Please read Nagata Kabi

I'm obsessed with this Manga, nobody knows about it SEND HELP

Feb 21, 2026

I read all of Nagata Kabi’s titles available in english

7 titles 150 - 180 pages each that I read back to back in a few days.

I started reading it by the recommendation of Gabby Caldera - link to the recommendation video

These works are autobiographical and the titles were tempting. I started reading and I could not stop. I wanted to know more. Seeing an adult in their 30s going through the things that she was important to me. Going in and out of her parent’s home needing support for recovery, but still struggling with her relationship with them. Making her art keeps her alive and happy but upsets her parents and then follows the perpetual abuse cycle “you could be doing something better”, “get a job”, even though she already had a job, making manga. She made money from it too.

The struggle with loneliness, substances and approval from parents; the burdening existence of being alive when you didn’t grow up learning the skills you need to be an autonomous adult - all these themes still feel extremely unexplored from an adult, especially a queer adult in Asia. When you’re a disabled queer adult, you get used to depending on your parents for executive function and financial support, they do nothing to change this. They revel in the fact that their kids still need them. Thus perpetuating the cycle, never being free to know who you are, what you want or make space for how you feel + express them. It was devastating watching her fall into alcoholism - at first, to experience autonomy as an adult and then as an escape leading to addiction; hiring a female escort to experience intimacy at all knowing how homophobic japan can be and struggling to form relationships that mature into love.

In wandering warrior existence, she talks about how happy her friends look getting married, how badly she wants that for herself. And the gap she feels between herself and them who are capable of forming relationships that turn into marriage.

I have felt that all my life, there was a bond that kids seem to have with each other that allowed them to get close and some of them going as far as being in love. I didn’t experience that up until my 20s. I knew what having a crush felt like, but I couldn’t fathom being in love where you’ve spent so long being close to someone that you both now are in love. Hard relate.

In my twisted eating disorder she talks about liking margarine on her bread just because the container’s shape and its soft.

I have forever avoided things that make my hands get wet before consuming. It was way too relatable to know that someone other than me has all these arbitrary reasons for loving something that has nothing to do with the thing but the way its packaged or helps me avoid a texture I hate.

There are many more instances like this, that made me feel like Nagata Kabi is living example of “your suffering isn’t unique”. It was almost freaky. But I am thankful to know that there are adults struggling with things like this and I am not alone. For every adult out there, doing their best despite knowing they’re struggling with things unfathomable to other people, carrying burdens just to be alive.

To all of you, thank you for being alive. Please make art and be vulnerable. It means a lot to know I am not alone and I am not pathetic for going through the things that I do.

Please know you don’t need anyone’s permission or approval to be alive. No one to please, nobody else’s metric but your own to know your life is fulfilling and worth living.

There is joy to be had by just being alive. Experiences to seek out that have nothing to do with having a job or being in love. Never apologise for feeling what you feel.

Please checkout Nagata Kabi’s work and talk about it so they publish these comics in india and I can buy them. I had to go to the depths of the internet, I wouldn’t go with a gun to find all the titles and read them. If you do read them, please tell me about it so we can gush over it together.

And Nagata Kabi, never ever stop writing. Your work is saving people’s lives and please stay safe and be happy :D I hope one day I can meet you and tell you how much your work means to me. I will read everything you will ever write.

Love,
Santa