What this genre is
My Darling is a Foreigner opened up the genre of telling your own experience in loose, friendly drawing. Parenting, illness, work — manga became a container for non-fiction.
Alternative — about this band: The experimental spirit of Garo and COM, expanding what manga could do from outside the commercial mainstream.
Connections
Three kinds of line: direct evolution, influence, and born in reaction against.
↓ Flowed into this
↑ Grew out of this
Key works
The author's own girlhood in Shimizu, Shizuoka, in 1974. It brought the sensibility of the essay into a girls' magazine, and became a national institution.
Daily life with her foreign husband Tony; over a million copies sold. The book that lit the comic-essay boom.
Yotsuba, a girl made entirely of curiosity, and the unremarkable days of the people around her. The high point of slice-of-life, by the author of Azumanga Daioh.
An easygoing comedy in which Buddha and Jesus share a flat down here on earth. Its light touch with religion made it popular.
The daily life and the dinner table of a middle-aged gay couple, drawn plainly. Loved by a wide readership for its usable recipes and its life-sized living.
Alternative — walk the band
Genres in the same band, in order of year. You are at the highlighted one.
- 1964 Garo↓
- 1967 COM↓
- 1979 New Wave↓
- 1993 Subculture↓
- 2002 Comic Essay（you are here）
All genres
About this entry
Genre boundaries are drawn where the network of manga happens to concentrate, not by decree. Years are approximate. Where opinions differ, this page says so rather than picking a winner.