The image features two of the main characters from the anime "Servamp." Behind a set of chains, there is the vampire Kuro, a young man with light hair and bags under his eyes and wearing a furry jacket, and Mahiru, a high school student with a bright smile. Behind them are other characters, including the vampire Jeje, who wears bandolier of bullets and three papers bags on his head.

On today’s stream: What nostalgia and my dissertation has to do with Servamp. Watch along today at 11 AM EST on Twitch and YouTube.

An initial transcript for today’s stream is below.

A recording of this stream is available as a podcast at Substack and Patreon.

Description

On today’s stream: What nostalgia and my dissertation has to do with “Servamp.”

Read “Servamp”: https://sevenseasentertainment.com/series/servamp/

Read “Undead Unluck”: https://www.viz.com/shonenjump/chapters/undead-unluck

“Bungo Stray Dogs” and “Servamp” are available at http://crunchyroll.com (#JustAMeeting)

A transcript and links to content discussed are available at http://www.dereksmcgrath.wordpress.com.

Support this livestream (get rewards: Discord access, your name in the credits, and the opportunity to recommend manga or other content to discuss in the livestream): one-time contributions at http://ko-fi.com/dereksmcgrath or monthly at http://patreon.com/dereksmcgrath

Listen to this livestream as a podcast at https://dereksmcgrath.substack.com

What Dr Seuss’s “The Sneetches” teaches about racism: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/11/2146642/-Chilling-effect-of-Republican-anti-CRT-campaigns-plays-out-in-an-Ohio-third-grade-classroom

Promotions:

Commission GoldenSunDeer for artwork: https://twitter.com/GoldenSunDeer

Commission Ichi Rose: twitter.com/Ichi_Rose_ twitch.tv/eve_chi_

Support Jeff Harris: http://paypal.me/nemalki https://bio.link/nemalki https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2XVBY1VHOBSKA

Professional Left Podcast: https://professionalleft.blogspot.com/

Black Comics Chat: https://www.twitch.tv/blackcomicschat

Check out “Sudden Death, Sudden Life”: https://www.patreon.com/painapplestudio

Irregulars Productions “Soul Eater” content: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbepqcHtthJnp2uTriH8wIw

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Music:

“Los Angeles” by Muzaproduction: https://pixabay.com/music/motown-old-school-rnb-los-angeles-20922/

“Sunshine” by lemonmusicstudio: https://pixabay.com/users/lemonmusicstudio-14942887 https://open.spotify.com/artist/4XWZhZ32YrVV5lvpF7cr1E?si=tnbSklR7SJyPNKiHP4MbHA

Intro

Let’s get started. Today is January 15, 2023. This is Sunday Morning Manga. I am Derek S. McGrath, my pronouns are he/him/his. I livestream here every Sunday, 11 AM Eastern on Twitch and YouTube. A video recording is available at youtube.com/dereksmcgrath and an audio podcast version at dereksmcgrath.substack.com. You can read my writing on WordPress and other sites, @dereksmcgrath. And you can email me at derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com.

If you like what you’re hearing, please consider a monetary contribution. Putting together this stream takes a bit of work, and your tips help pay down costs for setup and subscriptions. One-time contributions can be sent to ko-fi.com/dereksmcgrath, and you can subscribe monthly at my new Patreon at patreon.com/dereksmcgrath. Thank you for your consideration.

Disclaimers

This stream is not endorsed by any companies mentioned, any persons mentioned, or any financial contributors mentioned. This stream is intended for information and entertainment purposes only. All names, pictures, and sounds are registered trademarks and/or copyrights of their respective trademark and copyright holders. All original content of this stream is the intellectual property of the speaker–me–unless otherwise indicated. The views and opinions expressed on this livestream are those of the speaker–me–and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any other persons mentioned in this stream.

This stream is not safe for work (due to coarse language and content warnings discussing works that feature horror and violence).

