Not here to claim all people with autism of whatever level or form have the same experiences and not claiming I am an expert. Mostly will be discussing my own experiences and how it shaped my anime and manga fandom.

Online Communities
Everyone almost always asks IRL if I go to conventions. Answers for the neurotypical person is something like a quick no and there’s too many people. I do not think I am someone that would appear to be a party goer so I think an anime convention would be over the top. Some people call it over stimulation, but for me I have always found describing why difficult. Talking to someone about fandom is fine and online even better. Forums, blogs, and the like you can search for something of your taste and reply when you want or not at all. I would say Discord or Twitter but such platforms are devoid of actual discussion.

Expressions
Emotions of others and how to interact is a learning experience for those on the spectrum. Lots of trial and error with some frustration. Anyone reading this that is new or casual has noticed the visual style of eyes and facial expressions are exaggerated. Then even so for characters that do not show much, as it is pushed and made clear.

Stye and Personality
Depending on the anime there are just certain characters I admire for being loud with their hair, arrogance, clothing, or just literally loud. Maybe like Laharl in Disgaea or so. Characters in an anime would have their hair more styled and intentional with something to make what they are wearing stand out like a hoodie with dangling things. I want that and have made adjustments, but now I am just snarky. Sometimes I otherwise find characters relatable like an expert that can go on and on about their expertise. Then other times it just might be they are reserved personality, social deviations or awkwardness.

Honor and friendship are common and many stories are based entirely around what they mean and how important they are. It is wonderful to think there are people out there that do not have wishy-washy honor. They are predictable easy to understand traits and relationships to go by. Also, some characters like things…like their mech friend.

Its Own World and Rules
Would be nice to worry about catching Pokemon in life or having a world with a set of rules that are more forgiving or fluid for each person. Anime and manga are an escape with simpler worlds where people are just themselves.

As always I am a heavily casual writer, so much what I wrote about might appear condensed. There are several things I have subtly dropped in this article that is common among those that are high functioning or Asperger’s, but would be more easily picked up on or understood by them. To me I am just normal trying to explain that I might not be in some aspects.

Good thing that never happens since I prefer physical releases. Most anime companies of the west are very conservative when choosing which anime or manga they want licensed. They pick up what is new and prefer further what is already in great discussion online to play it safe. Most are not like Discotek Media where they prefer to re-licensed older anime or the boy-love niche company Digital Manga Publishing. Just what is easy. more…

A couple days ago big news hit that Japan has made the possession of child pornography illegal. Most big countries already have such laws, however this law differs in that fiction such as animation and comics are excluded. Big media companies like CNN state the exclusion is from large powerful lobby groups that protect the interests of the anime and manga industry. The law is also much softer than most countries in where the person charged faces a year is prison or a $10,000 fine. In many countries people have much harsher penalties like Canada’s 20 years of imprisonment or public online databases.

People do not want children harmed or abused, but there is a lot of bias and assumptions floating around. Two big ones are animated or drawn depictions of children are real children and that people who like fictional characters are also attracted to real children. Comic Book Legal Defense Fund debunks the views they oppose from the CNN article linked above and what they believe what the law will do in Japan. One side accepts that fictional works are still pornographic and the other suggests there needs to be scientific evidence that such creations are harmful.

With that said the political satirist Jon Stewart from the cable show The Daily Show took a stab at the news. His views are known as liberal, but in my opinion he has always seemed “Democrat.” Someone that is on the left of center and leaning towards liberal, but not by very much since the US is not very liberal. In the video he states the new law is embarrassingly late and “How can a lobby for a harmful, destructive industry take precedence over the protection of children?” He then compares the industry lobby groups for anime and manga to be similar to The National Rifle Association in the US. They are supposedly trying to defend companies that are willing to make money at the cost of children’s lives and well-being.

I am pro-gun regulation and a fan of anime and manga, so I find his comparison of media to weapons designed to kill to be outrageous. Both have differing worlds of psychology, science, and societal factors behind what the industries produce.

Nijigahara Holograph could be summed up as a surreal slice-of-life with sprinkles of folklore and mild darkness. Shallow characters you do not know and incoherent story telling makes me not care so hard. Here is a table with a doll for you that does not have anything to do with anything. It requires several reads or getting further in to know who is who when the characters are school kids and then adults. Let us flood the panels with Boogiepop Phantom butterflies that could give symbolism, but let us not give them any so we can give a poor attempt at abstraction and supernatural elements that will not exist. Perhaps I should not be hard on it because it is suppose to have a dreamlike atmosphere with its progression, but I will because because of regret.

Leaving much to the reader to imagine works best if there is something left for them to imagine about or at least a setting and/or characters that can stimilate imagination. With this manga the reader is forced to flip back and forth between the past and present with characters you will not care about. There is not any horror in Nijigahara Holograph despite boasting from hipster bloggers and sites that slap a genre on whatever for a lack of a better genre to classify it. The issue of not knowing which character is which and again the lack of care leads to just simple dark themed panels.

