An Inspirational Story About the Power of Yoshihiro Togashi's Manga!

Making news in some of the smaller news outlets was this tiny story of a blogger who posted a heartfelt "Thank You" to Yoshihiro Togashi on his blog. This blogger is 22 with a younger brother who is 14. A year ago, the younger brother was being pushed around and bullied in school to the point where he attempted suicide. His attempt failed, and he chose to remain at home and not go to school any more. Their mother had to quit her job so she could be at home to watch him all the time. The blogger lent his brother some manga to read, all titles by Togashi - Wicked Cupid, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Hunter X Hunter. He thought that it would not be a good idea for him to read Level E. The night before this entry, he spoke to his brother to see if he was okay and he told him that he didn't want to die without reading the end of Hunter X Hunter. The blogger then ended the entry thanking Togashi for saving his brother, and told him to have a good rest from his manga.

What should have remained a heartfelt sentiment then became a victim of 2ch. A popular trend on the message board is "Kopipe" ("Copy Paste"), where one of the site's users copies and pastes the entry, and then mocks it. This entry has created a lot of negative buzz on the board lately - and one blogger on Internet Watch sympathizes with the original blogger and is surprised at how this entry is being used for something other than it was intended to.

In other Togashi news, Oricon ran a poll asking readers who they thought changed the history of manga. Of course, legendary mangaka like Osamu Tezuka, Akira Toriyama, and even Hayao Miyazaki made the list, but it was the opinion of this Slashdot.jp blogger that Togashi was one that would have made his personal list.