Manga recommendation time!!!
Hey! You! Yeah, you! Late 20's/early 30's who was feeling blue about finding manga you could still relate to! Ones that weren't all about some 16 year old finding love or magic powers...you gotta give TOKYO TARAREBA GIRLS by Akiko Higashimura a try!
This series is 9 volumes long and here is the synopsis: Rinko has worked hard through her 20s to get where she is today; a screenwriter, with her own office in fast pace, trendy Tokyo. What more could a gal want? Well, now at the age of 33...she is heavily reminded that her career's lost it's luster and plateaued, that she is still utterly single, and spends all her free time getting drunk, while "shooting the shit", in drawn-out bitch sessions, with her two closest friends at their favorite drinking spot. On one of these girl's nights, Rinko vows she will get herself married and be happy by the time the 2020's Olympics are held in Japan. But finding love and happiness is going to be a real challenge for a true romantic at heart. The world we live in is a lot more dirty and cutthroat than we'd care to admit.
This manga grabs you right at the heartstrings and shakes you silly with an occasional slap of great comedy in the face for good measure! This is the most "real" manga I have read in a very long time. Through the eyes of Rinko (as well as her two friends Kaori and Koyuki) we see the world peeled away piece by piece, revealing how hard and absolutely terrifying it is to find true happiness with our rose tinted glasses off and stumbling about asking "WHAT IF" about our lives as adults.
"WHAT IF" Is the very heart of this story and is most impactful lesson it'll teach you. We all have those "WHAT IF" questions in our lives and sometimes it can be all-consuming to the point everything is confusing and scary. Where making any sort of choices literally feels like the end of the world. Turning us all into jaded, frightened, guarded people. There is hope though, thanks to this manga it teaches us to cope with regret and start truly living and answering life's curveballs with "BECAUSE" instead.
All of these characters are so fleshed out and are so painfully raw and relatable. Akiko Higashimura knocked it out of the park again with this story. I orginally picked this up after reading her PRINCESS JELLYFISH series, (which is flippin' amazing btw. The anime is also to die for!) and was blown away.
On a super personal level, this manga came out shortly after a very traumatic experience for me and these books have just shook me to my core. In a very real way. Good and bad. Admittedly I had to step back a few times for a break or two, but it brought me right back in after I had a breather and a box of tissues to go through. Lol. I also adore Akiko Higashimura's reflection on how the manga effects her readers:
Seriously, cannot recommend enough. Please consider reading it!
