Started: October 18, 2025
(This is my first time reading this book, so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.)
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* Books I read in 2025: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7Fev7Uv6_tzuSf84LtYwQu&si=Im1rdozRXrgGnr99
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1 comment:
Aww it's nice to have the authors send you books. I bought a Japanese hntai manga but didn't even dare to do the publisher's survey, since I was afraid the survey was meant for Japanese audience exclusively and they didn't want any input from a gaijin. Seriously I cannot fathom people keep saying about how bleak Japan is on the internet or through Western media - no matter how I think of it Japanese people just have it much better than anybody else, given that you are more likely to receive a signature from the authors themselves if you live in Japan rather than in foreign countries (and that's not even mentioning the extortionist prices you have to pay for shipping no matter the service you choose, 3rd-party or official, that you have to pay an extra 30-50% of the original value of the book - unless you have a friend who's willing to bring the goods home and get through the customs somehow). I am somewhat salty that I literally bought the physical tankoubon, and yet the DDL (download) version got the extra treatment of featuring the character design sketches when the author was planning. The pirators are likely gonna receive more than I do! I guess I can make do with some cards which contain some of the extra drawings. Still, given that the rampant piracy of these days should be an obvious knowledge, shouldn't the publisher treasure the buyers and make them feel like they are special for spending money on the physical tankoubon? ...oh god... I'm being really silly here and I can even retort what I just spouted previously: there's a limit of special extras that they can churn out and asking for more is already asking them to create on top of the ceiling. What am I even complaining about, given that hardly anybody has much better treatment. Anyway... It's just hard to show the book or brag about having bought them to anybody. Other than the obvious reasons, and my loss of contact with other hobbyists, I'm not sure if the author herself would find it intrigued to know a gaijin bought her manga, or she would be asking questions about how come people like myself managed to buy it in the first place. Even if Japanese people find it more to be a nice sight, I still don't want them to know who bought the manga. It's hard to talk about this without mentioning my own self-hatred for the land I am in. I just don't want Japanese to know the buyer is a betonamu-jin. Maybe the perception in Japan of betonamu at worst is still better than the exotic whatever of the West. My low self-esteem doesn't accept that however. If anything, I'm actually pretty proud of my own self-awareness of how lowly I am. Unlike other countries who are so full of themselves to even literally spout they believe they can make anime on the same level of Japan even though they are antithetical to the very concept of moe. Not that I am better than any of them, but I do love to think a lot of them shouldn't be in Japan in the first place to begin with. This is getting off-track, but anyway... even if I showcase the book to Twitter, I wouldn't feel any proud of it. Even though I want to, and I want the author to know of an enthusiastic fan. I guess there's nothing to really lament about here. It's all made-up victimhood. I thought a lot of Japanese had it better because some of them got to receive even drawings as signatures from the author, but as I rechecked the info... the ones who the author signed on their books are actually friends. It's not like they're are selling the books at the Comiket so even if I was there I would get to ask for a signature. But actually maybe I can? The author herself was at the Comiket sometimes, selling some tiny merchs I thought wasn't interesting. But maybe if I was there I could buy one of them as an excuse, then ask for a signature. That is... if I ever had any chance of coming to Japan at all, let alone Comiket. A man can dream, but dreams are not reality.
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