Sometimes, one click and just a couple of minutes on your phone can be all it takes to find a new hobby. Pair that with people around you who also found the same interest, and that interest quickly becomes an obsession. This was just the case for Alex Arens ’23. He found himself intrigued by Japanese culture from watching a YouTube video, and from there his friends introduced him to the world of manga and anime. Now, it has become one of his biggest passions.

“It began in seventh grade year,” he said, “with a friend kind of like, all into anime and stuff. So from that it evolved into me getting into anime… And then I figured out, hey, there are books that you know, you can pick up from the library and read really quickly. So I picked up a few books, read it, thought wow, this is great, then I just kept on reading longer.”

“I was reading stuff, since I tend to read a lot of manga. So I guess he saw it, and then I started talking to him about this one show called Bleach. And then he started getting into it,” said Teagan Clouthier-Proud, who introduced him to the world of manga and anime.

He got into his first anime, Naruto. “It’s really mainstream, so I decided it was a really good anime to start with.” After that, he went on to reading his first manga, Bleach, and continued on from there.

The stories that are told in manga and anime is what seems to have intrigued Alex the most. “American comics and stuff, I don’t really find them appealing … mangas are much better because it’s more like an in-depth story.”

He thinks that having everything drawn out makes understanding the emotions of the character and the overall narrative of the story easier. “I guess it’s just nice to again see what the author and illustrator wanted to make that character be. The action scenes would go much quicker. Instead of having to say, this person, like, drew their sword and was charging into battle, they can just, like show them having the sword.”