“Haaa...” Another two months until the next volume hit shelves...

Don't mind me. I just finished the volume of Kaguya-sama I was reading and am now having what I call a pastime crisis. It's like an existential crisis, except you have it when you finish binging a series or catch up on one you love. You just sit there and stare into space, like, Shoot. My life's lost its purpose again...Now what am I gonna read?

What indeed? That is the question.

In this wide universe of ours, the number of romance series to read seems countless. Take a look at MAL and marvel at how the list of good, great, and astounding romance manga goes on and on. And then there's the Korean webtoons that have sprung up in recent years. So many great choices across the professional industry and the self-publishing realm.

But choice paralysis isn't where my issue lays, nay.

It's that I've read them all.

You think I'm playing?

I've already mentioned the excellent, the spectacular Kaguya-sama, but also on my read list is...

Book Girl

Bakuman.

My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected

Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki

Domestic Girlfriend

A Silent Voice

The Quintessential Quintuplets

Yona of the Dawn

Nana

Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle

ReLIFE

Your Lie In April

Skip Beat!

A Bride's Story

Spirit Circle

Kamisama Kiss

Inari Konkon

Fruits Basket

Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun

The World God Only Knows

Horimiya

Cross Game

Spice & Wolf

Accel World

Sword Art Online

Maid-sama!

Welcome to the Ballroom

Orange

Monogatari

The Empty Box & Zeroth Maria

WorldEnd

Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai

Toradora!

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls In a Dungeon?

Baka & Test

High School DxD

Katanagari

Blue Spring Ride

Date A Live

Kokoro Connect

The Pet Girl of Sakurasou

Invaders of the Rokujouma?!

Fly Me to the Moon

Nisekoi

I Want to Eat Your Pancreas

School Rumble

A Condition Called Love

Teasing Master Takagi-san

We're New at This

To Love Ru

I Love Yuri and Got Bodyswapped With a Fujoshi!

My Friend's Little Sister Has It In For Me!

Rent-A-Girlfriend

A Side Character's Love Story

Kuzumi-kun, Can't You Read the Room?

Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches

Heart Break Club

Saki the Succubus Hungers Tonight

Wotakoi

Mayo Chiki!

Midori Days

Today's Cerberus

Gosick

Tomo-chan Is a Girl!

D-Frag!

How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend

A Sister's All You Need

And that's just what I can think of off the top of my head. And don't get me started on a webtoons list. We’ll be here another 72 hours.

Whether it be shonen or shojo, seinen or josei, pure romance or action with a romantic subplot, an official translation or fan, completed or ongoing, you name it, I've read it.

Disclaimer, I haven't read all romance series there are to read, but I have read all the good ones. The greats. When you're on the market for a product, you don't wanna settle for some half-assed or mediocre garbage, no. You want the high-quality meat and potatoes. You wanna sink your teeth into the best of the best, and you want it to get its hooks in you. That sounds like a horror manga right there, and I've read some great horror manga when the mood struck, but I'm dead serious when I say I've spent hours scouring MAL and sites like WebToons in search of series that won't make me think, Should've picked something better.

That's the benefit of living in the time period I'm living in. A great read is just a Google search away, and yet the disadvantage to this time period is that it's now and not the future. We only have as many series as we do now. The greatest thing my eyeballs could ever read might not be published for another five years, and there's nothing I can do but wait until then. It makes me wish there was, like, this alternate universe where every series that will ever be published existed, even if its author won't be born for another three hundred and some change years. I could check out books from there and never again suffer a pastime crisis.

“What's good, Grant?”

What's good? A universe containing every masterpiece manga, that's what's good.

“What do you want from me this time?”

“You know, you're pretty rude for the man who saved the world.”

“If you've got nothing nice to say, get back to your run. Arguing with me isn't good for your heart.”

Since you're wondering, probably, the person being a thorn in my side is Elsa. You know, that teenager I saved a week ago from becoming a Karraker's midnight snack. The norm after saving someone is that, from my perspective, they drop off the face of the Earth, but two days after saving her, she found me here at my job and was all, “Ohmigawd I know you!” She goes jogging around the city on the weekends, and where did her route that day take her? In front of my face.

“I've been wondering for a while. What's it like having superpowers?”

“What do you mean? Like, how it feels shooting laser beams out my fingertips?”

“That, too.”

“It makes me feel like a shonen protagonist.”

“Like a what?”

