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12 Years of Manga Therapy
So today, my blog is officially 12 years old. I don’t have much to say, but I know my writing has slowed down a lot. I haven’t written…
Go Read “Boys Run the Riot”
I just finished Keito Gaku’s “Boys Run the Riot” and I really enjoyed all of its messaging about dealing with prejudices. This was number 2 on my top…
Only Just a Bit
I’ve been enjoying Yuji Kaku’s Ayashimon in Shonen Jump due to its mix of spiritual lore and yakuza tropes. While reading it, I found this scene from a very recent…
Cells at Work! - The Body Is a Community
I got a chance to finish Cells at Work! and I like how the series ended with talking about COVID-19. It gives me hope about how not to…
Naruto and BLEACH - Forever Evergreen
Since everyone’s doing the end-of-year “most popular” lists, the libraries in my home of NYC decided to tell its users what books were checked out most in 2021 And for…
My Top 5 Manga of 2021
Hey everyone, I just uploaded my video of my top 5 favorite manga of 2021 (along with an honorable mention). Some post-show notes: - Audio was a bit too…
Anime NYC 2021 - All the Feelings
So, I decided to talk about Anime NYC 2021 in a kind-of long Twitch stream (if you can’t view the embed, you can watch here). It felt a…
Off to Anime NYC 2021
I'm headed back into the fray this weekend. Also, the return of this look on Saturday and/or Sunday (with a Persona 5 mask this time). I don't really have a…
The Real Freedom Is the Friends We Made
I talked about Attack on Titan's ending when the last chapter hit a while back, but the original story is technically over with the English release of Volume…
What to Accept When You Have a Disability?
I've been preaching for a long time that acceptance of certain bad situations opens up the world for anyone who's going through them. But after reading this part in…
A Sad Cosplay Tragedy Story
An incident involving a killing of a cosplayer came to my incident this past weekend. Rolling Stone Magazine had a feature-length read about two best friends who met…
I Really Miss People
This past weekend, I went to the Kinokuniya Bookstore in my area for the 1st time since the pandemic started. I went in and I saw so many people…
Manga Therapy - Where Psychology & Manga Meet
JUJUTSU KAISEN, My Hero Academia, The Way of the Househusband
Lost Judgment and Its Heavy Subject Material
When I heard that Judgment, a Yakuza series spinoff that focused on a private detective rather than a criminal figure, was getting a sequel, I was ecstatic. It…
Don’t Forget the Minority - World Mental Health Day
Today’s World Mental Health Day, huh? Normally, I would be all “Yes, combat the stigma!” But I see that many people want to jump abroad the hashtag/trend. It’s fine if…
Strong Lines from a Prideful Prince
I’ve been reading the Dragon Ball Super manga ever since the franchise came back in full force. To be honest, seeing Vegeta (my favorite character) continue to get wrecked despite…
Reframing Disability in Manga - A Must-Read for Today’s World
When my local library re-opened with full access over the summer, I decided to catch up on any print manga series I may have missed. While doing a…
Satoru Gojo’s Anti-Suicide Motivation
I alluded to this in my post about Jujutsu Kaisen’s Yuta Okkotsu, so I’ll bring this into full light as it should for Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. The…
Going Out to Enjoy Life Again After 2020
Many of you may know that I’ve been on a mahjong playing journey for a while now. I decided to take a venture out in person (twice) to…
End of Summer Break 2021
Hey all, hope you’re doing well despite COVID continuing to be a problem. I’m gonna be taking a break until Labor Day (September 6 in the United States). In…
Tokyo Revengers - The Best Kind of Revenge Is Compassion
“I don’t care if I can’t be like Mikey-kun! Because I’m Takemichi Hanagaki!” I heard this line from a famous article about being comfortable with yourself. Perfection is an…
The Magic of Reframing - Witch Hat Atelier
Normally, I would write a whole bunch of words. But for this post, I’ll give the spotlight to Kamome Shirahama’s artwork. This is a moment in Volume 7…
5 Years Ago, I Almost Ended It All
Time really flies once life doesn’t feel so bad. I just reflected on some painful memories of when I really thought about suicide in the summer of 2016.…
BLEACH 2021 - Embrace Hell
It’s 2021 and in the middle of a pandemic within a pandemic, the 20th anniversary of a manga that still resonates with A LOT of fans is teasing…
We’re In the Golden Era of BL
I watched the Manga Publishing Industry Roundtable at this year’s Comic-Con@Home event and watching it made me think about whether we now have a second mainstream manga category…
“Look Back” - 140 Pages of Raw Emotion
Koyoharu Gotoge gets all the attention right now, but the real manga superstar of the future (or soon-to-be) is Tatsuki Fujimoto. His previous known works, Fire Punch and…
Kaguya and Miyuki - One of My Favorite Manga Romances Ever
“Women often fell in love with someone who seems superhuman suddenly reveals their vulnerability.” I haven’t found many fans who talked about this, but how the relationship between Kaguya…
Anime Music and the Mentally Ill - Healing for Both?
