I honestly don’t have much to report this week, but since I’ve been keeping up with this blog regularly, I feel loath to break the habit for even just one week, lest I fall behind. The past week at work as been super busy, such that I haven’t felt up to doing too much reading with intent to review, or anything like that.
This weekend has been fun, though! After work on Saturday night, my coworkers and I legged it over to another comic shop for their annual Battle of the Comic Shop All Stars, in which several local comic shops put together teams of four for a comic book-based trivia event to benefit charity. Our team is usually second to last (that’s what we got this year, too), but it’s still super fun and I learn a lot of random facts about first appearances and whatnot. And just for me, this year they had a “name that anime” sheet full of screenshots from various series. I aced it. 😛
When I got home from that, I found that I had received a package from my oldest and best friend. She had had some trouble sending it to me in time for my birthday, but it finally got to me and it was a pair of completely adorable handmade Sailor Jupiter transformation wand earrings!

And then there was today…I drove (by myself for the first time ever!) to the local East Asian supermarket to get a load of snacks for a Gunpla building party that another friend was hosting. The only Gundam series I’ve ever been able to become invested in is Gundam Wing, so naturally I built myself another Sandrock model — this time a Master Grade, which was an interesting exercise in fiddly bits and frustration.

As we were building our models, we listened to some Gundam tracks, and then watched some various Gundam series — including Gundam Wing Endless Waltz. Remember the friend who made me the earrings? Her name is Sara — well, Sara and I used to watch Endless Waltz every single day after school for the better part of a year. It’s deeply important to me, and tied to my reasons for getting into fanfiction, drawing, and animanga as a whole.
I am the type of person who is extremely prone to nostalgia, so I didn’t need all this external help to start reflecting on my past and my passions. In truth, I do it often; I do, professionally, what I did for fun as a teenager basically. I always say that 13-year-old Morgana would think 28-year-old Morgana is so cool, and on some days…that’s really the sentiment that keeps me going.
Working in comics has allowed me to relapse, but not in a bad way. I’ve been able to come back around to things I really care about, and not only am I engaging again in singular, personal hobbies that used to be important to me, I’m also engaging in a community of people with similar hobbies and interests.
The more and more I delve into comics, the more I feel the particular pull of community, and how important I believe it is to have a community that is supportive and uplifting. Conventions like Anime Boston and ConnectiCon, both shows which I do with work, have that feeling of community that I think some of the bigger shows are starting to lack for me. Of course, CTcon is my hometown show, so it’s always going to feel like home. I walk through the Hartford Convention Center and remember that time I was randomly asked to dance by a Vash cosplayer, or that time a bunch of people piled into the lobby to watch AMV Hell.
There are times when I am envious of today’s teenagers; every series they could possibly ask for is at their fingertips, streaming or available to read digitally through so many publishers. At the risk of sounding like an ornery old person, they have no idea how good they have it. I hear complaints about manga chapters not getting translated quickly enough, and I am bowled over by the fact that only fifteen short years ago, literally NOTHING came over to North America with any kind of speed or even decent translation sometimes.
So sometimes I’m envious that kids can buy their anime swag at their local Hot Topic (though I also can partake of that, of course). But there’s also that deeply sentimental side of me that wouldn’t trade the weirdness of growing up in the 90s and 2000s for the world. There is something very beautiful to me about having to wait for a certain time after school to get the next episode of your favorite series, or hunting through the VHS tapes at your local video rental store for something you haven’t already seen (preteen Morgana saw some series at perhaps too impressionable an age).
I don’t particularly truck with the idea that my youth — or anyone else’s — was any better than the youth of kids today. I think a lot of dangerous ideas can come out of dwelling too much in certain kinds of nostalgia. But I’m also grateful for what I had, and I hope that the next generation of nerds finds a similar solace in their own nostalgia without having to tear down the generation that follows. For those of us who love stories, I think memories and the emotions that surround them are important. I don’t think that’s something that changes much, no matter when you were born.