Today’s Reaction: Servamp Chapter 99

As with every Sunday, there is a reaction to a recent manga chapter…but that would’ve been Friday when Viz released new manga chapters, and today is Sunday, so that wouldn’t be a live-reaction. And neither will this. Instead, I’m going to ramble about how my grad school research on nostalgia, melancholia, and homesickness led me to a manga about a vampire being roommates with a werewolf. This time we’re discussing the manga Servamp and more specifically its Chapter 99.

Accessibility and Links (and Mask Up!)

Links to Servamp and other content from today’s stream are available on my web site, dereksmcgrath.wordpress.com. There’s also a script for today’s stream and all images for greater accessibility.

And as annoyed as you are hearing it, I’m just as annoyed seeing it: we’re not out of this pandemic, people, please mask up when going out or indoors, and get vaccinated! Arkansas, your so-called governor is a damn fool–don’t listen to her dumb ass, get vaccinated to protect yourself and others, and mask up so you’re not spreading COVID.

Patreon Audio Commentary

And before we get to Servamp, thanks again to those who have contributed to me on Patreon. If you contribute at the $5 tier, you can listen early to my audio commentary for Episode 2 of Bungo Stray Dogs Season 4. I’m really enjoying this season, and I hope my audio commentaries point out how Episode 2 is setting up future plotlines and using the artwork to enhance what is already in the story. So, if you like Bungo Stray Dogs, or hearing me hyper-fixate on what is so good about this season, check out that audio commentary early at patreon.com/dereksmcgrath, or listen to it when it comes out for free and public on Tuesday on my YouTube, Substack, and WordPress.

Thanks to my Ko-fi and Patreon contributors, including Emily Lauer and Ellak Roach–thank you for your financial support!

Today’s Reaction: Servamp

With all of that out of the way, let’s get on with today’s reaction! This time we’re talking about Servamp, more specifically Chapter 99!

This is not like previous discussions I’ve done. I’m not going to get into the good, the bad, or the bizarre of Servamp–not because the series doesn’t have strengths, flaws, and uniqueness that is all worth discussing, but because I want to get more personal and discuss how Servamp propels what I enjoy researching and publishing.

The Plot

Let’s start with the plot. Quoting from the web site for the English publisher, Seven Seas:

“When a stray black cat named Kuro crosses Mahiru Shirota’s path, the high school freshman’s life will never be the same again. Kuro is, in fact, no ordinary feline, but a servamp: a servant vampire. While Mahiru’s personal philosophy is one of non-intervention, he soon becomes embroiled in an ancient, altogether surreal conflict between vampires and humans.”

That’s not a bad summary. There is a lot more to this story, as the supposed conflict between humans and vampires gets bigger, with allies becoming enemies, fighters switching sides, and more and more magical beings getting involved in this war.

The Creators

I’ll get more into who those characters are and how the plot has changed over time. But let’s talk about the people behind the creation of the manga and the anime.

This manga has been published since 2011. It was adapted into a 12-episode anime produced in 2016 by Brain’s Base (the studio behind Natsume’s Book of Friends, Spice and Wolf, Princess Jellyfish, My Little Monster, Golden Kamuy, Baccano, and Durarara!!). There was also a theatrical film released in 2018 (that, unfortunately, has not been legally released yet in the United States).

The manga is written and illustrated by Strike Tanaka, translated into English by Wesley Bridges, with lettering by Courtney Williams. The manga is published in the United States by Seven Seas.

The anime is directed by Itto Sara and Hideaki Nakano, written by Kenji Konuta with music by Kenji Kawai. The Japanese dub features performances by Takuma Terashima as Mahiru, Yuki Kaji as Kuro,Tatsuhisa Suzuki as Tsubaki, Yuto Suzuki as Sakuya, and in the English dub, Clifford Chapin as Mahiru, Chuck Huber as Kuro, Brian Olvera as Sakuya–and I’ve mentioned their Twitch livestreams and DND isekai series Sudden Death Sudden Life, Micah Solusod as Tsubaki and Ayu as Otogiri. The anime is distributed in the United States by Crunchyroll.

My Dissertation

What does any of this have to do with me?

