series | Lenn of Spades ♠

I have always considered myself as an avid reader, so I read almost anything and everything. As I have mentioned in a previous post, I didn’t have a lot of friends when I was in elementary school and books have been my best friends since. I basically devoured every book that is available for me to read.

I used to read a lot of romance books (because my mom used to have a lot of Nicholas Sparks pocket books) back then. And in the middle of all that, I was also reading middle-grade fantasy books, nonfiction (e.g., National Geographic magazines, Almanac, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, etc.), comics, and horror books. It was just recently when I discovered the wonderful world of manga (and even more recently, anime).

I’ve always known that manga have a large cult following different types of fans depending on its genre (e.g., yaoi, yuri, shoujo, and others). Being a long-time comic book reader, it was a bit confusing for me when I first started reading manga because of the reversed way of reading it. I know so many people who are quite fans of reading manga. Take for example, my brother — he reads a lot of manga online and I never really cared about it before until I met my boyfriend a couple of years back who asked me to try it. Being a wide-reader, I did try it, but I never really expected to go deep into this fandom.

The quarantine has absolutely turned me into what they call an Otaku, a person with consuming interests in manga and anime. In my side of the world, reading manga or watching anime is synonymous to a geek or a nerd, which I don’t quite understand. In my perspective, I am just reading another book or watching another series/film. It’s still reading, it’s still watching. That’s it.

So what made me continue reading manga? What really cemented my being an Otaku was when I fell in love with Tokyo Ghoul‘s characters. I am far from finished with the first arc because I have yet to complete the physical copies, but I am absolutely obsessed with this manga that I even started reading other titles like One-Punch Man, Kaguya-sama: Love is War, and I recently preordered the Orange Collection Vol. 1 which I am really excited about. Hopefully it arrives this month. I also started reading Cardcaptor Sakura which has been my favorite anime when I was a kid.

Aside from reading manga, I also started watching anime. I started watching Sword Art Online, Erased (which I’ve already finished), and Your Lie in April. It’s been such a fun journey so far and I am absolutely looking forward to more manga to read and anime to watch.

How about you? Do you read manga or watch anime? Maybe you could recommend me something?

To start with, there are a lot of TV series that I’ve started watching before but didn’t really caught up on because the season breaks are too long that most of the time, I lose interest. Recently, though, I signed up for Netflix’s free-trial and have watched a lot of series. I used to just watch some of the series that I think is interesting online, but the server of the website where I was watching has always been down recently and it frustrated the heck out of me. So I decided to sign up for Netflix and just pay for it after the free-trial. So here they are:

Riverdale (2016- )

It all started with Riverdale. I was just instantly hooked the moment I watched the pilot episode almost two years ago, but as usual, I got tired of waiting for the next episode to be uploaded online. And then, I tried watching it again this year and I just couldn’t get enough. The reason I got so interested in watching this series is because I have always been a big fan of the Archie comics and Riverdale’s dark take on the comics has really piqued my interest.

Stranger Things (2016- )

I didn’t really think I’d like this as much as I do now. My cousin has been so addicted to this series, so I started watching it after I finished the last episode of Riverdale Season 2. I personally loved Dustin because he’s so adorable! I can’t wait for season 3.

Gerald’s Game (2017)

This was a hell of a movie. It messed not only with my mind, but with my emotions. Upon watching the film, all I can think about is, “How much of mess would it cause me if I read the book?” Because I know how Stephen King writes. He’s very talented to the point that he can and he will get in your head.

When We First Met (2018)

All I can say about this movie is that it’s too cute. I love the idea of the film and the twist at the end. The message (for me, at least) is that no matter how much you try to alter things, what’s meant to be will always find its way. So might as well just do your best at everything because you will always end up where you’re supposed to be.