Artwork is of overall solid quality with most effort in the characters than backgrounds. Many pages and panels can either be seen as minimalist or lazy depending on expectations and preference. New chapter, so lets add a little box on a blank white page as a stronger example. Hair lacks layers and detail for characters and background surroundings are too clean and lacking mood for my tastes. Main exception for the lack of mood however is the warm and cultured summertime’y moments that may fill you with nostalgia of warm summer days outside. That of course is dependent on the time of day of reading this, your local climate, and if your school years were remotely similar.

Some of the reason for my purchase of Nijigahara Holograph is the severe lack of new manga licenses, new volumes of what little I follow, and few manga of interest. In short it was the awesome cover art, descriptions, and most of all desperation. My lesson from reading this has been not to give into impulses (pre-ordered) based on deprivation and instead look to older overlooked manga. Perhaps returning it to Amazon would have been a wise, too.

Fantagraphics gave this a wonderful hardcover like the great manga Wandering Son and it has a wonderful printed smell. I will not give much hints to the ending, however it is not original.

Are we dead yet? I can never be too sure.

As most of the Interweb is aware, Japan is animating Nisekoi. I have to wonder why I care. It is just another lame and predictable romantic comedy from the pages of Shonen Jump that I would never recommend to anyone; but try as I might, the sappy gooey mess that I hide beneath my armor of glamorous gun-wielding babes, and tank-riding schoolgirls tends to find the cracks in my defenses from which to ooze out of. What results is a person much comparable in likeness to myself, secretly downloading the mild-mannered obscenity that is Nisekoi… What can I say, it’s true.

I absolutely loved Naoshi Komi’s previous work Double Arts, which was cancelled far too early. I was hoping Nisekoi would be a worthy successor, an original idea that could compete against its predecessor in terms of potential. Instead I got a graham cracker and a marshmallow. All the fat lonely slobs of the world latched onto this bait with its promise of promiscuous bath scenes and immoral slip-ups, making Nisekoi Naoshi Komi’s longest and most successful work to date. Good for him.

I was not spared from this underhanded trap, and as much as I pretend to hate s’mores, I brought with me my stash of Hershey’s. The rest is history: this manga fried my brain. How else can I explain my unmistakable joy with each chapter, as vanilla stench takes form in black and white on my monitor screen. At any rate, now that I am fully invested in this series, and now that it has stolen my money… what could possibly go wrong?

They decide to animate it.

Nisekoi wasn’t a very well thought-out series, and I am sure even a seasoned fan can admit that aside from its cute assortment of girls, the story barely has any legging to work with. For eighty-seven chapters the only thread tying the characters together was the protagonist’s unreliable assortment of memories which seems to change details with every flashback. I am a proponent of structure, and really frown upon this style of “make shit up on the go” writing. But I like the mangaka and forgave him every time I felt the sharp sting of pain run across the right bridge of my neck whenever I chose to ignore some glaring flaw in his plot.

All of this is irrelevant because the anime has already been greenlit. I really believe they should have let the series run its course for another year before moving forward on an anime, but as my opinion has very little effect in swaying the powers that be, I did the gracious thing and stepped aside. Now I’m here to promote this shit, and hopefully at some point in the future, someone will buy the manga. Like I did.

Icon Source: rainraven
It is Sai calling someone bro as he did in G Gundam’s dubs. Dreamwidth is a fork of LiveJournal by former LiveJournal staff. There are many forks, but Dreamwidth is the most popular with their users linking between the two sites. Pixiv source no longer exists.

Icon Source: reccessional
Fire Candy has amazing character art with a very wonderful rough style. Above is “manga coloring” and not official art or from a cover.

Icon Source: ukemilk
Original Source: Nico Nico Douga
The icon originated from a Nico Nico Douga video with the Vocaloid Kagamine twins Rin and Len.

Icon Source: kazimierzi
Aventura was a formally licensed and published manga by Del Rey before Kodansha took over their manga publishing. It sported some of the most dreamy and excessive character (especially hair) detail. Safe to say Del Rey had much more interesting manga choices with Q Ko-chan, Alive: The Final Evolution, and Yozakura Quartet. Kodansha’s US division is far too timid and does not bother much with manga outside big hits.

Icon Source: mensenhater
Original Source: momocan.egoism.jp (a little NSFW)
Most of my favorite avatars or what LiveJournal calls icons have action, posing, or a bit of emotion. Just a character’s face is bland and not very creative. It is Ken cross-dressing in what the blond Aigis android is known to wear in Persona 3.

LiveJournal is a giant from a long ago era where people created communities of posting user avatars. Users had the ability to upload more than one icon (avatar) and choose which they wish to use when commenting or publishing a blog entry. In a way the site is very much like WordPress.com in where it is a network of blogs, but community and networking is much more stressed. Users created communities for anyone to post entries to and used them for massive image heavy posts with often a hundred icons. The community may not be Facebook, but it remains active and worth the membership.