The anime/manga otaku world is the intranets, and the intranets is a world tailor-made for otaku.

As an ex-hundreds-of-dollars-a-month animu fanboy, I remembered when it truly evolved in the late 90’s, early 00’s, when technology finally allowed the subculture to develop into a worldwide community. Sure, there were always discussion boards, fan clubs, comic-cons, VHS fan subs, and commercial sales of licensed and bootlegged merch, but the digital age introduced DVD’s, TV-to-computer captures, and higher-speeds/bandwidth on the internet, enough to share online video and high-rez scans on a first-time-ever legitimately user-friendly basis.

The age of digi-subs, manga-scans, and screen captures had begun, all propagated by peer-to-peer networks and community forums.

As the distribution of the shows increased, so did their fanbase. Within this niche geekery, once a private or at-best limited cloister, content could now easily be replicated and shared. Everyone could make a fan-site now, thanks to shitty geocities, angelfire, and generally reduced hosting costs for the DIY’ers. Everyone could make forums in their own voice and content thanks to easy prepackaged programs.

New shows and stories created widespread buzz, and that buzz created a market. And everyone wanted their old favorites on-hard-drive, if not in-hand.

Everything ballooned together, from animu being consistently shown on cable TV, massive walls o’ DVD’s in your local Best Buy, and bookshelves of complete Tokyopop manga translations in every brick and mortar book store. Anime conventions broke away from comic cons and some got bigger than their outmoded parents.

Nowadays the bubble has long-since stabilized (if not shrunk down a bit), but this reflective history has a point, giving this review some context:

Fandom is more widespread, developed, and knowledgeable than it’s ever been in the past. It’s hard not to find Bit-torrent and Youtube fansubs of the newest shows, let alone information about the entire industry thanks to the glut of bilingual fans (compared to their community accessibility in the 90’s).

Even still, as far as webcomics go, I’m sure you’ve come across plenty of projects that tip their hats to animu bullshit, be it in theme/parody, mixed with gaming humor, or generally replicating tired old stories in a one-off gag-a-day. Mangu comics are so common as to be facepalm.

But rarely have I seen a pure otaku-comic. By this I mean a Penny-Arcade-esque comic devoted to anime/manga from a fan’s perspective: a focused commentary on releases, attitudes, and merchandise; not story-based; with rants to support the individual strips; never deviating from the theme of anime/manga fandom.

Here we go: Mistakes of Youth

At face value this resembles the same middle-tier shit I’ve been exposed to and been reviewing for the past year. By some guy going as “Wildarmsheero,” he’s been using the same internet handle since he was twelve or something (might be about twenty now), so I’ll just abbreviate it for all our sakes. We’ll just call him Wah, for fun.

Like I was getting at, Mistakes of Youth is a foray into the anime subculture from a very-insider perspective, following the pervert Rets and token-female Tina along brief scenes and discussions about the newest shows, some classics, and offering some is-this-trite chuckles about fandom in general.

I’m sure the skilled illustrators out there would rightfully call Wah a shitty artist, but the talentless out there would probably be jealous. That’s what I meant by middle-tier shit: the art isn’t stunning, but neither is it absolute dreck. Normally full-color, clean line art, but with awkward proportions, Wah seems every bit the developing artist who’s good enough to not let the art get-in-the-way.

That’s the important part.

So while arms, hands, feet, and faces can get funky-as-fuck, the effort shows in the things he does do right, which is drawing at high-rez before he condenses the image, constant experimentation with shading, and an overall improvement over time, even if it’s subtle. As usual, I’m impressed at effort into the backgrounds, which are usually washed out tablet scribbles or photos that normally match the art and aren’t overtly cut-and-paste. Overall, it’s nothing to get excited over, but the effort is enough for the individual strip. Suggestions for improvement? Keep at it–that’s about it—he sure produces enough.

The writing itself sways between eye-rolling banalities, scattered lulz, and damn near incomprehensibilities.

And that’s not to say it’s impossible to ‘get,’ because while the comic is made by and for a specific niche audience, Wah has some middle-tier skill at writing/joke-telling as well. Often the dialogue is overly specific, and much too obscure for casual fans who just watches shit off Cartoon Network, but I think most readers would still be able to understand the punchlines based off of expressions, usage of panels, and general comedic timing. Wah’s ability to put jokes in context is what saves the writing on a first-time-viewer level. Anything beyond, there’s plenty of material on-site to ‘get the joke.’

Basically, MoY is the same thing as +EV, PA, and every niche webcomic, except with lots of Japanese names of animu shows you probably haven’t watched.

Credit to Wah that after every MoY strip, there’s a long rant underneath apologizing for the update schedule, middle-grade art, and lack of lulz. The general self-effacement of the rants would usually be a turn-off (not confident enough), but it’s rather endearing in this project, as is the wealth of editorial-esque insight about the topic and other aspects of fandom and the anime/manga industries. So while the not-that-great comic itself won’t really teach you shit about anime, the strips combined with the blog creates a one-two punch that’s extremely entertaining as a whole. It’s a very good model, but the site design doesn’t support it. I’ll explain:

It needs an overhaul, the sooner, the better. This is really easy shit for anyone with basic site-design skills, which makes me scratch my head as to how it hasn’t been fucking resolved in the last eighteen months. Let’s break it down:

• Too much whitespace in the banner.
• Why put Google ads over the comic? I’m sure under it is fine. I never click on the fucking things anyway, as I’m sure most people don’t, so why distract my eye and wreck the overall design? If we want to support MoY by clicking links, it won’t be during our first visit, and by the time we’re returning readers, I’m sure we’ll notice their new home between the comic and the rant.
• Navigation bar is too wide, too yellow, which only adds to the general, noobish “wide open spaces” feel of the design.
• The left side of the text is humping the border, especially on the introduction and profile. Could use a few more pixels on the comic-site rants as well.
• The archives, even as a drop down, doesn’t really help much as it doesn’t give dates. It’s a piss-or-get-off-the-pot kind of thing. Either include the dropdown on every page, or make the archive page an actual list with one of those calendar scripts or with names and dates.
• I have to stress that the overall problem with the webdesign isn’t even on a point by point basis: it’s just this flat expanse of steaming shit surrounding an otherwise decent product.

Overall, the site design seems very slapped together, like Wah just doesn’t give a fuck. These one-time, no maintenance fixes aren’t that difficult. He should take a day he normally spends doing gallery shit and learn/work some site design. It pays dividends for turning first-time viewers into returning readers.

Finally, I’m frustrated with this one because the premise has so much potential, there’s a feast of content on his blog, the gallery (including a loli-NSFW subgallery) is consistently updated, but it feels like Wah either doesn’t know how to tie a professional-esque bow on it, or is too goddamn lazy to. Remember, I’m not telling him to spend any monies, or become a professional; I’m saying that it’s a very simple thing to transform your ugly site into something snappy with a big-dog feel. As it stands, the art and writing is not killing the site–the webdesign is killing the art and writing.

Now, I wouldn’t pay to read this in print, nor am I an immediate fan, but I certainly see how it has fans, has room for growth, and appreciate the obvious effort into the art itself. There’s no real end to available material with this premise, but it is rather silly to have a webcomic that actually has this kind of potential, even as a hobbyist, and not take an extra step in webdesign and webpresence to gain that middle-tier notoriety that so many already enjoy.

Just quit half-assing the details, Wah. And keep drawing. You own this niche, so sky’s the limit therein.