A Review of Kabi Nagata's My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness
/Written by Ross Webster
My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness
By: Kabi Nagata
Published by: Seven Seas Entertainment
$13.99
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness pg.5
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness begins en medias res with its artist Kabi Nagata naked facing a female escort in a Japanese love hotel. She lets us readers know that this is her first sexual experience. She makes it very clear that anyone looking for easy hentai titillation or sweet yuri fluff will be sorely disappointed.[1]It is awkward, and Nagata brings up a prominent bald spot on her head and scars from self-inflicted cuts on her arms.
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness pg.97
At this point it goes without saying that Kabi Nagata is an atypical manga artist. While her style is marked with all of the telltale minimalism that characterizes manga, Nagata takes it to the nth degree with extremely simplified characters and backgrounds, sometimes juxtaposed right after a panel drawn in a more traditional bushojo style.[2] This largely works to mock expectation of a romantic or dramatic experience and then to contrast it with its messy and often absurd realities. The simplified style also meshes well with the chaotic state of Nagata’s mind. Nagata’s also part of the small but growing clique of manga artists to begin in webcomics rather than print.[3]
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness pg.15
Nagata flashes back ten years to her completion of high school, when she tried and failed to make it in a normal workaday world. Her inability to conform to even basic work habits, led to deep depression, self-inflicted cuts and two eating disorders in both directions. In the case of the over-eating spell she even eats instant ramen straight from the uncooked package. Despite reaching the point of suicidal ideation, Nagata managed to regain the will to get things together to move onto the next challenge.
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness pg.40
That next challenge was pleasing her parents for whom nothing but becoming a salary-worker would suffice.[4] However, she could not convince her prospective employers that she had any sincere desires outside of drawing manga which one kind interviewer suggested she pursue.
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness pg.55
After luckily entering a manga contest and winning there was no going back for Nagata, especially as her artistic pursuits led her to confront her own mental health which leads into an exploration into her own sexuality. Ultimately, she reached the conclusion that she did not allow self-love and understanding which leads her at 28 years old to call a lesbian escort service and where Nagata begins her story.
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness pg.104
Yuka, the female escort, is the only other named character in this memoir and is just who Nagata needs for her first sexual experience; sweet, affectionate and willing to give her the love that she had long neglected to give herself be it physical and emotional. Once this deeply intimate yet brief and primarily transactional relationship concludes upon leaving the love hotel, Nagata wants more.
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness pg.117
Although Nagata originally wanted to start an erotic manga based on her experience, she found herself unable to fictionalize and realized that her memories were becoming fantasized and less sincere so she decided that it would be autobiographical. This is the best decision she could have made. Not only is it more powerful in terms of storytelling but Nagata manages to break with the tropes of yuri and yaoi, which while exceeding popular in Japan are often criticized for fetishizing same-sex relationships for an overwhelmingly heterosexual audience.[5] Also by the end it is clear that while she has had many breakthroughs, Nagata still has a long way to go in terms of emotional growth, relationships and self-acceptance. Fortunately for readers who have stuck around this is the jumping off point for her ongoing Manga series My Solo Exchange Diary which continues course with her journey which is likely to be a bumpy ride. Though not without a few laughs and moments of poignancy.
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness pg.120
Although I’ve loved manga and anime since 7th grade, I admit to often feeling unsatisfied with familiar tropes of giant robot battles, magical schoolgirls, hyper-energy 50+ volume shonen epics or erotic tentacles monsters.[6] I often scour for unusual genres that seldom make it to American distribution markets and among those are autobiographical manga.[7] My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness was overall a very satisfying read and many of Nagata’s endeavors will be very relatable especially for any creative who’s struggled to balance their creative pursuits with finding a line of work to maintain financial support. She also manages to balance the more serious themes with wry self-deprecating humor. One of the only drawbacks of this memoir is that readers will not learn a lot about the long and complex history of LGBTQ culture in Japan, but on the other hand it is hard to imagine inserting a bunch of hard facts without sullying a story so deeply personal.[8]In any regard, My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness is a short but emotionally deep edition to a small but growing niche of LGBTQ manga serving as a welcome counterbalance to the superficial Yuri and Yaoi genres. At times funny, other times disturbing, or somber but ultimately hopeful - Kabi Nagata is one of the most painfully sincere comics artists you will ever encounter, and you will be grateful for it.
[1] Hentai refers to pornographic manga or anime. Yuri (female)and Yaoi (mail) are genres of manga that focuses on romantic same-sex relationships.
[2] Bushojo is a broad genre of manga which is geared primarily towards adolescent girls or young women.
[3] Of whom the most famous are ONE and Yasuke Murata, whose global hit manga and anime series, One-Punch Man started originally as a simple crudely drawn webcomic. Another prominent webcomic to gain similar success is Akihito Tsukushi’s Made in Abyss.
[4] From Wikipedia: A salaryman (サラリーマン, sararīman) is a salaried worker and, more specifically, a Japanese white-collar worker who shows overriding loyalty and commitment to the corporation where he works. In conservative Japanese culture, becoming a salaryman is the expected career choice for young men and those who do not take this career path are regarded as living with a stigma and less prestige. On the other hand, the word salaryman is sometimes used with derogatory connotation for his total dependence on his employer and lack of individuality.
[5] Also the majority of creators of yuri and yaoi manga are heterosexual men and women.
[6] Shonen is a broad genre of manga geared towards adolescent boys.
[7] Indeed, the only other ones that immediately comes to my mind are Henry Kiyama’s The Four Immigrants Manga, Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life and Shigeru Mizuki’s three volume epic, Shōwa: A History Of Japan.
[8] Also there are already other manga that better examine those theme such as My Brother’s Husband and Our Colors, both by Gengoroh Tagame.