Who could have imagined in 2016, when we all first discovered Nagata Kabi-sensei’s honest and touching diary of her struggles with mental health, that we’d be tuning back in repeatedly, like a manga reality show, hoping to see her feeling healthier, happier, more whole? And yet, here we are, reading the fourth volume of this real-world epic saga of a journey through her own life.

In Genjitsu Touhishitetara Boroboro ni Natta Hanashi (現実逃避してたらボロボロになった話), which has the English subtitle “A Story of Me, Trying to Escape From Reality Just to Be Worn Out,” Nagata-sensei finds herself at a new crisis point. She is suffering physically from her habit of self-medicating with alcohol, and ends up in the hospital with pancreatitis.

This book has shifted to a new color palette – using what my wife insists is the color of dayglo circus peanuts….a color schema which is correct, but perhaps a bit obscure as circus peanuts are a dying confection (“for good reason,” my wife insists, “since they are gross.”)

We’ve watched Nagata-sensei struggle with food, with alcohol, with depression, and now with her pancreas. It’s all very heavy going, but as a reader I don’t feel like I have the luxury of wallowing since, for any bleak feelings I might have, I have to believe that it’s harder for her. To some extent, the only thing we can do is be distant, abstract cheerleaders on the sidelines of the parts of her life she chooses to share with us. We have to know were not getting the whole story – and we have to be okay with that. So we mentally pull for her and send good thoughts.

And, in a way that means something to the universe, at least, there is some good news. She is getting work as a cover artist; her cover for Saotome Kanako’s Pants ha Haiteoke, (パンツははいておけ) is coming out this month, she’s got a lot of recent work on her Pixiv…including quite a bit of 18+  and lesbian work (which, to my mind, at least, mean’s she’s got some interest in sexuality and sensuality,) and a story in Shueisha’s Grand Jump Mecha, (sample available in Japanese on the Mecha website.) We know – we all know – that productivity does not equal health or happiness. But I hope that if she can concentrate on something that is not herself long enough to produce work that is not a diary, that something has shifted, if not improved. I’m interested to see what she creates when freed from her own story.

As a reader, I’m also torn between wanting to see how the rest of her life goes, and hope that it becomes enjoyable enough that she forgets to chronicle it. As per my last review, there will be no ratings, as it seems bizarre at best to rate the contents of a life being lived.

I note that this book is back with East Press and her other work is with Shueisha. I have no assumptions to make about that, I’m just noting it.