Countdown to Japan: Manga

I have been quite an otaku this past couple of years, doubling down on my anime intake and really getting into some manga (mostly Bara).

One of my goals in life is to be a published (Bara) manga author/artist, much like Gengoroh Tagame. But as you can tell in my artwork, I cannot draw in the “manga-style”. People have told me that I draw well, and are shocked to learn that I cannot draw a “simple” manga-style image. I am also shocked by my lack of competency in drawing anime/manga. But as I have come to realize, anime/manga is not that simple at all.

One of my early attempts at drawing manga. 

Apart from Tagame's "My Brother's Husband" (Volume 1 and Volume 2), most of the non-Bara mangas I own are in its traditional medium - in paperback. But there are a lot of online sites and even manga reader apps out there. There is one called ZingBox, a free app for Android, which is getting a lot of good reviews for its wide selection, including the niche genres, like Yaoi, BL, and Bara. It is not available for iOS yet, however.

I’m really looking forward to my trip to Japan next month, mostly to geek-out and visit a lot of places considered as an “otaku’s paradise.” One place that comes up over and over in all of the Japan travel videos is called Mandarake in Akihabara, which is close to one of the hotels I will be staying at in Shinjuku (and by close, I meant a 30-minute subway ride, according to Google Maps).

Oohh.. there's a Gundam cafe! I'll add that to my itinerary.