The Hive Book club prompt of this week asks about the first manga I read.
Sadly I've been in the manga reading and anime watching business for quite a while so I can't earnestly say the very first manga that I read (although I know my very first anime :-P).
Despite being unable to accurately list my very first, I can say the first manga that really inspired and hooked me.
I started reading Manga almost ten years after I started watching anime, so imagined the joy I felt when I first downloaded the Tachiyomi app in 2021 and began reading my first series.
Due to the fact that I had already started watching anime ten years prior, I had already seen most of the popular shows that most people start with manga.
Thus I wanted to start reading a story that I haven't heard about, and that's how I clicked the first chapter of Blue Lock ⚽.
Needless to say, it was mind-blowing...
Although I didn't read it hardcopy but on my phone, I was enthralled by it.
Just switching from anime to black and white pictures and the story line was that immersive. The emotion from the drawing was felt in every scene.
I've already made a review about this manga as one of my earlier posts in the anime realm so I won't over rant about it here.
Plus the fact that it has gotten an anime and has so much traction means that this isn't that same hidden gem manga I was over sharing back then in the early 2022.
If I were to answer on the selling point of this manga for me back then, it would have something to do with it's uniqueness.
This is actually the first sports anime I had genuinely seen.
Blue Lock --> Haikyuu --> Boukayo Battery --->, etc
This anime unlike haikyuu and most other sports anime totally threw out the idea of school life or any other thing and decided to go straight down into the adrenaline filled world of soccer.
There were loads of other good manga's that I was reading then too, including Solo Leveling, Eminence In Shadow and so on but Blue Lock was what actually hooked me in the manga life. To me, the others just lose in ego.
This was written in response to the Hive Bookclub Prompt: What was the first manga or comics you ever read, and how did it shape your love for the medium?
All images used are screenshots from my Kotatsu manga reader app
My Instagram page.