A long while back, I used to check out local Japanese rock music acts in my area. It was a fun, crazy time. I got to meet some…
The Young Jump Upstarts - Oshi no Ko and Boy’s Abyss
Two titles that caught my eye as of late come from Shueisha’s Weekly Young Jump Magazine and both cover adolescents dealing with the reality of how the world…
The Tension of Getting Close
Reading this part of Komi Can’t Communicate makes me think about what it means to be close to someone today. The more you reveal about yourself to someone,…
Living Freely Does Come At a Price
When it comes to freedom, I think about what Inio Asano was trying to point out when Solanin was released in America. There was a quote about freedom…
Narratives Can Go Through Time-Skips Too
So I just finished reading Nagata Kabi’s My Alcoholic Escape from Reality. It’s another eye-opening memoir about struggling with your mental and physical health. There’s a part in the…
The Evergreen Shonen Story
A short while ago, there were some online conversations about the popularity of shonen stories. Almost all of them are based around the experiences of youth and some…
Chika-chan’s Depression - Some Glimmer of Hope
Near the end of Nagata Kabi’s My Solo Exchange Diary Volume 2, there was a one-shot manga, Chika-chan’s Depression, that depicts a world where society tries to remake…
Hi Score Girl - Turtling Forward
“Both you and the video games industry keep moving forward. It’d be pretty lame for me to be the only one getting left behind, right?” - Yaguchi Haruo…
Kentaro Miura - A Manga Legend That Used Darkness as Light
There’s a saying that a lot of mental health experts preach - you don’t know what someone’s going through unless they either say it or you directly talk…
No Conflict Does Mean Conflict
I’m a huge proponent of education, but I’m not going to lie that most of the people in charge of school systems aren’t great at providing great learning…
Nagata Kabi Is Refreshing to Listen to
I’ve been waiting for this interview ever since it was announced that Nagata Kabi (the now-famous mangaka of her memoirs, My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, My Solo Exchange…
An Online Community Is Better Than None
Lately, there’s been a bunch of talk about online communities and their role in the grand scheme of things given the fact that not too long ago, we…
Understanding Yumeko Jabami, Thanks to Mahjong
One of my latest hobbies is about to intersect with a very notable gambling anime/manga series starring a girl who just loves to risk it all. So I found…
Attack on Titan’s Ending - We’re Now All FreeSo this was finally it, huh? A manga that...
So this was finally it, huh? A manga that debuted in 2009 which became an anime/manga phenomenon in 2013 and would later still have a significant place in…
Yuta Okkutsu - The Curse and Blessing of Love (Jujutsu Kaisen)“I’ve always believed that...
"I've always believed that love manifests the most distorted curses." Before the curse of Ryomen Sukuna became the main problem in Gege Akutami's Jujutsu Kaisen, there was another curse…
On Kodansha US’s New Tagline
One of the North American manga publishers recently got a new revamp as Kodansha Comics became consolidated into a more centralized Kodansha with a new logo and also a…
Manga Therapy - Where Psychology & Manga Meet
Attack on Titan, Chobits, Knights of Sidonia, Tokyo Ghoul, A Silent Voice
The Little Child Inside Us
“Maybe there is no other way besides killing. And I dunno what I’m gonna do when the time comes. But I want to save that little boy.” My Hero…
Non-Manga Book Shoutout: Mental Illness Is an Asshole
I wanted to take a moment to recommend this book because it’s one of the few mental health books written by someone who’s not a professional, but an…
What We Really Want
Source: VIZ Media This is one of my favorite sequences in Komi Can’t Communicate from what I’ve read so far. Someone said to me a long time ago that you can’t…
11 Years of Manga Therapy
Today, this blog is 11 years old. And it all feels like the past year went by so suddenly despite a pandemic that’s shut off almost everything. Given that…
Being Asian in America and Fandom
I want to talk about my nationality today and being part of a fandom that I question from time to time due to my background as a Chinese-American.Yesterday…
Processing Meaningful Death in Anime/Manga
A few college students got some psychology headlines recently as they completed a study published in Omega - Journal of Death and Dying about meaningful deaths in fiction…
Demon Slayer and My Hero Academia - 2 Sides of the Same Coin?
Whenever you hear about Koyoharu Gotoge’s Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, you tend to hear about the records the series has smashed in Japan since the anime adaptation…