Some time in between when the manga started and when the anime started, I finished my doctoral dissertation. It was titled American Masculinity and Home in Antebellum Literature. I’ll quote from my dissertation’s summary:

“The conventional argument in literary and gender studies of nineteenth-century United States culture has been that the home was women’s claimed sphere of influence, whereas men were excluded from the home because of their economic, cultural, and societal commitments to the public sphere. [...] Hardly only a woman’s domain, the home was a powerful force in motivating constructions of masculine subjectivities before the Civil War and long after. [...] This study traces the permeable boundary between the supposedly masculine public and supposedly feminine private spheres, to identify the opportunities and challenges that the home provided to United States writers, men and women, and across the spectrums of race, class, region, and religion.”

What does any of that have to do with a Japanese comic about vampires? Servamp was right up my alley, in terms of what it shows about the gendering of household work.

There are obvious differences between the times and locations covered in my dissertation and in this manga: my dissertation was about the 19th century United States, Servamp is mostly set in contemporary Japan, although it does track back to earlier time periods and puts its own spin on ancient and popular vampire lore.

Still, despite those differences in time and place, and despite how gendering household work in the US differs from that in Japan, I can’t help but look from my vantage point here in the US and see Mahiru, and appreciate how his interests and behavior does run against limited gendering. In other words, sometimes it’s nice to see a character who is a teenage boy who is into housework and domestic tags. In the series, Mahiru is frequently referred to by his classmates and friends as being like a househusband. There is some reductive humor to that, but it is also treated as a reality for Mahiru: he lost his mom, his dad isn’t here in his life, his uncle is busy at work, of course he is going to take care of himself–and take care of his uncle, his friends, and that means cooking, cleaning, doing the work that needs to be done. That is commendable.

And it’s fun to see how the story incorporates those details into his fighting style. Yes, there is something problematic that a boy like Mahiru, in a primarily shonen story, is put into a position where he has to fight things out and turn domestic items into combat items: doesn’t something like that risk suggesting a “real man” can only do housework if he also somehow re-deploys those domestic items for what we still, unfairly and inaccurately, gender as only masculine, that being fighting? Maybe we can continue that discussion if I ever get around to discussing The Way of the Househusband, although at least that series is making jokes about the supposed incongruity, whereas Servamp is a bit more covert and hence potentially dangerous.

But despite all of that, I can’t look at Mahiru wielding a broom as his combat item and not think, “Oh, wow, this is a cool way to have him owning who he is.” He is a househusband kind of character–and that’s valid. His initial magic weapon is a broom, more akin to how we imagine a woman witch than how we imagine a man witch (that’s “a witch who is a man,” not the sandwich), which also complicates his portrayal once we start meeting other combatants in this story. For example, we meet numerous magicians in this series–and while just about all of them are man-presenting characters, the names and symbols for their techniques are not wholly what we would call masculine but are also coded with ancient symbols out of Greek and Norse culture that are coded as feminine. Granted, there is also that other problem, that these man-presenting characters wield feminine symbols, as if putting them under their control–

But then I cut off my discussion there, because I’m just excited to talk about this series because, unlike a lot of other content I read and write about, this one keeps saying more and more as I get through it. I appreciate Servamp for giving me something to talk about, even as I can’t get all the answers immediately, because I rarely feel like the story is making content problematic just to be offensive or boorish or insulting–it feels like a story wrestling with how complicated relationships are, and how little of our world can be reduced to any one thing. Maybe I’m overcomplicating this: maybe it’s just a story that gets dismissed as for kids and not that deep, or not as well structured in character progression or narrative structure. But as I said, when your story is about how people are not as wholly good or bad as we want, but people we still have to deal with daily, and sometimes you need to forgive them, it makes sense that the symbolism and implications are not as neat and clean either.

My Presentation

And speaking of how things are not that simple, that is what I tried to get out–maybe not as well as I wanted to–when giving a presentation on Servamp.

