The Fall 2020 Manga Guide

Fangirl

What's It About? 

Cath is a Simon Snow fan. Okay, everybody is a Simon Snow fan, but for Cath, being a fan is her life. Cath's sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath just can't let go...

Cath doesn't need friends IRL. She has her twin sister, Wren, and she's a popular fanfic writer in the Simon Snow community with thousands of fans online. But now that she's in college, Cath is completely outside of her comfort zone. There are suddenly all these new people in her life. She's got a surly roommate with a charming boyfriend, a writing professor who thinks fanfiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome new writing partner…

And she's barely heard from Wren all semester!

Fangirl adapts the novel of the same name by Rainbow Rowell. The comic is illustrated by Gabi Nam and adapted by Sam Maggs. Print and digital versions of the first volume are available on Simon & Schuster for $16.99 and $9.89 respectively.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

So here's the thing – I couldn't get into the original novel this OEL manga is based on. I hated Wren, was angry at everyone who couldn't understand Cath, and when I skimmed ahead and found that her creative writing professor didn't seem to get the concept of fanfiction, I dropped the book. And to be perfectly honest? I don't like the story any more now. But it is a good snapshot of what it's like to be awkward, uncomfortable, and anxious, and that's something that this adaptation very much does right.

The story is technically new adult – one step up from young adult and a genre some people argue is a marketing ploy and not a real thing at all. That definition fits right in with the story, because Cath almost sees herself that way, the shadow of her vivacious identical twin sister Wren. On the one hand, she likes being the shadow, because she's not really into the party scene and just wants to be left alone to write her totally-not-Harry-Potter fanfiction. Except…she doesn't want to be completely alone, not really; she wants a few people to understand who she is and to let her be that person without pressuring her to do things she's uncomfortable with. She isn't really sure what will make her completely uncomfortable (because everything is uncomfortable away from her fanfiction), but she also doesn't want to be forced to find out. That's a very relatable form of anxiety, and certainly one that anyone who was nervous about going to college for the first time can understand.

The body language in the art really conveys that. Cath is perpetually slouched in on herself, moving like she doesn't want to be seen. When she sits in the dining hall, she curls around her food just a little, and we can see her go from moderately comfortable to wishing the floor would open up beneath her when she eats with Wren and Wren's roommate Courtney. She does ease into things a bit as the book goes on – accepting her roommate's maybe-boyfriend Levi as a nonthreatening person, for example, and agreeing to go to the dining hall and bowling with roommate Reagan – but the sense of little girl lost never really leaves the way she carries herself, and every perceived betrayal looks like it physically hits her.

Maybe this just strikes too close to home for me as someone anxious. Maybe it's that I really don't like it when authors do something as blatant as Rowell has done with the Harry Potter/Simon Snow books, which honestly feels a bit lazy because it's not fanfiction. Whatever it is, as well-written and well-drawn as this book is, I just really don't like it. I appreciate it's technical merits, but as a whole work, all it makes me want to do is read something else.

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Caitlin Moore

Rating:

Previous to reading this, all I knew about author Rainbow Rowell was that her book Eleanor & Park received a lot of criticism in my circles for being clumsily fetishistic toward its mixed-race Korean love interest, and that one of my friends is openly disdainful toward her and her skill as a writer. I don't doubt that's all true, and no doubt this is partially because of the strength of the adaptation, but I still enjoyed the first installment of Fangirl.

The main character, Cather “Cath” Avery, is just starting as a freshman at University of Nebraska Lincoln, and having a tough time of it. Her boyfriend is going to a school three hours away, and her twin sister Wren didn't want to room together. While Wren is having no trouble in the college social scene, Cath just can't seem to break out of her shell. Instead of eating in the dining hall, she lives on the energy bars she has stashed under her bed. She has a popular fanfic she's been writing for over a year, but the stress of everything going on in her life has sucked her dry of her creative energy.

I found a lot to relate to with Cath. I struggled socially in my first year of college, before finally finding my people late into my second semester, and ended up spending a lot of time eating alone in my room while talking to my friends over the internet. I have a twin sister who I'm very different from, though our relationship was a lot more, um, contentious than Wren and Cather's, which is close despite their dissimilarities. I even wrote fanfiction, although it never reached the same level of popularity as hers does in the story.

What I'm saying here is that I get Cath, and that makes it hard not to root for her. For all that I've enjoyed and related to anime and manga about fandom, Fangirl has an almost painful immediacy that those can't match, and if you're reading this, there's a better-than-average chance that you'll relate too.

Gabi Nam's art here is great and does a lot to bring the characters to life. Everyone is easily distinguishable, in body language, facial features, body type, and fashion sense. Her technical skill is apparent on every page, including in backgrounds and paneling. If Rowell's writing is as weak as I've heard – and I haven't seen anything to dissuade me from that impression – then Nam is an essential part of what made this so readable.

Still, there are a few things that give me some pause. I had a hard time suspending disbelief that Cather and Wren's mother didn't know she was having twins and thus split up the name she had chosen into two. Did she not get any neonatal care at all? Did she not realize she named one of her daughters something way too close to “catheter”? Plus, when Cath's professor gives her a failing grade for submitting fanfiction for a creative writing assignment, it's hard to tell who's supposed to be correct at the moment. I have nothing but respect for transformative works, but they have no place in a creative writing class unless that's specifically the assignment.

Fangirl has a lot of charm and relatability to its credit, with strong art taking the place of the novel's clunky writing. If you were thinking of checking the series out, I have no doubt this is the optimal way to do it.