public.
But, I’d like to offer critique. I have some things I wish I could say to the real life person behind the manga. Reading this particular volume makes me want to learn enough Japanese in order to write a letter to Nagata-sensei explaining to her that it’s pretty clear to me that her “problem” in this particular volume isn’t a problem at all.
The set-up for My Wandering Warrior Experience is that Nagata-sensei got invited to a friend’s wedding and, in essence, the whole fun, party-atmosphere of the reception seemed like an answer to her struggles with depression. Like with the autobiographical manga that rocketed her to fame, My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, Nagata-sensei decides to take matters into her own hands. What she thinks she wants is to have a photo shoot of herself in a wedding dress, because why not?
Because it’s not going to be the same, is why not.
Worse, it sets off a whole cascade of “why can’t I have relationships with other people,” and, of course, her mother, who gets super into the fake wedding pictures, lamenting the fact that she’ll never have grandchildren.
She then spends much of the rest of the manga exploring her relationship with sex and romance.
As an American steeped in ace/aro culture, reading it feels like reading a primer for “How Do I Know I’m Aromantic /Asexual?” But, Nagata-sensei never seems to come to this conclusion in the book? Instead, she sets herself up–as she does in these manga–as a “hilarious kind of broken,” a target for ridicule and laughter.
That last bit made reading this particular volume un-fun. She’s not any more broken than any other aro/ace person, which is to very clearly say NOT AT ALL. Being aro or ace is not a problem to be fixed. It’s a label that helps you understand that you are who you are. So, I left the last page with a bad taste in my mouth, like I’d participated in some kind of weird self-bullying or something, you know? Like I was supposed to laugh at or find humor in the suffering of someone who just needed an ace or aro friend to pull them aside and say, “Yes, honey, there’s a word for it. You’re FINE.”
It’s getting painful. Yet I keep buying these books??
I think it’s that last part that I’m finding hard to justify to myself. I really need to stop reading about this woman’s life. It feels weird to be taking any enjoyment out of her actually very serious train wreck of a life. Like, in the previous book, My Alcoholic Escape from Reality, she ends up hospitalized for fatty liver disease which she brought on by basically being an untreated alcoholic, a condition she never solves, other than to realize that she can cheat on her fatty liver diet by STILL DRINKING OCASSIONALLY. This woman needs real therapy, not another manga contract.
I say this not to be cruel, but because I really care about her. I love her quirky little adventures, like hiring an escort service or deciding to do her own wedding shoot, but those stories get a whole lot less funny when you realize the toll they seem to be taking on a real person.
So, can I recommend it? Yeah, I don’t know. On one hand, I want Nagata-sensei to have enough money to live and possibly afford the therapy she could benefit from. On the other, I don’t know what to do about how ghoulish I feel after having bought and consumed a product that is based on someone’s pain. Queer pain should not be entertainment, and I feel that aro and ace pain count as queer pain. But, again, Nagata-sensei’s art is adorable as usual and her love of her super-huge refrigerator is honestly delightful.
This manga came out in 2018, but I feel like there’s been an uptick in the popularity of autobiographical manga in the US markets recently, possibly due to the success of My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Nagata Kabi. American audiences seem to suddenly crave more stories like this, and Monnzusu’s book fits that bill.
I’m not sure that I have a whole lot to say about the stories in this collection. I have a feeling that they will feel very familiar to a lot of people and might be a source of comfort. I know that I had a brief moment of the tears of being “seen” when I hit the one chapter that deals with learning disabilities, specifically dyslexia. My personal stories was very different since my disability is very mild, but there were things that really hit home.
It’s also really interesting to see the way that Japanese culture plays into all of this. The services that are offered and the ways in which various people come to realize they have “a different brain” than most people. I very rarely feel grateful to live in America, but reading this book made me happy that even though my dyslexia wasn’t diagnosed until I was an adult, teachers didn’t actively bully me for it (though, honestly, I might just have been lucky. I don’t know.) I do feel like there is some awareness in the US that schools and companies have to make an attempt at accommodating disabilities, thanks to the ADA which does, at least, include major depression.
At any rate, this manga was an interesting set of autobiographical stories. Everything was illustrated by Monnzusu-sensei, but each story was built around stories told to her by other people. I would say that most of the stories are upbeat due to the fact that the narrators begin to understand their conditions. However, if you are at all triggered by talk of or depictions of suicide attempts, be warned: several stories are pretty graphic in that regard.
Would I recommend this one? Well, I bought it. I was at a new-to-me bookstore and the title caught my eye and so I paid real money for it. Is it a book I’ll read again and again? Probably not. It was interesting and informative the first time through, but for me, a generally neurotypical person (minus the dyslexia), this was not as powerful as I think it might be for others. But, I obviously felt it was worth its cover price. I did link you to a site where you can read several chapters for free, so if it seems like your cup of tea you can try it out and see if it’s worth buying.
