Week 10 - My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Nagata Kabi (4 points)

    This manga was quite the turn from the last, being rooted in the realm of feelings. I tend to enjoy these stories more anyways. Kabi’s story was much more relatable than Phoenix, albeit it much more depressing. However, by the end I found her growth to be very compelling.

    Kabi’s simplistic style is charming and even though the panel layout was very similar throughout the book, it flowed very well. I also think the secondary color of pink added to the panels was a nice touch that help enforce a sense of a woman’s story about women and herself.

    What I also found interesting was how she chose to represent herself as a cute lil’ chibi cartoon. She said herself “I should probably make myself cute” since her face would appear on so many pages. But the content of those pages could be very grim. I imagine it was to make the dark moments more palatable. Since a cute little character contemplate suicide is probably easier to read than a disheveled, not-so-cute character doing the same.

    I still think it is very admirable that she was able to turn her life around through some brave choices and realizations. I wish I could share this story with more people. The more I read personal stories like this, the more I don’t believe in laziness. At art school, students get called lazy a lot, but often when you look closer you will find a lot of people struggling to function as a person that they desperately want to be.

    I enjoyed this one much more than the last.