I was aware of just how male dominated the information ecosystem was, but I didn't realize just how impactful the downstream effects were. There's a lot of headshaking, sighing, and rage in these pages.

Ever wanted to read a cringe love story set in the #Helldivers universe? Somebody surely has, so I wrote one!

(I am eagerly awaiting Dark Magician's reveal… )

All in all, it hooked me! It delivers a drip-feed of something dark and mysterious surrounded by edgy teenage power-fantasy - which really what more could you ask for as a moody kid? I've got volume two on the stack - and I can't wait to keep reading.

Big story beats, like Shadi's intrusion into Yugi's mind and Kaiba's defeat to Yugi all happen more or less as you would expect them - but with an art style that is much more fitting to Yu-Gi-Oh than the questionable animation of the cartoon.

The story doesn't align to the anime 1-1, and has a bit of a slow ramp up. The iconic cards aren't introduced until midway through the volume, and fade away almost immediately. Characters are all over the place with personalities, but fill similar roles to the show.

The anime has a dark edge, but is very sanitized for American children. The manga (so far) has that same edge, but a touch less restraint and censorship, and significantly more violence.

I'm pretty new to #manga - only really started digging into it this year. Yu-Gi-Oh will be the second larger series I'm tackling.

And boy is it different.

Yu-Gi-Oh is one of the childhood cartoons that really left its marks on me. It spurred an interest in Egypt that led me to Rome and Greece, it hooked me into trading card games for life, and gave me some of my favorite video games of all time (none of them particularly good).

Grab something from the genre, expand your horizons 🪐💙📚

Like anything worth doing, Afrofuturism challenges its reader to grow. It presents new takes on old ideas, forces you to confront challenging topics, doesn't restrain itself for a western English-speaking population, while also making for some really cool sci-fi.

Built on a backbone of contrasts, it mixes past with future, religion with science, and trauma with hope. The outcome is a flavorful stew that adds much needed depth to a genre dominated by bland, neo-western corporate dystopias about white dudes shooting aliens in space.

It's funny how eating well makes you feel well. Wish somebody could remind me of this fact when I'm feeling depressed.