“Don't read manga, I take it?”

“Japanese comic books? No.”

Manga is more than a “Japanese comic book.” Technically, that's what it is, but calling it that waters down its value so, so much. Manga is an artform in and of itself. It's a collective whole. Look at western comics: everything looks different. Some comics are children's cartoons but with still frames. Some comics are trying to be novels but with crappy illustrations. There's no uniformity.

Manga, on the other hand, it's the industry and the style. When I see a manga, I know it's a manga. If I've read a thousand manga, I'll know what I'm getting into with the 1001st. I know the tropes, I know the humor, I know the narrative beats. When I pick up a manga series, I know I'll love it. Can't do that with comics, where it's a grab-basket of stuff that might be good, might be mediocre, or might be pretentious.

In summary, manga is superior, change my mind.

“I do sometimes read graphic novels. Strange Planet, the Avatar comics, Amulet, The Prince and the Dressmaker, Scott Pilgrim! I love Scott Pilgrim! The movie's great, too.”

“We can never be friends.” Though I will concede on the Scott Pilgrim comics. Those are dope.

“Just because I don't read Japanese comics we can't be friends?!”

“Precisely.” And stop muddying their glory with the term Japanese comics, you philistine.

She crosses her arms and gives me a stern eye like she's sizing me up. Evaluating me. Judging me.

What is it that diehard Christians say? “Only God can judge me”? Well, God, what’s your verdict on me? Am I a good person, a bad person, or what?

...

I’m gonna take your silent treatment to mean I’m rad.

“You don't have any friends, do you?”

“——”

Wow, hearing that feels like a stake just went through my heart. Through my sternum and into my beating heart.

I mean. She's not wrong. The only contacts in my phone are my parents, my bosses, and hospital security. But it's nothing that bothers me.

“And if I don't? Got a problem with that?”

She frowns at my answer. A pitiful frown. A judgmental frown. “Aren't you lonely having no friends?”

“Nope. The only thing I need is a girlfriend. I get that, I'll be a content man.” I suppose she doesn't have a hot older sister, does she? I'd ask, but then she'll turn around and say to her, “That Grant guy's a dick. You don't want his dick.” Damn. Sabotaged before I even get the chance to know if she exists.

“I'm guessing you don't have a girlfriend.”

“You're guessing right.” Though I'd appreciate it if she didn't remind me.

She nods, as if satisfied. “Mm, yeah, I thought so.”

“——”

That's the second time she's lambasted my heart, this time with a sharper stake, one made of metal.

Gah, it hurts...It hurts! Someone call a doctor!

I've faced city-destroying Karraker and a world-smashing meteor, and the thing that's gonna do me in is a little girl's rude comments. Thought I was made of tougher stuff.

“Again. So what if I don't? Got a problem with that?”

She's rubbing her finger on her chin, back and forth, with her eyes down, deep in thought. Oh, great. What kind of stake is she planning on impaling me with this round? One made of titanium? Or maybe the toughest stuff of all, diamond? What if she's about to create a physically impossible stake, made of a black hole? Out in the vacuum of space, that would be my one true weakness. Aside from the vacuum of space itself.

“Can I ask you something kind of rude?”

She decides now to be polite?

Ah, who am I to talk about politeness? The other day, she watched my Driver skills over my shoulder, laughed when a boss KO'd my party in seconds, and I tied her hair into a blindfold in revenge. It was hilarious. I took a picture before dropping out of Light Speed.

“Go ahead.” She has my official permission to be as rude as humanly possible to my face. Can't promise I won't tie her hair into knots in retaliation.

“Have you always been like this, or were you nice when you saved the world?” In spite of her warning that she was gonna gore me alive, she's asking this with genuine curiosity.

“I was nice once.”

“What happened, then?”

I knock on my podium. “Same answer to your question that night I saved your ass—life happened. Put up with people for long enough and before long it'll change you.” Saw it firsthand without the need for a mirror. Met a coworker who was sunshine and rainbows. By the time she quit, she was a misanthrope.

She frowns again, but it's not a judgmental frown. Looks more sympathetic, unless I'm misjudging things.

“Don't give me that look. You think I'm that bad?”

“It's just so sad...”

That has to be the most a person's felt for me in forever, aside from my mom. She’s all, “You're still my sweet, little Granty-poo.”

“Don't stress yourself over it. I am who I am. Doesn't have any bearing on your life.”

