thanks! this didn’t solved my specific problem but caused another problem for me (e.g. _M_A_N(1)), but while searching about MANROFFOPT I came across a reddit post I had somehow missed when searching for a solution, and it it the actual solution was mentioned. what worked for me is export MANPAGER='nvim +Man!' instead.

didn’t notice this, I use a couple of alts and create a new one from time to time (although I do this less and less because I mostly use lemmy instead now)