#Convenience Store Woman came out in 2016 in Japan and it only made waves stateside last year

[mystacoceti]

ZHUCHKA: I find it really frustrating-- not for me, personally, because I don't really have a problem with it, but for the general American reading audience, there's so few [manga] that come out that actually are relevant to current events. Because, like, the simul-publishing stuff [i.e. digital distribution simultaneous with Japanese magazine serialization] is all reserved for the most commercial works. It's really depressing to think-- not only for the art comic stuff, but that people don't read anything that matters to the Japanese audience. They've got to wait for like 10 years, or 20 years. It's ridiculous to me.

It's the precarious situation where really the whole perspective of what Japanese comics is, is still largely controlled by market concerns, because it's all based on what western publishers think is salable. And as a result it's a particular mutation of Japanese comics that goes through, and after a while, the tail starts wagging the dog, where it's all [commercial kids' comics] stuff controlling the direction.

ZHUCHKA: Yeah, I would have loved to do something like this a long time ago, but I just am not the type of person to organize it, and so I was really appreciative and grateful for the opportunity that somebody else would have me on, and then also go through the trouble of contacting everybody and making sure that all that could happen.