Pick of the Month – Satoko & Nada

Okay, this one… This one right here?  Delightful.

Satoko & Nada is a simple series about two young women finding themselves as roommates in University and exploring each other’s cultures.  Satoko is a Japanese exchange student to America who finds her expectations for her roommate are very unlike what she initially thought when she meets Nada, another exchange student who comes from Saudi Arabia.  However, the two find themselves as incredibly fast friends and, for the benefit of this manga, very open and accepting about sharing their cultures with each other.

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New Series – Picks of the Month!

Hey!  Mythos, here.  I wanted to try something new.  If you’ve followed us for a while, you may have noticed a bit of a dry spell from us and I know we’ve apologized a million times over it.  All three of us try to do this site on the side from our own lives, which unfortunately have gotten super busy to the point where it’s kinda out of our hands right now.  We’re still committed to doing this blog and starting a lot of fun and interesting discussions, however. So, instead of apologizing over and over again, I decided I’d do something a little different to help out over the course of this blog being a little slow with updates.  So lemme get to this.

I typically don’t have a lot of time for things but where I suffer from insomnia, I usually have an unfortunate ton of time before my meds kick in where I’m just laying in bed waiting to sleep.  So I’ve been doing a lot of reading, mostly manga and webcomics. As such, I figure I’m already doing the research for it, so why don’t I write about what I’m reading?

These won’t be super long pieces, as while I have time for the reading part of this, I still don’t have a ton of time for the actual writing.  So these will just be little short pieces either detailing a specific manga, manwha, or webcomic I’m going through and either explaining the plot or detailing a specific idea or concept from them I find interesting.  I love giving a shout out to fun ideas or stories as there’s always a lot of negativity about. So hopefully, these can act as a nice bit of levity from all that. And who knows? Maybe you’ll find something you like with some of these and take a look yourself!

One last bit here and as a bit of an aside:  I usually play a little loose and fast when it comes to scanlations when I can’t find an official release.  However, I always, always want to support the source material if I can and buy the official version.  So while some of these may not have an official English version, many others do.  I highly recommend buying it and will always try to link to someplace that you can, if possible.  In fact, if you all ever find a legal version of any of these, and I don’t mention it, PLEASE let me know about it.  I will buy this shit in a heartbeat because 1) I absolutely want to support the authors and 2) I’m a collector so I need dat shit in my life.  So lemme know if you ever find the full release of some of these and I will buy it and share where everyone else can as well.

That’s it!  Hope you enjoy.  The first of these new posts is linked below!

Pick of the Month – Satoko & Nada

Sunstone – Love, humor, and heart hidden in a BDSM story

Man, it’s been a while since I’ve had to do this but forewarning, the content in question is Not Safe For Work.  Before that scares you off, though, this graphic novel is sold in the normal kind of stores and has a beautiful point for it’s use of sexual imagery.  Also, while this topic may not exactly be anime related, the author of this work in question is a super nerd and takes obvious influences from Japanese media. Plus, it’s my own damn article and I just wanna write about this, okay?

Sorry, that got a little confrontational…  Lemme just start.

Sex is often a very taboo topic, particularly when it comes to where I live here in America.  We’ve become more accustomed to talking about violence and aggression than all that other stuff that gives you cooties.  Basically, you can watch people die horrifically and it’ll get a PG-13 rating but if two girls kiss “OH NO!  Grab the pitchforks ‘cause it’s time fer a burnin’!”

With a bit of a flipped morality like that, it can be hard to find well-written stories that approach the topic of sex with the right respect and openness that it deserves.  Honestly, it seems to me that it’s sometimes easier to find a story that uses rape as a means of moving the plot forward than one that uses consensual intercourse.  And while there are efforts to educate and make things better.  Education is only one side of the coin.  We also need it represented tastefully in our media to expose and normalize the topic along with all the other aspects and types of affection and love.

Enter my exhibit A for the court hearing on tasteful representation of sex: the graphic novel Sunstone.

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