Hi, I’m Dr. Water 🐬 — a physician in occupational and preventive medicine in Japan, and a lifelong anime and manga reader. Medicine and anime: I’m an insider on both sides. That double perspective is what this blog runs on.
Who I am
- A licensed physician practicing in Japan, specializing in occupational and preventive medicine. After clinical training, I moved into occupational health — health checkups, one-on-one consultations, and workplace improvement for working adults.
- My daily practice covers sleep, overwork, lifestyle disease, and mental health in working people — which is exactly the territory most of this blog’s fact-checks live in.
- A die-hard anime and manga fan. I don’t grade these works. I use them as a doorway to talk about your body, with real, cited medicine.
Credentials
- Senior Occupational Health Physician — Japan Society for Occupational Health
- Board Certified Supervisory Physician for Public Health and Social Medicine — Japan Board of Public Health and Social Medicine
- Occupational Health Consultant — Japanese national license
Questions, corrections or media inquiries: please use the contact form.
Why I write under a pen name
Let me be straight about this. As an occupational physician I work under contract with multiple companies and handle their employees’ health information. To keep that work strictly separate from my hobby writing — and to protect its neutrality — I publish here as “Dr. Water.”
In place of a name, here is my promise to you:
- Every medical claim comes with a source (PubMed, DOI — primary literature). You don’t have to take my word for it; you can check the study yourself.
- No diagnosis, no treatment advice, ever. This blog is medical commentary as entertainment, not medical advice. If you’re worried about your health, please see a doctor.
- When I’m wrong, I correct it — and the article keeps its updated date.
How the articles are made (editorial policy)
- Three-layer citation audit: ① the paper actually exists, ② the bibliographic details match, ③ the paper really says what I claim it says — all three, before anything is cited.
- Numbers are never paraphrased: statistics keep their original values from the source.
- Manga panels appear as quotations for commentary, relying on fair use: unaltered scans from purchased copies only, with the work, author, and publisher credited, and my own commentary always the main content. No pirated or watermarked images.
- Respect for the work comes first. The point is never “gotcha” — it’s “this scene is even more interesting when you know the medicine.”
Disclaimers
Every article carries two standing disclaimers — Medical and Copyright — at the end. Nothing here substitutes for individual diagnosis or treatment. And nothing from my occupational health practice (individual checkup results, consultation records) ever appears on this blog.
Follow along
- Newsletter: Substack (free)
- YouTube: @theanimemd
- X: @Drwater1981
- Japanese edition: Dr.Waterのアニメ医学