Archive for the Nagata Kabi Category


LGBTQ: My Solo Exchange Diary (English)

June 12th, 2018

Back in February, I reviewed Hitori Koukan Nikki (一人交換日記), the sequel to Nagata Kabi’s breakout hit essay manga, Sabishi-sugi Rezu Fuzoku ni Ikimashita Report (さびしすぎてレズ風俗に行きましたレポ) , which was translated as My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness. Now the sequel is out in English from Seven Seas as My Solo Exchange Diary, and I wanted to sit down and take another look at it.

As I point out in my review of the Japanese edition, this volume revolves around Nagata-sensei’s need for human relationships and independent life as a whole individual and the depression and dysfunction which make it hard for her to have those things. And, as I’ve pointed out repeatedly since I read this volume, becoming famous for having created a brutally personal diary of one’s crushing depression isn’t going to be the thing that helps with that depression. Nagata-sensei is honest about her need for praise, her desire to build a healthy ego and her challenges in doing so. It can make for a frustrating, fascinating, hopeless and hopeful ride in this volume. 

Towards the end, she has a chance to finally make a connection with another human, someone who genuinely seems to like her, but she’s blocked by her essential inability to return that affection. This is not a character we are talking about – the is a real person living a real life. So, while reading the Japanese version, I felt hopeful that we’d see her able to reject what keeps her trapped, but after this last week, I’m reminded that we have no “cure” for depression and no matter what we hope, it may never get better. All we can do is hope that the woman behind the name “Kabi Nagata” can find a way out of this. And we wish for that selfishly, as much for ourselves and the next volume of this journey, as we do for her, which is perhaps horrible, but true.

Ratings:

Art – 7 It’s developed into a distinct style
Story – 8
Character – 9
Service – 3
LGBTQ – 7

Overall – 8

While talking with folks from Seven Seas, I commented that as I read this, I kept wishing there was something we could do for her. Short of thanking her for her honesty and courage, there’s little we can do, except root for her from a distance. 

Thank to Seven Seas for the review copy and congrats on having another best-seller. ^_^ Now I’d like Takemiya Jin’s and Nishi UKO’s work please.





LGBTQ: Hitori Koukan Nikki (一人交換日記)

February 22nd, 2018

“Dear Nagata Kabi-san, this is Nagata Kabi.”

We left Nagata-sensei at the end of Sabishi-sugi Rezu Fuzoku ni Ikimashita Report (さびしすぎてレズ風俗に行きましたレポ) (which was sold as My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness in English) looking at a building a life in the middle of crushing depression and a debilitating eating disorder. As the pages of Hitori Koukan Nikki (一人交換日記) open, she is still attempting to build that life with crushing depression and sudden, shocking fame. (How much fame? The cover of this book says that her first book has 4.8 million copies in print.) But no pressure.

Nagata-sensei’s journey is a merry-go-round. Left out of the normal development of human emotions and affection, she’s desperate to be loved, to be embraced, but incapable of functioning at the level she would need to build the relationships that provide those things. Torn between needing some kind of stability, and desiring adulthood and freedom, we see her moving in and out of her parent’s house over and over trying to find some kind of balance.

Determined to make it on her own, Nagata-sensei struggles with ever worsening depression – her darkness is very omnipresent in these pages, signified by increasing use of black in the art, as she all-but-literally drowns in her own misery. 

Nagata-sensei, though, really is determined and keeps working at her next book, this time for Shogakukan’s Big Comics Special. Although her story is fully autobiographical, it has enough general appeal to have a major publisher pick her up and run her work in their magazine. More success equals more pressure.

But, just when things seem too overwhelming, she meets someone. Someone who becomes important to her. For the first time in her life, Nagata-sensei is experiencing the kind of emotion she craves. And, miraculously, it’s returned. I won’t spoil the end of the book, because it made the rest of the book worth reading, frankly, and you too will be able to read it this June when it comes out as My Solo Exchange Diary from Seven Seas.

