Years and years ago, this used to be the space for me to communicate some of the thoughts and interesting things which I found worth sharing with others. Back in those days, my motivation for writing a blog was a sense of freedom as I was able to talk freely about anything here, although my posts always had a strong focus on Japanese pop culture, especially manga, literature, music and everything in its periphery. So in that way, maintaining a blog was simply motivated by wanting to share something, to contribute something to a community of like-minded people who kept similar websites and by something you could call a need for self-expression.

Things moved on, the internet evolved and with it blog culture changed into something way more mainstream and commercial while becoming one part of what is now called social media. When I’m coming back to this space now I feel like I’m fully aware of this history but at the same time, I want to re-start this blog with the same intentions as so many years before: share things that I think more people should know about, write about things I find inspiring or simply worth spending some words on.

My main focus here will be manga, manga for girls and women to be a little more precise. Shōjo manga, but also manga/Japanese comics in a wider sense, particularly works by female artists, have always been a huge area of interest to me over the years, even as I neglected this blog. Watching my favorite artists’ ideas, styles and themes evolve through time but also diving deeper into shōjo manga history and reading what is now turning into “the classics”, something like a canon, have been the biggest joys of following this type of comic. And I kept asking myself why not come back to this place to reflect on my findings and thoughts again? Why not write reviews about the works I find especially accomplished? Why not share a few pieces of news from time to time to keep track of relevant events and developments in the shōjo manga world? Why not follow some of the more interesting authors and explore prominent themes of their works more deeply? Well, why not?

So with the same feeling of freedom and excitement, I’m beginning again. A fresh but probably slow and humble start into not entirely new territory! The image above is just a tiny glimpse of what’s to come here at coinlockerbaby.org :)