In 2017, I drew upon my dissertation research for a presentation at Anime Expo in Los Angeles. The presentation was titled “ ‘Ha Ha! Boring’: Nostalgia and Melancholia in Servamp and Anime Fan Communities.” The title comes from the primary antagonist of Servamp, that being Tsubaki. The thing is, in Servamp, there are seven vampires, each representing one of the seven deadly sins. But then we meet our antagonist, another vampire none of the others heard about before, Tsubaki, the vampire of the sin of melancholy. But how is melancholy a sin? And what does that have to do with what I just said about things not being so neat and clean and orderly? And what does any of this have to do with me bringing up anime fan communities in the title of that presentation?

Forgive me as I quote bits and pieces from my earlier Anime Expo presentation, but the gist is that the story Servamp makes sure to choose Tsubaki’s sin as melancholy. How on earth is “melancholy” a sin? Let’s define the term, and what Tsubaki wants.

Tsubaki’s story is reflective of medical, psychoanalytic, and cultural conceptions that have been with us since the 17th century regarding two ideas: melancholia, as Tsubaki calls himself its very sin, and nostalgia, which has long been associated with melancholia both in medicine and in popular conception.

Tsubaki is a sympathetic villain. His creator, his adoptive father, was killed. That is his melancholy. Melancholia, defined in psychoanalysis as repetitive action in an attempt to live through trauma, is practiced by Tsubaki not only through his repeated attempts to murder the other vampires in the series.

But he is also motivated by the cousin of melancholia: nostalgia.

What is nostalgia? In popular parlance, we mean that you are wishing to get back to something you had in the past. You’re nostalgic for old TV shows, or meals your family used to make, or places you used to visit. It is a desire to get home–that is the medical definition of nostalgia. And that is the older definition, one lost to time nowadays. The word “nostalgia” was coined from the Greek to refer to “pain associated with a lost home.” From the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, nostalgia was used as a way to explain the phenomenon seen with increased travel--and to defend the impressment of sailors into maritime service and to defend even slavery. “That sailor didn’t jump ship to get away from forced service, they jumped ship because they missed home! That enslaved person didn’t jump ship because they’d rather die than be put into slavery–they just wanted to swim back home!” It was utter bullshit. Nostalgia was defined as a homesickness as a way to explain the physical dimensions of people suffering from enslavement, imprisonment, forced labor, and torture--rather than, you know, blaming the fact that you just enslaved people.

But there is still something to that idea of nostalgia as not just our fan reaction to something but as literal homesickness. Tsubaki is not just melancholic, his melancholia takes the form of nostalgia, it is his desire to return home: he wants to return to his creator, to his family. So, Tsubaki creates his own family, becomes a creator himself: he sires other vampires.

I go into more detail on all of this in my presentation, which I’ll share on my WordPress later. But the rest of my presentation at Anime Expo went into how we can understand melancholia as more often associated with creation–moody artists who make stuff, Tsubaki making his own family–while we associate nostalgia with audience reception–the melancholic artist creates something, the nostalgic fan remembers something.

So, where am I going with all of this? I won’t go through the rest of my presentation, because I want to get to a more recent chapter of Servamp that tackles this homesickness in a more obvious fashion.

Nostalgia, like melancholia, depends on a loss. Whereas melancholia is a constant process of responding to loss, nostalgia tends to emerge at the finality of something--the final episode, the final chapter, the final work by an author or an actor or a production company, the final part of a narrative arc. Nostalgia persists, even as it is mitigated, by returning to that work--re-reading it, re-watching it. Nostalgia is an attempt to re-engage with that initial fascination.

And nostalgia can lead you to doing something you’ll regret.

Last weekend, I had a snippy remark against the reboot of Trigun Stampede. I did not react well to this premiere.

I’m going to say it, I’m not getting into this series–yet.

It’s not that there aren’t good parts to the series. This Vash is pretty much still the same core identity of Vash. I like that the series mixes and matches the manga with the earlier anime to now have Meryl be a news reporter. I like the character re-designs…But, I don’t like them in 3D: I really wish this was a 2D series, because these designs look so good in 2D. I like how the music enhances the action…but I don’t like the camera movement, I don’t like the pacing of the action, I am not impressed with the 3D animation. I am ambivalent about rushing to cover back story that fans of the first anime and the manga already know about Vash’s back story and how he got to this point in his life.

