 Hey everybody, welcome back to Wicked Geekdom, Gio here, and today we're doing a review on my alcoholic escape from reality from Nagata Kami. Welcome back to the channel, and if you're new here, I do content like this, talking about anime, manga, and comics. Subscribe if you can, help a brother out with that YouTube algorithm. So what is my alcoholic escape from reality all about? So I gotta be real with you guys, I have not read much of Kami's work before. I know that she's famous for titles such as my lesbian experience with loneliness and my solo exchange diary. They've always been books that I've had on my to read list, but I've never actually gone through them. But now that I've read my alcoholic escape from reality, I'm really excited to check those books out. So my alcoholic escape from reality. This is another autobiographical manga from Nagata Kami talking or telling us about her experience with pancreatitis. Of course this was brought on by the excessive amounts of alcohol that she consumed, and sort of her experience of telling us about the alcoholic consumption, the incident with all the massive pain that she felt in her stomach and in her body, and then the process of going to the hospital, the hospitalization, the treatment, leaving the hospital, getting that IV out, starting a healthier diet, and no, you know, getting that sentence of no alcohol for the rest of your life, or no greasy foods and stuff like that. I have a family member that went through pancreatitis, so I know firsthand how dangerous that situation can get if it goes out of hand, how taxing it is for the person, and how much it sucks, and how it alters your lifestyles, especially if you're accustomed to a certain diet or special drinks or whatever it may be. It can really alter everything for the rest of your life. However, it is curable and you can't treat it, and there is medicine and stuff like that to keep everything in check, and of course the person has to put their part in to, you know, so the body remains at a certain level and you don't get another scare like that. What's interesting with an autobiographical book is that there's no room for imagination. You are telling your audience how you feel through the creative process of a manga in this case, which is quite comforting for a lot of readers, because no, it's not this high fantasy tale. It's actually something extremely relatable whether, and by that I mean, it doesn't have to be about the actual disease, but also the fear of the unknown of what's going to happen next, the anxiety and process that can happen once you internalize that there's this major change happening within your life, and once you exit the hospital, how do you go about restoring your life? How do you go about confronting alcoholism? Because obviously the mangaka, you know, she's an alcoholic and was addicted to drinking and how does she face her new reality when you've been told you've got to eliminate alcohol? And essentially you can come back and start drinking, but it has to be super moderated, right? And that happens in her story where she kind of relapsed and started drinking again in small bits and it didn't alter too much her body and was actually a positive thing. So yeah, everything in moderation is great. Also a great point of autobiographical books, aside from getting up and close to the author, is the art. You can really face your fears and make readers understand what you went through by highlighting it in a comical fashion. In this case, Kavi's using Chibi art style, which accentuates the hard moments and the funnier moments as well in a really particular way. I love how it's not necessarily black and white. There are orange hues and tones throughout the story that really make it pop, really make it feel like you're reading this nice indie or European comic. I really appreciated that. It takes it up a notch just a tiny bit compared to other autobiographical comics or manga. So the author talks about her creative process with manga and editorial business and finding her muse and how she used to depend on alcohol to fuel the emptiness that would arise or the anxiety of having to meet deadlines and drawing stuff and creating things, but also how she feared that making autobiographical stories would be a turnoff. But in the long run, it's actually a great thing. Eventually the editors hear about this and like the idea and push it forward. You know, she did win a Harvey award for one of her older books. So that sort of makes her realize that there is this avenue for it and she can inspire and entertain people from her own cruxes in life and her own experiences, I should say, and how she can translate that into literature, into, you know, sequential art that can inspire and be funny and even scary at times with a disease such as pancreatitis, which can be fatal if not treated properly or in time. So yeah, overall, I thought this was an excellent book, really easy to follow, really fun all the way throughout. Obviously the subject matter is not fun, but there is a funniness to it when you have a creator, a writer tell you about her experiences, and it lessens the blow and you can learn something from it, you can take stuff from it, lessons in life. And there are some self-realizations that I think a lot of you guys reading that book will appreciate and easily become a fan of the mangaka. Like I said at the beginning of this review, I had not read her previous works and I want to rectify that. I want to read the other books which have high critical acclaim and sort of get a better understanding for that person. You really do understand the person by reading autobiographical comics and they're sort of like little life lessons through the stuff that people experience. You apply some of that into your own life and you move forward from there. But overall, I absolutely loved it. It is very heartwarming and endearing, has great art. I love the usage of color and it's a very easy accessible read for anybody that wants a little bit something else than your fantasy epics and shounens. This can be sort of your gateway drug if you will into a slice of life genres and books like this. So yeah, my alcoholic escape from reality. Personally, I haven't had a brush with something like this with pancreatitis or alcoholism, not really my thing, but I get it. I understand. And at the end of the day, you're reading stories about flawed people trying to make sense of things, introverted people that become reclusive because of certain things that happen in life and how that sort of creates a domino effect that eventually affects them in ways that they were not expecting like alcoholism or food addictions or whatever it may be. This story is a reminder of that, but to also not shame people and just to experience their situation and learn from that and take the positives out of it. That's what I thought at least. Thank you everybody for tuning in. Thank you so much to the folks at Seven Seas Entertainment for making this review possible. I really do appreciate it for the support that this channel has gotten by all that wonderful content being sent my way. How about you guys? Have you read my alcoholic escape from reality? Let me know down below what you thought of it. And if you haven't, and if you've checked out Nagata's other material, let me know what you thought of those books as well. Thank you so much everybody for liking, commenting, subscribing, and being a part of A Week in Geekdom. It truly does mean a lot. If you're new here, please consider subscribing. I do content like this, talk about anime, manga, comics, all that fun stuff. If you do subscribe, make sure to hit the notification bell so you know when new videos bump up. Thank you once again. God bless. I've got to go. I will catch all of you on our next video.