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Evangeline has participated in a program that gave her a once-in-a-lifetime experience to study in Japan. We were wondering about her experience, as well as the inspiration behind her comics. She wrote: “I was on a scholarship program that had a mix of scholars from ASEAN countries to Japan to study. The scholarship focused on cultural exchange between ASEAN countries and Japan, so we needed to work with the Japanese office to organize events and give talks about our countries to Japanese, as well as to go on cultural trips and events around Japan to learn more about Japanese history, culture, and language. We also needed to write several reports in Japanese that were checked by the office. These activities took place while we were studying in our respective universities.”
“While working with the scholarship office, I was shocked about the differences in our behavior and expressions. For example, I didn't know that when they said 'it was difficult', it meant 'NO'. I thought it meant that there was room for negotiation. I later learned about 'kuuki wo yomeru', which translates to 'reading the air'. I was supposed to gather from their indirect expressions that it meant 'NO'. This kind of shocked me. At that time, I missed home a lot and found nobody comparing their countries to Japan, so I decided to do that to record what I experienced.”
These days, when people are free to travel and live abroad fairly easily, a lot of them can relate to experiencing culture shock. Evangeline had a hard time in Japan, and her way to cope was to express her experiences in a comic. “I was frustrated at some parts of Japanese culture that I only found out when living there. Anime, manga, and drama usually paint a good picture and are different from actual experiences, like opening a bank account or trying to rent an apartment as a foreigner... I used to love Japanese culture a lot, but actually living there made me dislike the country more and more. It's strange that while drawing the comic strips, I brought out the goodness of Japan, and it sort of balanced out my perception. Talking with my readers and exchanging our views also helped me cope with my culture shock,” shared the creator of Evacomics.
We were wondering what motivated Evangeline to share her comics with wider audiences. She shared: “I've always posted comics online. Just that before Facebook came, it was on blogging platforms. Back then, I didn't have many followers on my FB page. Half were my friends whom I forced them to like. I was trying to find my niche and a topic that they like too, so I picked Japan. I thought it was a good idea because I was studying there, and the scholarship activities made me learn more deeply about Japanese culture instead of just on a superficial level. My first comic went viral. For the first time, there were strangers liking, commenting, and sharing my comics. So I decided to make more of such comic strips and see if I could compile them into comic books, which was my dream.”
Evangeline has created over 300 comic strips about cultural differences. Therefore, we wanted to know how she managed to maintain the consistency and quality of her work.
“Initially, it was easy because I was in Japan, and I had a lot to say. It got harder and harder after I graduated and returned to Singapore, my home country. My target was to compile them into 2 books, so I had a rough quantity in mind to work towards. Talking with my readers in the comments also helped me think of new topics to draw, so that was how I managed to churn out so many comic strips on the cultural differences,” shared Evangeline.
Now Evangeline covers more topics through her comics, so if you like her style, make sure to follow more on her Instagram. As for the future, the artist shared: “I'm actually quite busy with commissioned work now, but I always find time to draw and upload new comics every Monday on my social media channels. I've drawn comics on yoga before (which was a success) and Chinese metaphysics (which didn't work out). So now I don't have a consistent theme in mind and just draw whatever comes to my mind. I had thought about conducting regular classes and YouTube videos to teach drawing, but maybe when I have time…”
And lastly, Evangeline added: “Thank you for reading my comics and my brief interview. Hope to see you all on my social media channels too. Wishing all of you good health and dreams come true!”