It is hard to separate my enjoyment and criticism of this series when I am letting nostalgia get in the way of judging the work on its own. I’m letting nostalgia make my reaction toxic. I am letting nostalgia justify bad reactions. I can’t say this is the same as Tsubaki killing other vampires–but I can say, when melancholy and nostalgia are linked together so strongly, I can’t help but look at Tsubaki’s reaction as reflective of larger problems in how fans get toxic out of nostalgia.

And that brings us to another character in Servamp, the vampire who killed Tsubaki’s creator, the vampire who represents the sin of sloth, that being Kuro.

I had said earlier how Servamp is as much about the blurred line between good and bad. Kuro is supposed to be our protagonist–but he killed. Tsubaki is supposed to be our antagonist–but he is suffering from loss. And now we see how Kuro is wrestling with his deeds in the past, what brought him there–and it starts with that desire to go home.

I’m not explaining this very well. Let’s do a reaction, page by page, of Chapter 99. That should clarify what I mean by nostalgia emerging out of the home, and maybe even link all of this to what I had to say about my dissertation’s topic.

What Changed? Reaction to Chapter 99

So what has changed in the manga that has altered my argument? Let’s do a reaction to Chapter 99 of the manga. You can read it in Volume 16 of the manga, available for purchase at the Seven Seas web site.

We’ll start on the first page–Location 89 out of 170 if you’re reading this digitally like I am.

Some context about where we are in the story: after a battle that went south, the cat vampire of the sin of sloth Kuro and his partner Mahiru are teleported from Tokyo to London. There, memories come back to Kuro that he had forgotten over the centuries he was asleep–including that of a werewolf named Gear. And Gear is not happy to see his old roommate back. You see, Gear and Kuro had a close bond back in the day, and Kuro promised to come back to Gear–only he didn’t.

This two-page spread that starts Chapter 99 shows memories of the past for Kuro and Mahiru, including their allies and opponents, as well as a visualization of the inner turmoil inside Kuro and the sin he houses.

Let’s flip to the next page.

Gear is driving Mahiru and Kuro, along with his friend Youtaro, out of London, after they got beaten, again, by a set of vampires. Along the drive, Gear explains more about the secret society where Mahiru’s uncle works, that being the group C3. And Mahiru learns that C3 was founded by Kuro and Tsubaki’s creator, the Count Saint Germaine. But if vampires are able to track down Gear, that means Kuro and the others aren’t safe in London, so he is taking them to “the secret house”--which freaks Kuro out, before Gear grabs Kuro by his little kitten head.

What is this secret house? None other than the one that Kuro and Gear used to share centuries ago.

This is where my dissertation research ties in. You see, when I was writing my dissertation, my fixation was on how the home draws out more emotions from largely men-presenting characters. While the 19th-century United States was more complex in its understanding of the household when it comes to gender, we still tend to treat things as binaries–men close off their emotions, women are open with their emotions; the house is for women, men stay outside of the home. What alters this understanding, as I read Servamp, is how much Gear is positioned as much of a homebody as Mahiru, only whereas Mahiru is someone who busies himself cleaning up his home for his uncle and Kuro, Gear is a tech expert who loves mobile vacuums and other tools to make things more convenient.

And as Gear has kept up with new technology, he also has gotten away from that rustic home he shared with Kuro centuries ago–as we can see on the next pages, where the cottage he shared with Kuro is a bit worse for wear. And now the house comes to represent the collapse of his relationship with Kuro. This is why I love looking at literature about homes, and why I wanted to research it in grad school. This house, says Youtaro, has cracks from rain,is still a bit of a mess even after he and Gear were visiting earlier that month–it’s all demonstrative of how bad things got for Gear when Kuro left, the problems of their friendship made manifest. And that leads to the revelation as we flip a few more pages through the chapter to see the hole in the roof–but we’ll get to that.

