Welcome to Morning, Roo! My name is Christopher. It’s a pleasure to meet you.
I started Morning, Roo in 2014 as a broad ‘hobby’ blog, writing about a variety of interests before carving it into a more focused venue. Today, it is home primarily to manga discussion, with a wide range of articles from detailed analyses, to reviews and assorted musings, exploring manga history, technique, content, form and anything in-between.
I have been an avid reader of manga for the past twenty years. My interests are broad, with no ties to any particular genre, demographic, or style, but I am especially fond of the works of Taiyo Matsumoto. I worked as a moderator at MyAnimeList for four years, curating the manga database between 2011 and 2018. In 2023, I began a project spotlighting oneshot manga, with the goal of reading and reviewing fifty-two short stories, one for every week of the year.
My other interests include music, scale modelling, photography and film. I am a diehard fan of singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey and have seen her live twice. I enjoy exploring coastlines and rivers, which is where I love to take photographs, and at home I like to steal away whenever I can to build Gunpla models. Otherwise I like to spend my free time watching movies.
Film has been a life-long passion of mine and I have a specialist interest in Japanese cinema. In 2018, I wrote my MA thesis on heterogeneity and transnationalism in the cinema of Shunji Iwai, exploring the director’s distinctive aesthetics and challenging the narrow framework his films have often been viewed through in English-language academia. You can follow my film antics over at Letterboxd.
You may notice I also keep a corner here dedicated to an ever-growing collection of original haiku. I have loved poetry since a young age and hope my haiku will offer a glimpse into the more whimsical and artistic mind of this author. In 2026, I self-published my first collection of haiku, titled In the Shade of the Apple Tree. The book is available to purchase on Amazon, but subscribers here can access it for free.
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Thank you dearly for stopping by and I do hope you’ll pop in again from time to time.
