Mangacomicsraisedme,actually.

Hi, I’m kay.

Today’s question:

Do you read Manga?

I read many kinds of weekly Manga magazines

and comics until I graduated high school.

When I was a child

I started with Korokoro Comics.

I thought Doraemon

and Asari-chan were my real friends.

Under the influence of my three older brothers,

I read Jump, Sunday, which are for boys, of course.

But also, I had my hands on Ribbon

and Margaret, which are for girls. 

Of course, I also loved Osamu Tezuka 

and Leiji Matsumoto.

Naturally, I also had the Whole volume

of AshitanoJoe on my bookshelf. 

When I was in my twenties,

I started to live independently.

Every time I moved,

the number of comics I had decreased.

With the advent of manga cafes

I ultimately gave up keeping comics in my apartment. 

When I think that I can read them anytime

I don’t keep them at hand.

But when I think back

I spent most of my adolescence with manga,

I can say.

When I think about it now,

I’m sure this vast accumulation

was helpful for something.

Japanese weekly Mangas are incredible

Japanese weekly manga magazines are great entertainment

with high quality, and you can read the rest

of the story every week.

And what’s more, the first color page of the volume.

It was so beautiful!

I used to carry it around with me in a scrapbook.

Becoming a manga artist is

I can only imagine how hard it is.

If you think about it, readers are pretty spoiled.

Their bloody efforts, 

You can get it every week for ¥170 or ¥200.

I’ve been influenced by American culture.

I read a few Marvel comics in my twenties,

but they were not interested in at all.

I felt it was as flimsy as that booklet.

Compared to that

There are many excellent Japanese manga works.

In addition to the story

and drawing skills are also outstanding.

The best training for reading Kanji

Some books and comics have Kana

indicating the pronunciation of kanji.

In the early stage of elementary school

I grew up with Doraemon,

I’ve learned more kanji

I think I read more kanji in manga

than the ones I learned in school.

I learned the Kanji characters quickly because,

in the story, their conversations

were written in Kanji with Kana.

When I became a senior

I started to read Shonen Jump,

I learned a few words and said something to my mother.

I remember my mother scolding me many times,

“Where did you learn those words?!

(It wasn’t anything nasty.)

I was reading a comic book for young adults.

There was a Kanji character I couldn’t read.

I had a faint memory of pulling out

a Kanji dictionary for the first time.

Even I’m not very good at studying

I didn’t bother with the dictionary

if I wanted to understand that much.

There is no better way to learn Kanji

because you can get it in your head

with the reading in your rhythm and see how to read.

Manga is the universal language

Since Dragon Ball or Pokemon came out in the United States,

Japanese manga and anime are getting so much popular.

Various goods and costumes have become

a massive movement among children,

and the market has become more significant than in Japan.

I asked my French boyfriend about it,

and he said that TV cartoons were only Japan made

in France when he was growing up.

By the way, he is “Cat’s Eye generation.”

And he loves Hayao Miyazaki’s movies too.

But when I listened to it carefully,

the theme song of “Cat’s Eye.”

utterly different song in French.

What?! It’s not Anri!

I was so frustrated.

How ever we’re from different countries.

It’s a little strange(in very good way)

that we grew up with the same anime.

At another time when my friends from Singapore

came to visit me in Japan,

they begged me to take them to

Ghibli Forest and Tezuka Osamu Museum.

Nowadays, even just talking about Japanese manga

I can have something in common

with many people from different countries. 

If you are studying Japanese,

try to pick up a manga that looks interesting.

While looking up words repeatedly,

while going back to the page over and over

until you get to understand Japanese.

Before you know it,

you’ll have words in your head

that you couldn’t remember

just by writing or memorizing them.

Just as I once did with Marvel Comics to learn English,

when you learn a foreign language, 

it is more fun to have something to read

or listen to which you could have a passion.