In this seventh autobiographical comic essay about their physical and mental health, Nagata Kabi introduces us to the specific forms of their eating disorder, including an exceedingly intimate discussion of the foods they binge and purge.

My Twisted Eating Disorder has art and story by Nagata Kabi. English translation is done by Jocelyne Allen, with lettering by Karis Page. Published by Seven Seas Entertainment (28 October 2025). Rated 17+.

Content Warning: disordered eating, binging and purging

Erica Friedman
Rating:

Since 2017, Nagata Kabi has been telling us increasingly intimate autobiographical tales in comic essay form. Not the whole of a life, but selected cuts that simultaneously allow Nagata to articulate what is and isn't working, and that attracts a global audience of people who identify with those experiences and feelings. From feelings of depression and loneliness, disassociation from family and society due to gender and sexuality identity issues, to physical and mental health trauma incited by both external and internal imbalances, we know a lot about the author.

It is a truth, if not generally acknowledged, that humans are a weird cocktail mix of chemicals, driven by genetic propensity and circumstance. The fact that most of us function at all is miraculous. Some of us have physical barriers, some of us have an unbalanced chemical cocktail that doesn't have the right proportions in one or many parts. (Actually, now that I say that, it feels better to think of myself as a poorly made martini, both shaken and stirred. I may be bitter and undrinkable, but at least I have an olive.) Of course, some of us have both.

Nagata-sensei began this journey in the throes of a deep depression. We've followed through discussions of physical and mental breakdowns, and a previously mentioned eating disorder. In fact, the eating disorder has been mentioned multiple times across several of Nagata's books.

Here in My Twisted Eating Disorder, we get a microscopic, almost too-personal look at the specifics of Nagata's binging and purging. This book, as the author's note mentions, began pre-COVID and is here the result of a person coming to find that their problems aren't always the root of their suffering. This volume is, as all of Nagata's works have been, uncomfortable, enlightening, sympathetic, and frustrating, in turn.

Nagata's art is by now recognizable, with a one-color, black and white palette, complicated charting of Nagata's inner thoughts, and simple, often unattractive images of the author caught in flagrante delicto, while describing eating to excess and throwing up as casually as one might discuss the weather. How does one give a number rating to a life?