The Fall 2023 Manga Guide

My Lovesick Life as a '90s Otaku

What's It About? 

Otaku culture has finally become mainstream, and Megumi can't quite get used to it. Divorced, with a teen daughter, Megumi thinks fondly back to her days as an anime and manga otaku—in 1995. That year, she transferred to a new school and decided to start fresh by hiding her otaku interests. She found herself taken under the wing of a basketball ace named Masamune, who's got a kind heart and looks just like one of her favorite characters. But, though Megumi catches a whiff of destiny in the air, she's crushed to learn that Masamune detests otaku…

My Lovesick Life as a '90s Otaku has a story and art by Nico Nicholson. The English translation is by Matt Treyvaud, with lettering by Jamil Stewart. Published by Kodansha Comics (November 28, 2023).

Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Do you remember the terrors of being into something nerdy in the 1990s? I'm a bit younger than this title's protagonist, who is seventeen in 1995, but wow, does a lot of this book hit home! Whether you were an otaku, a D&D nerd, horrifically obsessed with the year 1888 for no good reason, or busily memorizing huge swathes of Jane Austen (or, uh, all of the above), feeling like you couldn't show your interests to the world at large could be a nerve-wracking experience. My Lovesick Life as a '90s Otaku feels your potentially repressed pain, and it does so in an incredibly relatable and funny way.

Megumi Sato, who wants to be called “Meggers” but can't make it happen, has just transferred to a new high school midyear, and the implication is that she did this at least in part because she was bullied – or at least teased – for being a fan of anime and manga. She's determined to hide it this time, but she can't stop herself from doodling Slam Dunk fan art or trying to figure out how to make her life into the perfect shoujo manga circa 1995. She's starting to crush on the president of her class. Still, she's so deathly afraid of him finding out that she's an otaku that she goes into an impressive number of contortions to hide it, even though she can't help herself from doing things like wearing goggles around her neck as a fashion accessory. She's not totally without cause in trying to hide her proclivities, though, because Masamune flat-out tells her that he hates otaku early on. We do get a pretty good idea of why that is at the end of the volume, and it's more than just the vilification of otaku because of a particular serial killer in the news at the time. That storyline also shows that the series can be serious and silly, which is important because while we might laugh at Megumi's travails, they're no laughing matter for her.

This volume is a veritable feast of references to otaku culture of the 1990s. Magazine covers are faithfully reproduced, fashion trends like kogals and loose socks are present, and Megumi has a pen-and-ink pen pal she writes to, with both of them carefully making their own anime stationary by tracing, copying, and coloring. All of this is contrasted with present-day (well, 2021) Megumi and her daughter, who has no shame about wearing anime-themed outfits and loudly geeks out over Hikaru Midorikawa in a way her mother couldn't when she was her age. Adult Megumi is more baffled than bitter about how the world has changed, which feels right. She doesn't begrudge her child what she didn't have, which also helps keep the story fun. I don't know how appealing this would be if you don't have any nostalgia for mid-90s otakudom, but if you were around for it, this is worth picking up.

Christopher Farris

Rating:

Much like its main character Megumi, My Lovesick Life as a '90s Otaku is a mess. Reflections on socially awkward nerdy childhoods are always necessarily going to get by on some level of disaster-person relatability. Still, in the case of this specific manga, I must admit there's a certain degree of disconnect. Part of this is down to sheer difference in contexts: The experience espoused by Nico Nicholson here as an otaku in 90's Japan fundamentally stands apart from my own fandom life as a weeb in early-'00s America. I don't have automatic relatability for the sheer level of disdain aimed at fans of anime and manga in its home country (at least partially on account of association with the crimes of otaku serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki). And since a huge portion of the anxieties arising from this is mostly confined to Megumi's overthinking head, it becomes difficult to parse where her persecution complex ends and true persecution begins.

The other issue with the approach of My Lovesick Life as a '90s Otaku is its (not uncommon) take on otaku-ness as a state of being. Megumi and the other characters reference stuff like watching Evangelion or reading Slam Dunk. Still, little mention is made of specific things they like about those series. The supposedly inherent energy of these art forms is seemingly supposed to speak for their fandom itself, but that means that their platitudes about the power of these pieces of media come off as flagrantly ignorant of the fact that stories that impact and affect people exist in forms apart from cartoons and comics. Ironically, it rings very close to the isolated media elitism of Japanophiles from my own fandom experience, meaning this book does succeed at making a point, but not the one I think it set out to.

Occasionally, the cavalcade of name-checks and references will converge into something clever done with the overall concept, such as Megumi agonizing over whether she should go for a Megaten-themed frame in the Atlus-branded print club booth she tries out with her crush. And some fandom quips and deeper-cut references caught me with an off-guard chuckle. The more compelling parts mostly come in the personal framing elements, like trying to suss out how class president Kaji's odd slow-burn affection for Megumi is coming through. The future-flung framing device of Megumi as a 42-year-old mother in the present confirms her as divorced, meaning there's an inherent interest in how this all doesn't wind up at a Happily Ever After. And while the art isn't personally my speed, I can respect its scrappy energy that matches the breaking-through desire for artistic expression. But even with those bright spots, I don't know that this one will ever be for me.