“But what if you turn to villainy?!”

“Why would I do that?”

“It's the natural flow of things, dummy! You were a good guy, and now you're less good, and pretty soon, bad things will seem acceptable to you.”

Did she just call me a dummy? I don't know if I should laugh at her or be insulted.

A dummy. She called me a dummy!

Rude much?

“Don't fret that pretty hair of yours gray. I'm not an amoral crook.”

“Yet!”

“You're overthinking things.” It must be those comics she's reading. They're putting bad ideas in her head. Some of those are so gritty I bet the hero-turned-villain is a common trope.

“No, I'm not! You've got superpowers, and you know the old saying—with super power comes super responsibility!”

“The correct adjective is great.”

“Semantics, shmantics! You need to start using your powers for the greater good before the dark side corrupts you!”

Don't you mean the superer good? “Your equation doesn't hold up. Just because I have two hands doesn't mean I oughta take up painting or learn the guitar.” Or strangle someone, but I doubt she'll take that example kindly.

“You're missing the point, Grant,” she says, shaking her head like I'm some numbskull kid who can't figure out his timetables. “Doing good and helping people is something you can't not do. Between saving a baby from a burning building and ignoring it, which is the better choice? Saving the baby, obviously! And since you can zip in and out in a flash, everybody will look down on you if you leave that baby to burn! Could you live with yourself if you let a poor, defenseless, innocent baby to burn?”

I could if I knew that baby was the next Hitler.

She's oddly passionate about this. She read a news story where a firefighter, instead of saving a newborn from a burning orphanage, lit a cigarette and watched the whole place go up in flames?

“You talk like I'm a monster. I have and do save people, but it's not like there's a mugging every day I need to be on the lookout for.”

“Even so, why park cars? You're already employed at the hospital. Why not work in the hospital as a nurse or a doctor?”

“Three things. That gets away from using my powers to help people, first of all. Second of all, becoming a nurse or doctor or anything requires schooling, which costs money I don't have. Third, whatever romanticized workplace you're imagining is factually wrong. I may be lacking in friends, but I've spoken with a few of the nurses here. It's not helping the sick and saving lives. It's getting yelled at by angry family members and working stupid-long hours because your floor's short-staffed.”

She crosses her arms and twists her lips into a pout. There's more tongue-lashing she wants to dole out, but she's holding it in, likely because she realizes that whatever she sends my way I'll slap to the ground.

No need to feel bad, sweetness. I was once young and idealistic, just like you. You'll come around to reality by the time you're out of college.

After a moment of ruminating and twisting her hips, she seems to give up on whatever's boiling in her noggin. She sighs it out. “Are all heroes like this?”

I shrug. “Don't know. Haven't kept in touch with any.”

She groans at me. What, wrong answer? I've seen that a few have made names for themselves, fighting crime in New York or Chicago. The lot stayed in the military and are stationed all over the world. I thought about rejoining the military once I grew sick of working long hours for piss pay, but I'm not of the mind to be a political pawn to old white guys in Washington. I didn't save the world to fight some bro in China.

Otherwise, if their name hasn't made the headlines, they've dropped off the face of the Earth, for all I know.

“I gotta get going,” she says, backing away from my podium and doing stretches.

“'Kay, bye.” I've gotta get to figuring out what's next on my reading list.

“Think about what I said, Grant. I'm serious.”

I don't bother with a reply. No promise to think about it, no halfheartedness. I wave her off, and she gets back to her jog. I watch her go for a minute, watch as her ponytail bobs back and forth.

Back when I regained my powers after the war, I operated with the mindset she was advising me to have—be a superhero and work for the greater good. I became something of a vigilante, going around town looking for bad guys to take down before they could hurt anyone. It's easy to watch a murder-mystery documentary and say to yourself, “If I had been there, that woman would still be alive,” and I was determined to keep all of those murders from becoming Homicide Hunter episodes.

But the world's a big place, and even with superpowers, it's impossible to manage it all. What am I supposed to do? Clone myself and accompany every person out there to make sure they don't get up to no good?

Maybe someday that'll be possible. Everybody magically turns good or we live in a Psycho Pass-esque world where ne'er-do-wells are apprehended before they can harm others or the Templars take over and transform humanity into a well-behaved hive mind.

But at the moment, it's about doing the best we can, but, really, without the Karraker as a constant threat, is this a world with a need for superheroes?