Junior High School Memory: Manga

Manga (Japanese comics) started booming in Indo when I was in Junior High School. A big publisher had just started translating manga back then and I was one of the fans. The first manga I had ever owned was Candy Candy. I had actually watched some episodes of the manga in the form of anime*** (VHS tapes) when I was much younger, but at that time there was no continuation yet, so I bought the manga also because I wanted to know the end of the story. If I remember correctly, at that time a new manga was published mostly every month, so we had to be patient, especially because at that time there weren't too many other manga books to read in between the wait. 

Of course as time went by and the popularity of manga increased drastically, the publisher hired more translators so that they could publish more manga books in a month. So I started collecting some manga that I liked and the collection grew bigger and bigger. As I had a limited amount of pocket money, I couldn't buy all the manga I wanted, so usually we'd switch reading them with other people who bought different ones. And there were also some friends who just wanted to borrow them.


Unfortunately, bringing manga to school was forbidden in Junior High School, so sometimes there would be unexpected raids. One time I had some manga books and comics that some friends had returned when I heard a friend saying that there would be a raid that day. I panicked while trying to find a place to hide them. Finally someone suggested hiding them underneath the teacher's desk. You see, the teacher's desk was put on a kind of "pedestal" (hollow platform in a shape of an upside down box), so I hurriedly shoved all the books there.

Fortunately, there was actually no raid, so it was a false alarm. But at least all my precious books were safe (albeit a little dusty). Ahem! :-D 

P.S. I sold almost all of the manga and comics that I had collected years back because there was simply no more space for them. I sold them to a place that rents comics and manga books.

 ***Before translated manga came to Indo, I had already been influenced by Japanese anime ever since I was young through VHS tapes that we used to watch with my cousins. These were some of the anime tapes that we watched when we were younger (there are more but I'm gonna share five):

1. Candy Candy (it's dubbed in Finnish):


2. Mazinger Z


3. Megaloman


4. Minky Momo


5. Goggle Five

When I posted links about old anime movies in FB, a cousin of mine said that we used to play together pretending to be them. I remember that, but I don't remember who I "chose to become". He said that I used to be Goggle Yellow, my bro used to be Goggle Red. My male cousin used to be Goggle Red, whereas his sister used to be Goggle Pink. We were laughing hysterically while remembering those days ROFL ROFL ROFL!!! OK, enough reminiscing hi hi...