My Life is Not a Manga, or maybe...

Harem Scarem: 001

I'm a pretty normal guy. Well, okay, let me qualify that: I'm a total weirdo, but in a pretty normal way. Does that even make sense?

I need to start over. My life is fairly average. I'm not incredibly attractive, but I'm also not bad-looking. I've got a decent number of friends, but I'm neither popular nor infamous. Just one of those guys skating through high school whose face you won't remember in 5 years, I guess. Which is fine by me, since I don't really care one way or the other for most of my fellow students.

Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is that if I were in a manga, I wouldn't be the protagonist. I'd be one of those characters in the background whose name you never learn and who usually never graduates beyond a vague silhouette. And I like it that way.

I mean seriously, thanks to my dad I've read a fair amount of manga and being a manga protagonist sucks. Their relationships are all fraught with absurdly manufactured drama, they're constantly getting beat up or kidnapped or nearly killed, and even when they're surrounded by beautiful women who all want to get into their pants they spend their time getting constantly blue-balled. Also, being sexually attracted to your siblings or first cousins is just wrong, so let's not even go there.

I'm quite happy with my humdrum life, thank you very much. Heck, I even have a girlfriend. And since she's not the most beautiful or most popular girl in school, doesn't have a semi-abusive relationship with me, has normal length hair that isn't styled into twin-tails, and isn't an old childhood friend our relationship would basically be doomed if I were in a manga.

So thank goodness my life is not a manga.

At least that's what I always thought, until during a get-together with my friends over summer vacation after my freshman year I tripped over my own feet and broke through the fourth wall.

# # #

Okay, okay, I guess I should back up a little. I mean, the vast majority of people don't even know what manga is, and I'm guessing I lost a few more at "twin-tails" and "sexual attraction to siblings." So here's the thing: here in the good old U.S. of A. we have comic books, right? Super heroes bashing one another's faces in, generally on a monthly basis, in full color on flimsy paper. Everyone knows about comic books.

In Japan, though, comic books aren't really a thing. Instead they have manga. Manga is similar to comics, in that it contains panels and speech bubbles and is hand drawn, but it's also completely unlike comics in that it's often released on a weekly or bi-weekly schedule in magazines alongside a whole bunch of other manga and is usually black and white. Then once a particular manga series has enough content, it's gathered together into a book called a tankoubon and sold as a series of paperback books.

The thing about manga, though, is that there are a ton of genres available, targeting a ton of different demographics. Sure, if you're a nerd and know where to look you can find a bunch of different genres in comic books, too, but manga is way bigger and more mainstream.

And because it's more mainstream and Japan is a capitalist country, a lot of manga is heavily informed by tropes. After all, if something sells, then it's worth producing in bulk, right? There are entire genres for just about every escapist fantasy you might want, starting at feel good slice-of-life stories right up to pornography, and in every setting you can imagine. Sports manga, romance manga, smut manga, monster girl manga, pet manga, harem manga, super hero manga, food manga, horror manga, fantasy manga; the list goes on and on.

My dad owns it all. Well, okay, it's not like my dad owns all manga published ever, but if it was translated into English, then he either owns it or has probably read it. We've got a room in our house he calls the Lab with bookshelves lining the walls which are exclusively filled with manga. Of course, when I say "filled", I don't just mean side to side; most shelves have a row of books behind the front-most books, as well, and sometimes have books stacked in a third or fourth row on top.