The Manga Bible is out today in the US – the right time for me to give the fabulous Mandy Kaplan a crash dive into manga on her podcast Make Me A Nerd We talked One Piece, Nana and Nausicäa, amid many of my trademark diversions, and you can hear us on TruStory FM or wherever great podcasts are found.
Not only did I have a LOT of fun – Mandy is a terrific host – but she took prep seriously. She made it easy for me to shine, asking the kind of straight-yet-demanding questions every interviewee hopes for. This was a podcasting masterclass topped off with a generous, quotable show writeup.
“Helen contextualizes all of it: the cartoony violence, the naïve heroines, the Indonesian protesters waving a One Piece flag, and why manga that looks contemporary might actually be set in your mother’s girlhood. By the end, Mandy may not be a manga nerd. But the door is open — and she can see the plushies from here.
Helen McCarthy is the author of the first English-language books on Japanese animation and on Hayao Miyazaki — which is to say, she was there taking manga seriously before the rest of the English-speaking world had even formed an opinion about it.”