hsieh

(it's pronounced "SHI'e")

  • he/him

i guess i'll use this to post manga panels from all those volumes i bought on sale at comixology


these panels from the karuta slash slice-of-life manga Chihayafuru struck me hard today. i'm really glad that Chihayafuru has older characters (well ... for manga. she's 35) like Haruka Inokuma, here, who raises her kids while also competing for the top karuta title -- and doesn't just put them in mentorship roles, but in roles that compete directly (and realistically!) with the protagonist.



i watched shirobako while i was stuck at home with covid and it was wonderful and heartwarming. i truly loved it! but i couldn't help but think about how it tended to romanticize things like, uh, working yourself to the bone to get an anime movie out in just a few months

the manga animeta!, on the other hand, is super transparent about things like "how much animators actually get paid" and "how much you're actually giving up by working here." yaso hanamura makes it a point to emphasize the work of people in the trenches, too: the protagonist is an in-betweener, not some visionary director, and the story focuses on how that work is often lost even to anime fans. it's well-researched, too, with plenty of sidebars on the nitty-gritty on animation

shirobako and animeta! both show how much their protagonists have bet their lives on anime. but that bet feels very different in each series. if you loved shirobako, i definitely recommend animeta! only five volumes out right now, but they're certainly a lovely AND informative five volumes