Let’s flip to the next page, where Mahiru asks how Youtaro is able to deal with such a vicious werewolf like Gear. Youtaro starts laughing, saying it’s just friendship–they trust each other. Mahiru gets a bit self-conscious, wondering whether he is able to reach out to Kuro the same way. Too bad that outside Kuro is eavesdropping on this, making him remember his first time meeting Gear, where Gear said magical creatures like them aren’t like normal humans, because they will outlive any humans they meet. That’s why these two stuck together so long–in one home, one cottage, not changing or developing with time. Kuro gets slothful, then, doesn’t he? And that’s his sin, and that is the problem when you are stuck in a rut for so long. There’s a lot there to pull out–another time, though, as I want to keep going through this chapter.

We leap forward in time. Kuro has received a letter, asking him to kill Count Saint Germaine. Gear tries to convince him that he doesn’t have to do this, but Kuro insists on going to Japan to stop his so-called “father.” Gear mulls how much a trip to Japan would cost–but he doesn’t commit. This is the other sin, that Gear could have followed his friend but did not. All this stubborn werewolf can say is that Kuro must return home so that they can fix that hole in the roof. Gear can’t just say he loves Kuro–he has to bury that love into the house itself, making it symbolic of their bond. And Gear says it’ll take the two of them to repair that hole, so he’ll wait for his return to fix it.

Kuro remembers all of this–and looks up to see that hole is still in that house. That stubborn Gear refused to fix a thing until his friend came back. That is both heartwarming and infuriating. And it’s worse than that: we learned earlier that Gear did search Japan to try to find where Kuro went, and when he couldn’t find him, he had to come back without him to England, and leave that hole in the cottage.

We cut to Mahiru and Youtaro finishing their meal prep–only to find the food missing. That’s because Kuro took it up to Gear as an apology. Gear says he wishes he could say Kuro doesn’t need to apologize–so, typical tsundere behavior.

Kuro, however, is in his own thoughts: he is scared, because he thought after killing the Count that the problems the vampires have experienced would stop. But Kuro was thinking only about himself and not understanding that Gear was asking, in his own way, to stay here and not leave him alone. Kuro apologizes, realizing that he didn’t think Gear cared about him, that he just saw him as a companion to pass time.

Gear shuts Kuro up by taking the food and eating it, telling Kuro to join him for lunch. Gear repeats what he told Kuro centuries ago, that humans die long before magical creatures do–and that gets boring. Kuro, with bags under his sleepless eyes, can only agree, before the two are interrupted by those humans in their lives, Mahiru and Youtaro, asking if they took the food they prepared. Gear gestures to Mahiru and Youtaro and explains that what he said centuries ago wasn’t the entire point: yes, humans die before they will–but those humans are their friends, and they are scared for their health and don’t want to see them die. Kuro should appreciate that Mahiru cares about him that much. Then Kuro smacks Gear upside the head for acting like a teacher now–so, funny little comedic beat there, as he lecturesGear that he should have fixed the roof before he got back. Gear responds that it’s Kuro’s fault for not coming back earlier–but at least a hole in the roof means he can watch the stars at night, something Kuro is not appreciating. But since he’s back, they can repair their friendship–by repairing the roof, too.

And that wraps us up on Chapter 99. This one meant a lot to me when first reading, whether because it is sentimental, or because I appreciated getting to see how this story intersected with my own dissertation research. This chapter made me appreciate the topics I was trying to tackle–and something I would like to approach for future publishing.

Contact Info and Credits

I’ll wrap up there. Thanks for listening to this week’s stream of Sunday Morning Manga! What did you think of Blue Lock? There is a lot about Blue Lock I did not discuss–probably one of your favorite characters or arcs that I didn’t cover. So, let me ask you this: who is your favorite character in Blue Lock? Or, what is your favorite arc in the series? And am I missing the goals that this series is trying to communicate? Or is there indeed a disconnect between where the series is trying to go and how it is arriving at that destination? Please share your remarks in the comments section or send me an email: derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com.

