A Post About Manga

I finally got With the Light Volume 8 in the mail this morning and I just finished reading it.

The series is over! I'm just gonna go be sad for a bit now.

I loved this volume, the ending isn't as final as I would like it to be but I liked it. But more on that some other time.

Is it weird that I still get surprised when I find out that other people read manga?

I was listening to an episode of Weekly Manga Recap yesterday and one of the guys mentioned that a friend of theirs (Benzaie) also read manga. I did a double take and was all like "he reads manga too?". And I'm not quite sure why.

I only really started reading manga when I was about 11 or 12, maybe younger. I would look through the Shounen Jump magazines in the grocery store. I didn't really know anyone else that read manga at the time, I don't think anyone I knew read manga then (or if they did they certainly didn't tell me about it).

I think I'm still stuck in this mentality that I am the only one that reads manga (which I know is untrue). I know my friend Meaghan reads manga (or she did, I'm not sure if she still does), but we never really talk about it. I don't talk about manga with anyone, really.

That's why I'm grateful for the Internet and this blog and livejournal and all that. Manga and anime are really big in my life and I have no one to talk with about them. I read a lot of books, and I can sometimes talk about them to others, but manga and anime seem to be a taboo subject around here.

I know I sometimes go on and on about manga on this blog, but if I didn't do it here, where else could I? I grew up being looked down on for even being interested in manga and anime. It's kind of a big deal for me to go from keeping all this a secret to actually having discussions about it.

Like today, I got WTL8 in the mail, and I've been excited about this day for almost a year now. No one really seems to care. All I get are the weird looks like "you're still reading that stuff?", and then sometimes people ask me why I'm reading stuff from Japan like it makes a difference where I get my reading material from.

It's weird.