Inhae's blog

Introduction

Pon Watanabe is an author of エッセイ漫画, manga that are autobiographical. 『もっと、やめました』is following a previous book simply called 『やめました。』. You don’t need to have read the first one to read the second.

Review

I bought this book because I love Miri Masuda’s manga, and I thought it would be similar. But I did not expect to love this autobiographical manga so much!

First of all, I love Pon Watanabe’s drawing style. It is so cute, funny and relatable. I could easily see myself in all the situations described.

Frome the title and the cover, I thought that this book might encourage a minimalist way of life, which scared me a little because I am not into that at all. I was happily surprised to see that there is nothing moralising in this manga. The idea is not to stop buying things, but to go for quality over quantity. It also shows that changing some habits can lead to discovering new hobbies.

But this manga is not only about physical objects, it is also about changing one’s negative way of thinking, either in the relation with others or in the relation with oneself. The manga goes from trivial things like stopping hoarding vinyl umbrellas, to more profound thoughts like trying to accept oneself and gain self-confidence.

No matter if it is what you buy, what you do or how you think, this manga is simply about learning to be happier.

I personally could relate to everything Pon Watanabe describes. At many times I was thinking “Oh, so I’m not the only one!”, especially in chapters about relationship with others and self perception. One passage made me very sad and I had tears in my eyes, but the next moment I was laughing at the author’s sense of humour.

I read the bunko (文庫本) version of the manga, and I found that some parts of the text were printed very small. If you have trouble reading small characters, I would recommend going for the bigger format if you are interested in reading this book.

I loved this book so much that I am going to read all Pon Watanabe’s manga!