Music today included the tracks titled “Los Angeles” by Muzaproduction and “Sunshine” by lemonmusicstudio. These songs are royalty free and available at Pixabay–links are in the video description.

And if you did like what you heard, let me know! Contributions at ko-fi.com/dereksmcgrath and patreon.com/dereksmcgrath are appreciated: please include a note to let me know what you liked in the livestream and what you would like to hear more of.

And if you thought anything in today’s livestream would suit your web site needs–such as news, commentary, or analysis of comics, anime, or larger pop culture, please reach out to me via email, derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com, and I can adapt remarks from today’s livestream into an article for your site! Additional job leads in writing, commentary, and online broadcasting are welcome: please email them to derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com.

Patreon and Ko-fi

If you have a request of something for me to talk about in the Sunday livestream, drop me a contribution in the Ko-fi tip jar or with a monthly Patreon subscription–$1 minimum–and if it’s something I’m comfortable covering here and is pretty much the same kind of content warnings as anything else I cover here, I’ll consider it or talk with you until we find something I’m up for talking about.

You can join other Ko-fi and Patreon contributors such as Emily Lauer and Ellak Roach–thank you both for your support!

Other People’s Awesome Stuff

And if you like what you heard–or didn’t like what you heard–check out other people’s awesome stuff! There’s the Pro Left Podcast, Black Comics Chat on Twitch, there is the writing of Jeff Harris at post.news/nemalki (and please support his work in media criticism on Paypal and his Amazon wishlist).

Commission Artists

And there are illustrators you can commission, such as the illustrator GoldenSunDeer at twitter.com/GoldenSunDeer, and illustrator and Twitch streamer Ichi Rose at twitter.com/Ichi_Rose_ and twitch.tv/eve_chi_.

Sudden Death, Sudden Life

Speaking of Twitch streamers: hey, the actors behind Servamp in the English dub, Micah Solusod and Ayu, host Friday livestream videos of their illustration work, and they have a Patreon for their DND-style isekai audio drama, Sudden Death, Sudden Life, which is available for $5 patrons at https://www.patreon.com/painapplestudio. If you enjoy their work on Servamp, please check out their videos–I think you’ll enjoy their performances and illustrations.

Irregulars Productions

And if you haven’t checked it out yet, please visit the YouTube channel Irregulars Productions for a Christmas-theme video about the anime Soul Eater. It features artwork by GoldenSunDeer–who, again, you can commission at twitter.com/GoldenSunDeer.

And One More Thing

But before we wrap up today: these book bans are getting out of control.

I can’t see how anyone can discuss manga, or education, and not address how these book bans are not only ridiculous and pointless, not only scapegoating marginalized people by targeting books by and for people who are women, Black, Latinx, Asian, LGBTQ+, but targeting what you read, what you teach, the manga you enjoy, the courses you teach.

For crying out loud, there’s a post at Daily Kos about how a discussion about Dr. Seuss’s The Sneetches got derailed because a child, rightly, pointed out the book is about the intersection of toxic capitalism and already implicitly toxic racism–for a school official to interrupt to indirectly shame the student. It’s The Sneetches: of course the book is about racism. But heaven forbid we acknowledge racism is a thing–because the same rightwing clowns want to target marginalized people to keep their white supremacist agenda going.

Forgive me if I’m being blunt rather than more measured, but it’s tiresome: screw these book bans, just teach and offer these books, stop kowtowing to these fascists.

And I once again offer only partial solutions against this nonsense: please work for some cause that opposes this bullshit, in one way or another. Please donate to Democrats running for local and federal office at Act Blue, donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds, donate to the University of California Academic Workers Strike Support and Hardship Fund, and donate to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Next Time

Next Sunday morning, we get back to live-reactions to new chapters released. And a lot has changed in the manga Undead Unluck, so let’s do a live reaction to Chapter 143.

Until next Sunday, I’ve been Derek S. McGrath. You have a good afternoon. Bye.