My Lovesick Life as a ’90s Otaku Volume 4 Review
We’ve finally arrived at the end of this rather charming romcom, and at long last we get an answer to the question of how a girl obsessed with manga back in the 1990s shunned much of her past, but ended up being drawn back into it.
Following the aftermath of Sara’s birthday party, Megumi, ashamed that her otaku nature has put off love interest Masamune forever, does her best to avoid him. Megumi even goes as far as to shun just about anything to do with anime and manga because of all the misery it has caused in her relationship with him. As a result, she breaks off her friendship with proud otaku classmate Miko, goes on to avoid Masamune in class, eventually graduates, and ends up selling all of her manga for a pittance.
Time rolls by as we witness Megumi getting a job, finding love, marrying, having her daughter Sakura, and then divorcing because her husband (who is never given a name) finds it off-putting when she tries to tell him that there is nothing wrong with Sakura liking anime. Cut to the present day, and Megumi learns that Sakura has encountered a boy who looks just like Masamune back when he was a kid, but this guy has no problems with anime, sharing Sakura’s fondness for Hololive. Megumi quickly learns that this boy, named Tadamune, is Masamune’s son. It’s not long before Megumi goes over to his place, and learns that Masamune is a recently-divorced father now living in a messy flat. Megumi ends up trying to get Masamune’s life back on track, as well as going over her past and helping to rebuild their friendship.
Once again, the production of this series has been good, with Matt Treyvaud’s translation, Jamil Stewart’s lettering, and Maggie Lee’s editing once again making Nico Nicholson’s manga a joy to read. However, the main draw to this final volume is that for most of it we come out of the flashback which Megumi has been narrating over the past three volumes.
We get to see the impact everything around Megumi has had on her personal life, and how things have changed over time. One of the most striking things is how much more widely aspects of otaku culture are now accepted in mainstream society. Megumi’s friends take her to a music festival, where she hears an anime theme tune performed on stage. She learns that Miko has become an incredibly successful mangaka whose latest work is being adapted into an anime for Netflix. Her old pen pal Itokichi put his experiences in the JSDF to creative use by using a JSDF protagonist in his own successful isekai light novel. As for Masamune’s troublesome, cosplaying otaku mother Fujiko, even she is able to use her passion for something useful.
All of this strikes home, particular for those of us who have been into anime for a long time. Take, for example, how anime has been covered in Britain. For many years, the mainstream press treated it with derision, considering cartoons to be just for kids, and Japan’s output to be something to be campaigned against and stopped. Look at the first reactions to Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend, and the cuts that were made to it over several releases across different formats. I remember back in 2015 when BBC Radio 4’s Crossing Continents did an episode about manga and the legal issues around things such as lolicon called: “Should Comics Be Crimes?”, which is still online and available to listen to.
But now, the BBC of all organisations has been getting into anime streaming. They started with old episodes of Pokémon, then they got to the rights to air the most recent series of it on CBBC and iPlayer, and just this week they got the rights to the dub of One Piece. Never mind the 1990s, no-one would have believe the BBC would be showing anime back in 2020! Just last month, I was at the Edinburgh Fringe and came across a comedian called Elliot Wengler, who did an entire hour-long stand-up show all about Pokémon, which I nominated for an award. However, the show also demonstrates there is still a hit of snobbishness regarding anything anime-related in Britain, seeing as how no critics came to review his show.
Of course, any art form will have its share of controversy, problems, and detractors, and it is right to challenge things that are certainly a problem, whether it be trying to get acceptance from others, or having to confront what, if anything, should be off-limits in what can be depicted. However, when it comes to this particular series, My Lovesick Life as a ‘90s Otaku is more than just a nostalgia-fest. It is primarily about acceptance, whether it be from friends, family, culture or society in general – and when it comes to love, it can blossom in all sorts of different ways, as the grand finale of this story demonstrates.
Our review copy from Kodansha was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.
