The name here is a bit of a misnomer, though I’ll explain why in due time. Today I was reminded of some experiences that I had growing up that I wanted to share. When I was young, Anime was “those weird Japanese cartoons” and people had some pretty harsh things to say if you talked about enjoying them. Thing is that by the time I came across Anime, I’d essentially developed an impervious psyche so openly enjoying it was always on the schedule and adults saying it was all evil or bad and peers making cruel jokes about it didn’t bother me in the least bit.

Thing about anime though was that it’s video, and this was in the days before the real massive proliferation of resources on the internet and internet access generally, so I had very few means to access anime aside from watching it on TV after school (and late at night later on in my school years). This meant that whatever was on the television schedule was what I could see, and I’d have to be available when it aired to experience it, and this was all very inconvenient. Fortunately for kid-me, we went to visit a bookstore and I found Manga. I’ve no idea which volume of what I grabbed first, it was probably the Manga form of some Anime I’d heard about or some title I thought was neat or funny, but I picked one up and realized I could just take it with me to experience whenever I wanted to. Thus started my Manga collecting days; the bookstore was up in the city so we’d only go once every few weekends or so or only when somebody had something to deal with in the city over the weekend so it’s not like I accumulated Manga quickly, but I did start amassing a collection a few books at a time with almost every trip. We’d go to the city, I’d pick some volumes I was familiar with or working to collect or looked interesting from the description and quick read, take them home, I’d read them in class like a true delinquent, then repeat the cycle a few weeks later.

This cycle started in middle school and continued into high school. Thing was my personal friend group was well familiar with my collection and would read some of my stuff from time-to-time, but it wasn’t like we went out of our way to advertise I just had this collection of Manga I was willing sharing around. To me, it was just what I did; I enjoyed it and I wanted to share that joy, so while I would produce it almost on demand, I had no particular interest in broadcasting that I had all this stuff available (really this is a character flaw of mine if anything). Plus I was into Yu-gi-oh at the time and playing card games was a new and fun experience for me, so Manga wasn’t typically on the mind. But my collection was growing extensive, and so was my knowledge of series generally as a result.

So in my 3rd year of high school, I discovered that we had some more junior classmates that enjoyed Manga. Specifically, one of them had brought Death Note to share with their friends and either I caught sight of it (I know a Manga when I see one) or somebody else noted they should talk to me about Manga, but either way we started talking. I was interested because I wasn’t familiar with Death Note and the premise sounded interesting to me, but we ended up talking about other Manga we had and I learned they only had a few series and I don’t believe any were even complete, and they were interested in a few series that I happened to have. While we were acquaintances and shared friends, we were more or less strangers to each other, and I understood how it could feel sharing your prized possessions with somebody you hardly know (they loved Death Note and valued their copies greatly), so I proposed bringing in a selection for them to choose from as a trade; I get to read Death Note a few volumes at a time and they can borrow whatever collection that pleased them the most. The next morning, we met in the cafeteria before school started, I opened my bag for the trade, and some of their friends that were nearby started eyeing the stuff I had on hand as well. I’d read it all and wasn’t particularly concerned with losing it, so I ended up getting some volumes of Death Note to read and I’m pretty sure I ended up loaning out like every book I’d brought that morning, and it was clear to me that people were interested in enjoying the same stories that I’d enjoyed much earlier.

So I started packing more and more books into my second bag I took to school, eventually fitting my entire Manga collection into it; I’d go to school early so everybody would have a chance to meet up and swap what they’d finished reading for new stuff I had on hand, and this loaning of Manga became a pretty big morning event for us at school. I never really asked people their opinions on it, all I really cared about was that they enjoyed Manga, books are made to be read, and they were getting a lot of use through this process, but I do remember the opinion of one person just because I found it funny. Thing is that in high school, I was kind of a closet celebrity of an athlete; I didn’t play football, the big sport at school, but I ran track and field and played soccer, was good, and everybody somehow knew it. I’m not really sure how everybody knew it because, again, I didn’t really broadcast anything about myself, but it turned out that some of the underclassmen had this view of me as a legend of an athlete so it came to them as a real surprise when I rolled up with literally shelves of Manga chilling out in my bag for anybody to borrow. They talked about it one day because they found it funny, noting that they found me pretty cool once they learned that I was like thoroughly a nerd at heart.

All that is to say, for a few years, our school did have a Manga library; it was me. Almost every morning I’d wake up and carry a duffel bag full of books to school and return home that evening with a different amount depending on who wanted what that day. While it was just a matter of course to me, the thing I wanted to highlight about all of this was that being open and sharing of my interests allowed other people to do the same, and if nothing else, a lot of people were able to read and experience media they otherwise wouldn’t have had access to, and it all got rolling with me sharing my joy. That stigma around Manga was still around at that time in high school, so when they were trading around the Death Note volumes that originally grabbed our attention, they were being cagey about them. I didn’t understand why at the time (because at the time I couldn’t possibly conceive of why somebody would hide being interested in Manga), though with my experiences over the years, I’ve learned to understand where those concerns came from. And really the message I have for other people in that position of loving something but being afraid to share it is that sometimes it’s worth taking whatever ridicule comes along with it to share your joy, especially if it doesn’t hurt anybody. There’s always going to be detractors to everything and anything, so the personal choice you have to make is if the benefits of sharing your joy outweighs whatever consequences are out there. Problem with that scale is there are a ton of things out there you can’t see that can and will tip the scale; I had no idea at the time just how many people I would touch by simply sharing some books. To see them coming back to school early every day, excited for whatever happens in the next volume? I imagine it enriched a lot of their lives; it was a ton of weight to carry daily, and not all the volumes made it back to me, but sharing that, hopefully encouraging them to be more open about their joys was well worth that trade to me. Even if it was just for the one original person I traded? Absolutely worth it.

I do happen to have a few pictures of my Manga collection, though none from back in the TV stand days:

This one is from the summer after I went to university; I, of course, brought the collection with me and had dumped it on the floor to put it on the shelf because the box I had them in broke.

This is a much more recent image; I’ve moved into a house and now have a nice, orderly bookshelf for all my Manga (though the shelves are bowing under their weight). The top shelf is for Ken Akamatsu because his humor it par excellence to me in a lot of ways; Claymore and Read or Die are two series where I enjoyed the Anime first and got the Manga volumes after for more enjoyment (though both series and how they relate to their Manga are stories of their own); Prince of Tennis…is Dragonball Z Tennis really, and I love that kind of wild action; I enjoy most the other series for one reason or another, but those were the noteworthy ones right offhand.

So hopefully you find all of this encouraging. I love the kind of storytelling that was explored in Anime and Manga from when I was much younger, and I’ll take every opportunity I have to share it with everyone else that I can.