I can tell the left is definitely Natsume Soseki. Anyone happen to recognize the author on the right?
(from 猫のまにまに in September’s issue of ハルタ)
I guess not really a language question but it’s definitely not grammar at least and I feel like deleting the post to move it would be more distracting than just leaving it
Was just a bit of a wild guess, but it looks like Tanizaki Junichiro. It definitely looks modeled after this:
猫と庄造と二人の女
I agree ! Wow you must know Japanese authors well.
I’m a bit confused because I read
それは僕が．．．あなたを好きだから
in response to a question along the lines of “Why did you do that?” Isn’t that ungrammatical though? For reference, it is in a doujin and there’s no indication of any editors. The artist’s twitter page says they’re Japanese too.
I often encounter 好き with を in songs.
You can use を because it’s a fragment and it’s likely that the full sentence is implied to be:
あなたを好きだからと思う
The を is for 思う
imabi has a pretty in depth analysis of が vs を (unfortunately it mostly sticks to potential verbs):
I think the TL:DR in this case is something like:
there’s also some deeper stuff such as nominative-object constructions as discussed here
seems like a lot of hoops to jump explain something people do without thinking about…I think this is just a case of it’s grammatical if enough people use it
That’s a pretty good definition of what grammar actually is. 
yeah but I dunno, you don’t usually make up entire clauses people haven’t actually said 
Aye, that’s the tricky part and what you start finding when you take the training wheels off.
I’ve found that native content relies on implication to a much larger extent than I had thought.
And while it may be a stretch to say that the を used here is because the accusative is allowed by 思う, it’s one of the easier ways to keep the rest of the grammar internally consistent, at least until you’re ready to go by feel alone.
You give me too much credit. It was really more luck because I had recently stumbled across this article in searching for some books to read:
Seeing they were both holding cats I presumed he might be an author famous for a cat book. From there it was mostly just a process of guessing based on eliminating anyone who was too current to likely be in that panel and removing Natsume Soseki who was also in that list. So I guessed it was him and then happened to find that picture doing a Google Image search. 
I just feel like at best there’s better ways of explaining it, and at worst it’s misleading (especially in a case like this, と思う might even be implying the opposite nuance given how が and をseem to work in general)
That’s a fair point. Although I don’t find that using を to avoid using が again as satisfactory either because it doesn’t explain how that’s consistent with を as an object marker.
But I do agree that at some point you just have to roll with it.
Honestly, と思う to me feels like the polite です. It’s lost almost all meaning since it’s used a tag so often, at least IMO.
You’ll often hear Japanese people sprinkle “I think” into sentences when speaking English because of how ubiquitous it is.
good, because it isn’t consistent with that at all… 
seriously though, it would probably be better to teach it as a completely separate particle that just happens to be pronounced the same. we can call it the secondary subject marker or something
Thank you! That makes sense. It had a very confession feel to it.
That also makes sense, thank you!
Well since you can’t double up on particle がs in the same phrase, it’s pretty much をに or で. を fits best of those I think.
Hard agree 
This is incorrect.
You can use を for 好き just like you would use が and its often utilized to clear up anything ambiguous. It has nothing to do with a hidden 思う which doesn’t actually exist so thats not what the full sentence is implied to be.
You’re mistaken on this point. Its NOT an object marker. Much like the に particle has many uses, so does を. It just so happens that を is 99% object marker so people tend to assume thats its only role. If you want the technical definition used here, douzo
《心情を表す語と共に使って》
心情の対象を示す。
「君―好きだ」
Where’d you get that definition from?
The first dictionary definition that popped up on google lol. Number 4
Honestly, I’d say that seems like a recent addition because of the usage in that particular phrase.
Aye, I was generalizing.
But if this specific case is an exception, then I don’t see how that invalidates supposing an implied phrase that keeps the general case internally consistent as an exception either.
Ultimately though, I’m firmly on the side of grammar as descriptive rather than proscriptive, so I don’t think it matters what framework you use to understand it as long as you get there in the end.