First of all, it's time to announce this year's Holiday Review Giveaway winner! gimmickpunk decided to revisit a shonen classic this year, one that's near and dear to my own heart:
Tis the season! I finally started reading the FMA manga this year and I’m loving it as much as I did both shows way back when.
Congratulations! To claim your prize, just reach to us via DM to our Bluesky account with a viable email address so we can get your Bookshop.org gift certificate to you in time for some New Year's shopping.
I don't think anybody will be looking back on 2025 with much fondness. There is no joy to be had in living through history's stupidest fascist regime as the economy teeters on the edge of self-induced recession and I cannot imagine anyone having any nostalgia for it in the future. It was definitely the sort of year to lose oneself in good media and the world of manga certainly provided lots of options. While the sales numbers are no longer at the dizzying heights of 2020 and 2021, the sheer number of manga and manga publishers out there is bigger than it has ever been. You could even see this reflected in this month's holiday reviews. I always strive to represent not just as many genres and trends as possible but also different publishers, and this year I covered books from fifteen different publishers, which has to be some sort of record. You could also see that in the kinds of books that were getting licensed. We're seeing more and more companies dig deeper into manga's history and take chances on titles and genres that used to be considered too risky for American audiences, even if most of those chances were being taken by the newcomers instead of the established publishers who could absolutely afford to take some chances of their own.
As bountiful as the US manga market feels, it too feels like it's on a knife's edge. There can be such a thing as too many manga, particularly when so many publishers are pumping out so many volumes of so many interchangeable titles. There's simply no space, money or time for these publishers to promote anything! They simply have to throw it out there and hope it finds an audience or gets an anime adaptation to promote it in their stead. The situation remains precarious for the people who work on those manga, as seemingly everyone I know who translates, letters, or edits is increasingly overstretched and underpaid. No one seems to talk about the prospect of unionization or any other sort of workplace protection for this industry - it's all about mere survival at this point. That's on top of localizers and readers alike having to fend off the looming threat of AI manga translations implemented by uncaring executives on both sides of the Pacific concerned only with their quarterly reports and not about the quality of their wares or what their audiences and workers actually want.
In uncertain times like this, the most I (or anyone) can do is take comfort and pride in our own personal accomplishments, however big or small they might be. I had a fairly productive year myself. I finally wrote the Gundam Build Fighters pitch for Anime Feminist that had been stashed in the metaphorical back pocket of my mind for years. I managed to survive the melting nightmare that was My Sister, My Writer. I turned my Anime Herald piece on the history Princess Ai into a panel that heralded my own return as a panelist to both Otakon and Anime Lockdown this year. My podcast schedule was not quite as busy as in years past, but I still managed to finally talk about Magic Knight Rayearth for Chatty AF (in spite of some galling technical issues that were sadly my fault) and make my first appearance on the Third Impact Anime podcast. Speaking of that, this year marked my first time at Animazement, where I got to hang out with a bunch of friends I normally only see at Otakon, made a few more along the way, drink a bunch of Cheerwine, subject my friends to the nonsense that is the Van Von Hunter movie and perform a few more panels (both old and new). Behind the scenes, I made a more concerted effort in the latter half of this year at getting my reviews written and posted ahead of time to try and keep things more regular here at the Manga Test Drive. I felt I was fairly successful at that and want to keep that sort of energy going into the next year.
Of course, a new year brings with it more things for me to do. More reviews, some more Disaster Reports, maybe some more additional essays (if I can find the time and motivation), more new convention panels, new podcast appearances, and god knows what else along the way as this site enters its fourteenth year. As always, I am eternally grateful to those of you who continue to follow this site, share these reviews and things, and particularly for those of you with the funds to spare to support us on Patreon. Being a manga blogger in an age of podcasts and Youtubers isn't a particularly glamorous or high-profile thing, but the fact that there are still so many out there who humor this hobby of mine will never not be heartening.
May 2026 be a better year for all of us, for the manga industry as a whole, and may it be the year where It Finally Happens (if you know, you know).
- Megan
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