This is your reminder that if you are feeling helpless and cannot be on the front lines, there are other ways to help.
People need to be fed. Check to see what your local food pantry situation is. Make hot meals for people you know have been out in the cold for hours on end. Emergency kits for field medics need to be supplied. People need help getting to the pharmacy, the grocery store. Help shovel your neighbor’s sidewalk if you’re able. Find a way to do something.
Build connections. Build community. They want us frightened and isolated. Refuse.
There’s a lot of manga, some somewhat obscure, that panders a lot to amateur naturalists and people working in fields of biology/ecology, but I’ve never really seen them compiled in ways that don’t include works that are very tangential just because they feature cute animals or something.
My criteria for these is that they should present aspects of working with wildlife in a grounded way, or if featuring fantasy creatures, go deeper into ecological worldbuilding and speculative biology.
If anyone has suggestions feel free to add on!
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind — I think everyone knows this one, but it feels wrong not to include in a list like this.
Dungeon Meshi — again, not obscure at all, but Laios is practically the autistic amateur naturalist mascot and it does its fantasy wildlife worldbuilding in a way that’s hard to get elsewhere.
Deep Sea Aquarium Magmell — beautifully illustrated and written manga about, as the name implies, a deep sea aquarium. Various sea life featured, along with some of the realities of working in animal care, also canon trans representation! Really good main cast. Officially published translation in French only but scanlations online.
Mushishi — more fantastical than everything else on this list but I thought the relationship between humans and mushi mirrored real life human-wildlife interactions a lot, and so does Ginko’s job. Really atmospheric.
Last Karte — manga about forensic veterinary science, a really cool niche. Some domestic animals featured but it’s in majority about the wildlife of Japan. For anyone disappointed with Laios’ dislike of parasites, this one has a parasite-lover in the main cast. DMCA’d off mangadex but scanlations are out there, only a bit hard to find. French scanlations are easier to find if you happen to speak it.
Hen na Mono Mikke! — slice of life about museum work with edutainment aspects. Unfortunately untranslated but the raws are out there and it has furigana so it’s a bit less of an intimidating read.
Mai no Mushigurashi — yuri heavily featuring Japan’s entomofauna, with comparisons to the bugs often furthering the romance. Set mainly on a farm so there’s a lot of IPM notions too.
Dinosaur Sanctuary — Jurassic Park if it were an accredited facility. I was surprised at how realistic the tone was (it’s not just fun with cute animals: understaffed, overworked, struggling for funding, and getting unprofessionally close to large carnivores due to anthropomorphisation leads to disaster) in regards to portraying zoological facilities despite it being about speculative reconstructions of extinct animals.
Heaven’s Design Team — I haven’t read this one myself yet but it was recommended, lighthearted series featuring a lot of animal facts
first rule of fandom is everything goes back to destiel
second rule of fandom is everything goes back to kirk/spock
third rule of fandom is everything goes back to holmes & watson
fourth rule of fandom is everything goes back to achilles & patroclus
the funny thing is. I originally typed out “fifth rule of fandom is everything goes back to gilgamesh & enkidu” but then I thought ‘no, I can’t trust that people will be familiar with the epic of gilgamesh’
