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krpalmerNot that long after reading the first two volumes of Nico Nicholson’s My Lovesick Life as a ’90s Otaku in rapid succession and commenting on both of them, I picked up the third instalment of the manga. Very little time passed between that and ordering the fourth volume, and I started thinking about making another double comment. By the time that fourth volume showed up, though, I’d realised it would be the conclusion of the series. Having started reading the manga in part through the thought I ought to “begin new titles,” having it wrap up so soon was a little hard to take for a few moments. After that, I did start wondering if a longer series would have changed from “ha-ha, I got that reference” to “arrgh, why don’t they settle things?”
In any case, as I began reading the third volume I have to admit to thinking again that it’s one thing to compare-and-contrast a “’90s otaku” in Japan with my own experiences with anime in (the second half of) that decade, but the “lovesick” part of things honestly feels a lot more foreign. That third volume, however, did give me something else to chew on. In the previous volume I’d started to understand the crush of the main character “despises otaku” because his own mother will zone out in front of anime, dresses in costumes from those series at the little “snack bar” she runs, and just doesn’t seem up to taking care of her numerous children such that he has to be the responsible one in the family. “At least I’m not that bad” thoughts can come to mind when confronting a certain number of fictional portrayals of fans, but this one still had me pondering the present-day frame of the main character Megumi as a mother, all the apparent complications to “staying interested in something you picked up on early,” and that perhaps-earlier assumption that attachment to “the fantastic” is a byproduct of having a hard time functioning in “reality...”
Where the second volume had shown Masamune’s mother Fujiko in an old photo “cosplaying” as Lum from Urusei Yatsura with a much younger Masamune pressed into service as Lum’s toddler cousin Ten, the third volume presented Fujiko in flashback as a much more isolated fan. She fell for her first husband because he looked like the handsome Prince Sharkin from Raideen; when he didn’t turn out to be “a prince” himself she told herself “Prince Sharkin was evil, but still...” A few years later, alone and struggling with a second baby that just wouldn’t stop crying, she resorted to watching Macross as a half-hour escape. (That one of her reactions was “Oh, Minmay...” did have me thinking of all the barbed comments over the years about things going askew in translation such that Robotech’s Minmei was an oft-disdained character, and of certain counterarguments that this was more just a matter of different cultural expectations...)
Megumi makes an effort to reconcile Masamune’s family by setting up a birthday party. When that turns out a disaster, things jump back to the “present day” that framed the story to begin with. (I do have to admit now to having noticed the date “2021” at the beginning and thinking there was no trace of “yes, you may have received your second vaccination, but you still have to take ever more elaborate measures to filter everything you breathe out...”) Megumi’s divorce having happened a decade before that present day had left plenty of room at the beginning to speculate about just how things had turned out, and indeed about how much of a “fan” she still was. There’d certainly been an element of sadness in her drawn-out response to the disaster, including selling two hundred and seventy-one volumes of manga for an average of somewhat less than four yen a volume. Now that things were stuck in the present, though, Megumi could happen at last through the accidental encounter of her untroubled fan daughter to catch up to the people she’d known.
The reconciliation with self and others plays out over enough time in the fourth volume that I found it quite satisfying. (In retrospect, though, I did get to wondering if the “present day” frame wound up requiring the reconciliation be pushed back rather than being worked out right after the disastrous party; I then started asking myself if that amounted to being over-analytical and demanding unemotional reactions from the characters in a story.) We get to glimpse how some of the other characters from the past have done all right for themselves. (I had noticed one of them emerging from “Comiket” earlier in the story muttering about “derivative works” “utterly reliant on the original creations,” and have to admit to contrasting that against certain proclamations of “fanworks” correcting all the errors of people doing things for the money...) That things don’t jump straight to “the proper romance at last, only now all grown up!” was somehow satisfying for me, but there was one last complication that might allow for imagining where the story could go. It also had me thinking back to a piece in one of my university’s anime club newsletter booklets describing a series where the rearranged relationships of the parents of teenaged characters set up the story and asking myself “that was Marmelade Boy, right?”
In any case, as I began reading the third volume I have to admit to thinking again that it’s one thing to compare-and-contrast a “’90s otaku” in Japan with my own experiences with anime in (the second half of) that decade, but the “lovesick” part of things honestly feels a lot more foreign. That third volume, however, did give me something else to chew on. In the previous volume I’d started to understand the crush of the main character “despises otaku” because his own mother will zone out in front of anime, dresses in costumes from those series at the little “snack bar” she runs, and just doesn’t seem up to taking care of her numerous children such that he has to be the responsible one in the family. “At least I’m not that bad” thoughts can come to mind when confronting a certain number of fictional portrayals of fans, but this one still had me pondering the present-day frame of the main character Megumi as a mother, all the apparent complications to “staying interested in something you picked up on early,” and that perhaps-earlier assumption that attachment to “the fantastic” is a byproduct of having a hard time functioning in “reality...”
Where the second volume had shown Masamune’s mother Fujiko in an old photo “cosplaying” as Lum from Urusei Yatsura with a much younger Masamune pressed into service as Lum’s toddler cousin Ten, the third volume presented Fujiko in flashback as a much more isolated fan. She fell for her first husband because he looked like the handsome Prince Sharkin from Raideen; when he didn’t turn out to be “a prince” himself she told herself “Prince Sharkin was evil, but still...” A few years later, alone and struggling with a second baby that just wouldn’t stop crying, she resorted to watching Macross as a half-hour escape. (That one of her reactions was “Oh, Minmay...” did have me thinking of all the barbed comments over the years about things going askew in translation such that Robotech’s Minmei was an oft-disdained character, and of certain counterarguments that this was more just a matter of different cultural expectations...)
Megumi makes an effort to reconcile Masamune’s family by setting up a birthday party. When that turns out a disaster, things jump back to the “present day” that framed the story to begin with. (I do have to admit now to having noticed the date “2021” at the beginning and thinking there was no trace of “yes, you may have received your second vaccination, but you still have to take ever more elaborate measures to filter everything you breathe out...”) Megumi’s divorce having happened a decade before that present day had left plenty of room at the beginning to speculate about just how things had turned out, and indeed about how much of a “fan” she still was. There’d certainly been an element of sadness in her drawn-out response to the disaster, including selling two hundred and seventy-one volumes of manga for an average of somewhat less than four yen a volume. Now that things were stuck in the present, though, Megumi could happen at last through the accidental encounter of her untroubled fan daughter to catch up to the people she’d known.
The reconciliation with self and others plays out over enough time in the fourth volume that I found it quite satisfying. (In retrospect, though, I did get to wondering if the “present day” frame wound up requiring the reconciliation be pushed back rather than being worked out right after the disastrous party; I then started asking myself if that amounted to being over-analytical and demanding unemotional reactions from the characters in a story.) We get to glimpse how some of the other characters from the past have done all right for themselves. (I had noticed one of them emerging from “Comiket” earlier in the story muttering about “derivative works” “utterly reliant on the original creations,” and have to admit to contrasting that against certain proclamations of “fanworks” correcting all the errors of people doing things for the money...) That things don’t jump straight to “the proper romance at last, only now all grown up!” was somehow satisfying for me, but there was one last complication that might allow for imagining where the story could go. It also had me thinking back to a piece in one of my university’s anime club newsletter booklets describing a series where the rearranged relationships of the parents of teenaged characters set up the story and asking myself “that was Marmelade Boy, right?”