Let me editorialize here for a moment: I am convinced that the reason the first book sold so well was that it had “lesbian experience” in the title AND a relatable story for so many.  I bet this won’t sell nearly as well without the word “lesbian” in it. Why? Because Amazon does not have a Yuri or lesbian manga/comics category. So people put in the keyword lesbian to find stuff they might want. Then they read the description. No one  is going to find Hana & Hina Afterschool when looking for a “lesbian romance” because that phrase is never used in the description. How many people might have loved a cute, sweet lesbian romance? Who knows because the description calls it a “toy-shop romance.” This is why Amazon needs a Yuri category, but also why publishers have *got* to understand how description works and who it’s for. Because I feel so strongly about this, I’ve sent this all to Seven Seas. Update: Seven Seas tells me that they agree, and are putting this volume out as My Solo Exchange Diary: The Sequel to My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness.

Seven Seas does a reasonable job with description, compared with say, Yen, who use the surreally vague Japanese descriptions, but this one is just going to need some help to become as popular as the first volume. And it should be, Because it’s a harder read, but a better book.

It is a harder read. I squirmed during the chapters when her parents read her first book. Crushing depression is crushing, and I was feeling weighted down by Nagata-sensei’s struggle. And when she broke down after kissing someone she liked for the very first time in her life, I’m not ashamed to say I cried, too. Which is why I really liked the ending and very much look forward to Hitori Koukan Nikki, Part 2.

Ratings:

Art – 7 She definitely has a style
Story – 6 
Service – N/A, even when there is nudity
LGBTQ – 9

Overall – 8

I’m fascinated by the (maybe disproportionately?I don’t know) important role in the comics industry held by autobiographical comic essays both in the West and in Japan. 

 





Seven Seas Licenses “My Solo Exchange Diary” by Kabi Nagata

November 14th, 2017

“Seven Seas Entertainment is thrilled to announce the license acquisition of the manga My Solo Exchange Diary by Nagata Kabi, the heavily requested sequel to 2017’s smash hit My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness!

In this follow-up to the viral sensation, Nagata Kabi uses engaging diary comics to explore her personal issues surrounding mental health, identity, and intimacy. Her relationship with her parents is growing more difficult than ever, and she struggles with the idea of living alone for the first time. Join her on her heart-wrenching, relatable journey through the challenges of adulthood.

Seven Seas will publish the My Solo Exchange Diary manga title for the first time in North America on June 5, 2018 for $13.99 USA / $16.99 CAN.”

The Japanese volume, Hitori Koukannikki (一人交換日記), will be available in December 2017 from East Press.





LGBTQ Manga: My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness (English)

May 19th, 2017

Nagata Kabi made a huge splash on online art community Pixiv with her heartfelt and honest autobiographical comic, in which she discussed her depression, the eating disorder she developed as a result and the long path to recovery and hope. East Press picked up Nagata-san’s narrative from it’s online home and printed it in book form. When I reviewed Sabishi-sugi Rezu Fuzoku ni Ikimashita Report (さびしすぎてレズ風俗に行きましたレポ) in 2016, I was convinced there was no chance we’d ever see it in English. I am so pleased to be completely wrong about that. ^_^

There are several amazing things about this book right on the surface. The publisher in English is Seven Seas, which has shown a genuine desire to be a Yuri powerhouse in the western manga market, but which – up until now – has favored moe schoolgirls over lesbians. I don’t blame them, I’m not criticizing…if anything I’m thankful that this is so out of their wheelhouse. Unlike something steeped in genre tropes like Hana & Hina Afterschool, I think Kabi Nagata’s My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness has a significant chance of reaching a non-manga-reading audience with a story that will very likely be meaningful for them. This is no Sweet Blue Flowers, this is a fairly brutal tale of a real life in crisis.

The most notable thing about this story is not that the artist is a lesbian. It’s that the Pixiv response to this woman’s honesty about her detachment from herself ,shows that a lot of people (not just in Japan) find themselves completely alienated from their own needs at an even earlier age these days than previously. The “mid-life” crisis has become just a “life crisis.” Pixiv readers resonated with this idea of the life one assumed one was supposed to have, the self-flagellation of not being able to even so much as fake that, and the breakdown when it all becomes too much. I sometimes think about the desperate loneliness of men and women in earlier centuries, unable to access – or even perhaps conceive –  of a life more emotionally fulfilling than the one they occupied.

