Sometimes It Really Does Get Lost in Translation

Since I'm a middle-aged white guy in Michigan, I haven't read tons of manga.  In fact I've read two and only because they were on Amazon Vine.  It's kind of a weird experience because you have to read it "backwards" from what in a traditional Western book is the back cover and read right-to-left.

But that's easier to overcome than some cultural differences.  The second manga I read was called Again!?  The concept sounded interesting:  what if an outcast graduating from high school could go back to the first day of school and do it over again?  Might he end up popular this time?  Or might it end the same?

Well it turns out the author doesn't seem to give a shit about those questions.  Most of it involves this kid somehow going back in time to the first day of high school and trying to impress this girl.  She's the sole member of some spirit club that sings the school fight song and bangs drums during sporting events.

And my thought is:  Who gives a fuck about this?  But the author makes this the sole focus of the book.  And I guess there are at least 5 more volumes!  It was just so tedious because I didn't really know or care what this stupid club was or why it should have any significance to what I thought would be a fun time-travelling story.

But probably in Japan they actually know what that shit is about, so it probably makes more sense to them.  That's where we get into cultural differences that can make a book exciting to one country or just super-duper boring to someone from another country.  And I guess sometimes you could end up with something that's just downright offensive from one country to another.

That's what I get for broadening my horizons I guess.

BTW, speaking of high school time travel stories I actually did something like that a few years ago with OMG, I've Become a Teenage Girl!  The idea was that after a 20 year reunion a loser wakes up back in high school, only as a girl who gets to hang out with the popular girls.  And then he (as she) realizes that popularity isn't all it's cracked up to be.  I never got into spirit clubs.  Clearly that's what I was missing.