The first manga I ever read was Fruits Basket, a romance anime about a homeless girl who moves in with a bunch of boys that turn into animals whenever she hugs them. It’s more saccharine than it sounds, but as a high schooler I was into that kind of stuff. The love triangles, angsty characters, and relative innocence of how everything played out was super attractive to me. I read the manga while watching the anime, and liked how the show almost perfectly mirrored the pages. Back then, when I found something I liked, I’d watch or read it over and over, so it didn’t seem so odd for me to be trading off between reading and watching the same story.

I ended up reading Full Metal Alchemist not long after that, since at the time the show was one of my favorites and someone told me that the manga followed a different storyline. At the time it was still being published and English fan translations weren’t the best or the fastest, so I ended up having to abandon it once I caught up with wherever the fans had made it to in the story. It’s been 15 years since then, the story was re-adapted to animation following the manga storyline, and I really want to go back to it.

I tried a few other manga in high school but completely forgot about it after that. Maybe it was lack of access, or the price when I did see them for sale, or maybe I decided I enjoyed watching anime more and quit trying to find copies of anything. About a year and a half ago, though, I was sitting in an airport waiting for a flight and I saw someone flipping through a manga on their tablet. I asked them how they read manga digitally and they introduced me to the Viz app. I downloaded it, but never opened it.

Some friends and I were discussing our favorite anime last year and it came up that I’d never seen One Piece. I grew up on DBZ, Bleach, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Inuyasha but just missed the start of One Piece. As the discussion always goes with someone who hasn’t seen One Piece, I was caught in a tug of war over whether I should read the manga, watch the anime, or give up on it entirely since the series was unbelievably long. I asked how many chapters the manga was, thinking it would be faster to read than watch if I wanted to catch up on it. They told me it had crossed over 1,000 chapters and my jaw almost hit the floor. That’s unreasonably long, even for a beloved series. But my friends assured me that each arc is better than the last, and there’s very little filler. The length alone spoke to readers’ love of the series, and I was feeling like looking cool, so I bragged that I could catch up in less than a month. That got a good laugh out of the group, but I downloaded the Shonen Jump app that night and started reading.

One Piece lived up to its popularity. It’s a classic shonen story with an amazing world, great battles, interesting and varied characters who grow and develop over time, and the pacing was surprisingly solid given its length. I read about 80 chapters a day and finished in under 3 weeks, giving updates as I finished arcs and enjoying my friends’ reactions to actually keeping pace with my stupid promise.

After One Piece, I went back to my roots and read Komi Can’t Communicate, a comedy romance about a guy who’s name is literally “Bland Human-man” and his love interest, the most beautiful girl in school who has such bad social anxiety that she literally can’t speak. The anime had been making waves on Netflix so I jumped into the manga after finishing the first season and I’m happy to report that it’s a truly wonderful story that is semi-consistently funny. But once I’d caught up to current translation, I dropped off again. I kept finding other ways to spend my time, and my interest in reading faded once more.

Since July started I’ve been chatting back and forth with my best friend about Dragon Ball Z. We are insanely nostalgic for the series, and have even sat through all of GT, Super, and all the movies. Our game of the year in 2020 was Dragon Ball Z Guess Who. The love for this series runs deep, I’m telling you. Regardless, it’s been years now since the anime has aired new episodes, and there are rumors online that two of the new arcs won’t even make it to the anime, so I decided on a whim to fire up the Shonen Jump app again and read the chapters in question. It was only like 60 chapters, so I blazed through it over 2 days. It was a small enough bite of content that I felt unsatisfied, so I flipped through Crunchyroll and started looking through it for something to watch. Dr. Stone was being pushed heavily, and I’d seen posts about it on Reddit, so I gave it a shot. After 4 episodes I switched to the manga. 233 chapters. I finished them in 2 days. The story was good, sure, but something within me was starving for manga.

I was insatiable now. I watched a youtube video from a channel I trusted, a ranking of his favorite anime and manga through the last 20 years. He mentioned something by the creators of Death Note called Bakuman. He said it was very special to him, and drove him to want to be a better creator. I added to the list with a dozen others. I tried on a few things – Chainsaw Man, Jiujitsu Kaisen, Komi again, Haikyu, Hunter x Hunter. Nothing was sticking, and I was mad. I flipped open the first chapter of Bakuman. When I looked up, it was 1am and I was on chapter 40. I forced myself to sleep. I have a convention this weekend where I’m showing my board game and I need to prepare in the morning.

I woke up, worked on my convention prep, and immediately dove back into Bakuman. I was so engrossed in it that I forgot to write anything for DoorFliesOpen, and then lied to my friends there about why – I blamed the convention prep, but it was all because I couldn’t stop reading Bakuman. This manga has lit a fire under me creatively, to the point that I sat down and wrote this entire post just so I could tell someone about how it’s making me feel. This story is excellent! The characters are so driven to achieve their goals, and the balance between drama and humor is perfect. The pacing keeps the ‘one more page’ feeling alive every moment. I can’t wait to finish writing this so I can read it some more, but reading it makes me want to work on creative projects, and the pull of those two forces is jarring. These characters are practically working themselves to death and I can’t stop thinking, I should do that! I should work until I lose 20lbs from forgetting to eat! What matters in life except to make things?

I’m not sure what I’ll be able to move to after Bakuman. I might just sit down and watch the anime after finishing the manga to enjoy this feeling a little longer. There are about 180 chapters, but I’m already halfway through it and I dread having to find the next thing to read. At least I’ll have a hard cap on how much content I can consume this weekend, since I’ve got a job to do. This board game isn’t going to sell itself.

Peace out friends. Read Bakuman.

Alex