The complete honesty of this story is moving. It hurts watching Nagata-san struggle…even when I know that she would come out the other end of this long tunnel.  

In my review of the Japanese volume I said “I think the story will resonate for a lot of people, although I am not one of them. I’m accustomed to my own bouts of depression and burn-out, but do not find solace in other people’s tales of their own experience.” I stand by this, but want to amend that the language barrier did affect me after all, because in English I was more deeply touched by the words. For that, I need to give my sincere thanks to translator Jocelyne Allen and adaptor Lianne Sentar (for whom I also owe thanks for the review copy!) Technically, this book looks awesome, maintaining the original three color interior of the original. And for that, I thank Lissa Patillo and all the fine folks at Seven Seas. You did an especially good job, with an especially challenging and especially worthy manga.

Which brings me to the final notable point about this book. It will officially hit shelves on June 6 and is already the #1 top selling manga in the Yaoi, Gay & Lesbian manga category! (And, almost in the top 5000 for books in general, wow.) When I checked yesterday Yuri manga filled 6 of the top 10 slots in that category, along with Hana & Hina Afterschool , Bloom Into You, and the Kase-san series (especially Kase-san and Bento, Volume 2 of the series), it’s something I never expected to see, and it warmed the cockles of this Yuri-lover’s heart.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 8
Character – 8
Service – 2
Yuri – 7

Overall – 8

Please buy this book, so we get more Yuri about lesbians. Please buy this book so we get more comic essays by lesbians. Buying this book lets Seven Seas know that you want lesbians in your Yuri. ^_^ And tell everyone you know about it. This book is, along with My Brother’s Husband, a game-changer.

And, while you’re at it, let Amazon know that the category title ought to be Yaoi, Yuri, Gay & Lesbian. I’ve written them to ask for it to be changed. If you write them, too, maybe they’ll change it!

 





Sabishi-sugi Rezu Fuzoku ni Ikimashita Report (さびしすぎてレズ風俗に行きましたレポ)

November 4th, 2016

51a2nxeuzdl-_sx351_bo1204203200_Nagata Kabi’s Sabishi-sugi Rezu Fuzoku ni Ikimashita Report (さびしすぎてレズ風俗に行きましたレポ) was just licensed by Seven Seas as My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, so I bumped it up on the to-read pile, because I wanted to have my own impression of the work before reading it through the filter of a translator.

Nagata’s work was popular on the Japanese art platform Pixiv before it was picked up by East Press, a publisher that has given us a number of LGBTQ comic essays in the past few years. The story is an  autobiographical account of her struggle with depression, anorexia and anxiety far more than it is an account of her life as a lesbian.

The story begins as she is about to have sex with a woman, then immediately rewinds to ten years early as Nagata graduates high school. We watch as depression strips her of everything society holds up as the ideal of a human life. It’s a hard read, especially if you’ve been depressed, and know how heavy the burden is.

Nagata’s art isn’t super sophisticated, but it’s not bad. It isn’t a pretty manga – not that it has to be or that I expected it to be. The pink, white and black color scheme, and her art style combined to make it a more jarring experience, which I believe was the intent. The color scheme and art make it hard to avoid the prickly emotions of the story.

She ends up with a life and a career, but the loneliness is still there, although lessened. One closes the books with a prayer that she has some good people in her life now, who will fill some of those emotional and physical needs.

I think the story will resonate for a lot of people, although I am not one of them. I’m accustomed to my own bouts of depression and burn-out, but do not find solace in other people’s tales of their own experience. (I understand that this makes me atypical, but why should today be any different? ^_^) Nonetheless, I can easily imagine a lot of people will feel validated by this book and the knowledge that they are not alone in their travails.

I’ll be very interested to see what you all have to say about the English-language version of this when it is released next year!

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 7
Character – 7
Service – 2
Yuri – 7

Overall – 7