Chiang Mai Zoo has world class facilities with happy active animals, an impressive aquarium and a kid's play center with one of the best collections of Seinen Manga I've ever seen. No joke! 
At the Chiang Mai Zoo Kid's Zone you can catch up on ultra violent martial arts classics like Fist of the North Star, Baki the Grappler and Tough.
Check this out. The Chiang Mai Zoo Kid's Zone also has a shockingly robust selection of Ken Ishikawa comics including Gokudou Heiki (Lethal Weapon--no relation to the movie). It is a WEIRD comic!
The Chiang Mai Zoo Kid's Zone is also full of classic Shoujo like Rumiko Takahashi's "Rumik World."
Wow, they even have the hit 80s shoujo manga "Crimson Fang Blue Sonnet" about a psychic Latina girl who initially works for a secret organization called Talon who hunt down other ESPers. This series was a humongous influence on Mob Psycho 100!
#紅い牙ブルーソネット
#紅い牙ブルーソネット
They also have some very nice volumes of Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's classic "Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin." Kid's need to know bout The One Year War! #一年戦争
Does anyone remember Clamp's professional debut comic? RG Veda? Based on Vedic mythology? The Chiang Mai Zoo Kid's Zone remembers.
Very fine selection of Mitsuru Adachi comics. Some of the best slice of life stories out there!
For more kid friendly fare they also have the 80s Shonen classic, Ironfist Chinmi, one of the first cartoons I can remember seeing in my life! It is known internationally as "Kungfu Boy."
Whoever put this collection of comics together is probably around my age because I remember loving "Hareluya Boy" as a kid. It had a great run in Shonen Jump during the 90s and helped stretched the limit of what could be considered kid friendly lol.
Of course if you have a public facing collection of manga anywhere in Asia it's going to have a ton of Detective Conan!
OK! If you're reading this I know you want to see the RARE stuff. Well the Chiang Mai Zoo Kid's Zone has got you covered. Did you know there was a Roujin-Z manga?? I can't find any mention of this on the internet! This isn't a film comic, it's a real comic apparently by Otomo!
Unfortunately I forgot to take photos of the interior (I snapped all these while babysitting 😋). The art looked like a cross between Otomo and Hisashi Eguchi (who did the character designs for the film)
Here's another rare treat. This is the official manga for Final Fantasy 2! Beautifully drawn comic from that wonderful era when everyone was taking influence from Otomo and Moebius! What a find!
This is just a small slice of what they had in store. It was a really well curated selection. I think an individual must have donated their lifelong collection of manga to the Zoo. Chiang Mai culture is very casual and cool like that.
A ton of the comics were obviously not kid friendly, but that's just how different the culture is out here. Most of the kids were way too little to even have an interest in comics. They were too busy with the toys and playground.
I think the comics are more for the parents or older kids that might drop in. No one freaks out about such material being within arms reach of the youngins. Plus parents can actually monitor what their kids are looking at. It's really nice and relaxed!
Anyway I hope you enjoyed this little window into just how casual and mainstream manga is in Thailand. Especially in the 80s and 90s, outside of Japan, i don't think anyone had as much access to such a staggering variety of manga as we did!
Fun note: Manga initially boomed in Thailand through widespread bootlegging. To this day probably more manga has been physically bootlegged into Thai than scanlated into English.
However something really cool happened in the 90s. Japanese publishers were smart and went straight to the top bootleggers and gave them a chance to go legit. This resulted in even greater distribution of official manga (with much higher quality printing!).
One of the top comics piraters of my youth was Vibulkij. Today they are the top legal distributor of manga in Thailand!
Shueisha eventually teamed up with a local publisher to release all their major Shonen Jump titles into the Thai market under a weekly imprint called "Boom"
A really amazing thing about Weekly Boom was that Shueisha mandated that whoever published their Shonen Jump titles also had to publish a locally produced comic alongside the Japanese smash hits. They wanted to nurture local comics not to wipe them out!
The result was a Renaissance in print comics in Thailand, both imported and locally produced. It was just the best time for comics. I'm so glad I got to experience it firsthand!
Oh yeah I should reiterate: aside from the massive and sterling manga collection, the Chiang Mai Zoo is also home to lots of cool animals! Totally worth visiting!
