see the picture
Monday, May 19, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
Sunday, May 11, 2008
how to draw manga
Interesting post here..i really agree with what u say and i'm looking forward to do my research as well...keep on the good work as usual ... this blog rules !!!
The term ‘manga,’ meaning ‘irresponsible pictures', was first coined by Hokusai, the famous Japanese artist. The production of popular comic books and pictures of everyday life emerged in Japan early in the 19th Century and flourished into the 20th.
It has been adapted easily to the medium of film and become ‘anime,’ the moving-picture branch of manga. The first animated features in Japan were produced in the 1930s and 1940s, but the futuristic fantasy films we know today as anime emerged in the 1950s and owe much to the experience of Japan during and immediately after the Second World War.
The emphasis on the romantic adventure story and on science fiction, coupled with themes such as Armageddon, death and destruction and rebirth through sacrifice and unselfishness, reflect the trauma of Japan’s near-destruction during the Second World War and its adoption of new technology enhanced by a dedication to rebuild the shattered nation.
The ever-present fear of a devastating earthquake, which remains an imminent threat, also contributes to the preoccupation with the post-apocalyptic wilderness.
Anime first made its mark in the UK with the release of Akira in 1991 and since then has become a boom industry, with an increasing number of distributors marketing this material, the biggest being Manga and Kiseki.
To a large extent, anime is the triumph of form over content, though often the non-linear narrative allows complex themes to be explored. To many non-Japanese, cultural barriers prevent any deep understanding of the underlying themes and imagery.
Many anime fans watch for the spectacular animation and the breathtaking leaps of imagination. Who needs an understandable storyline when you are being taken on a high-tech mystery tour of a far-off galaxy?
The result of the above is that anime sometimes appears to have little respect for the boundaries of taste and decency. Graphic violence, sex and sexual violence often appear within a medium which, in our western experience, has traditionally been free from such incursions.
Adult themes are starting to be explored through animation in western animated films (the backstory of O-Ren in Tarantino’s Kill Bill is a good example), but this is largely as a result of Japanese influence and ‘cartoons’ are still often seen as a children’s format.
A great deal of anime would seem to appeal to a young audience, populated as it is by teen and pre-teen characters, furry fantasy creatures and robots. However, there is sometimes a mismatch between the theme and the presentation and appeal, and this has presented difficulties for the BBFC.
Some of the most problematic anime works for the board have been those in which children are presented as sexually active. The characters in anime works are often presented as childlike, with their big eyes and high voices. They can change form according to their mood and a character that appears adult in one scene can look like a toddler in the next. Sometimes the only way to tell which character is which is through the consistent nature of their hair colour and style.
In addition to their childlike features, characters are often presented in school uniform, which usually takes the form of a sailor-style top and shorts or a mini-skirt. Until relatively recently, Japanese university students were required to wear uniform and it is sometimes the case that these uniformed characters are actually supposed to be at college.
However, there is a clear link between school uniforms and the notion of underage sex and the Board is always mindful of this when making classification decisions. Cuts have occasionally been written at '18' for such content.
For example, in the series LA Blue Girl Returns, characters presented as children (dressed in uniforms, physically small) are explicitly involved in sexual activity. It was felt that the link could potentially encourage an interest in underage sex and these scenes were removed.
Other scenes in the same work were removed due to their focus on sexual violence. Women are penetrated by a tentacled beast in explicit detail and, again, we felt these scenes contravened our guidelines. Such ‘tentacle rape’ scenes are a feature of a branch of anime known as hentai, a Japanese term meaning ‘strange appearance.’ The term has come to be used to describe pornographic anime works.
As a form of expressing sexual fantasy, hentai works can include depictions that are deemed unacceptable by society, or run counter to social norms. Such fantasies are often depicted in the extreme, demonstrating subconscious desires or purely carnal motivations.
Sexuality or sexual violence is often perpetrated by fantasy creatures or by humans with abnormal anatomy. Despite the fact that this sexual activity is drawn, the Board treats these explicit works as it would live-action sex and explicit detail has been removed or pushed up to the R18 category.
Examples of works which have been cut for sexual detail include Mission of Darkness and Alien of Darkness. Both these works were also cut for instances of sexual violence, which very often goes hand-in-hand with explicit sexual content. A further work in the same series, Sex Beast – Idol of Darkness, was rejected as there was barely any salvageable material once the explicit sex and sexual violence were removed.
Despite these examples, cut works remain a very small percentage of the anime product which comes through the Board. Most works are passed at the '12' category, perfect for Manga Entertainment’s stated target market, ’12-19 year old British males.
Find out more:
BBFC Guidelines
It has been adapted easily to the medium of film and become ‘anime,’ the moving-picture branch of manga. The first animated features in Japan were produced in the 1930s and 1940s, but the futuristic fantasy films we know today as anime emerged in the 1950s and owe much to the experience of Japan during and immediately after the Second World War.
The emphasis on the romantic adventure story and on science fiction, coupled with themes such as Armageddon, death and destruction and rebirth through sacrifice and unselfishness, reflect the trauma of Japan’s near-destruction during the Second World War and its adoption of new technology enhanced by a dedication to rebuild the shattered nation.
The ever-present fear of a devastating earthquake, which remains an imminent threat, also contributes to the preoccupation with the post-apocalyptic wilderness.
Anime first made its mark in the UK with the release of Akira in 1991 and since then has become a boom industry, with an increasing number of distributors marketing this material, the biggest being Manga and Kiseki.
To a large extent, anime is the triumph of form over content, though often the non-linear narrative allows complex themes to be explored. To many non-Japanese, cultural barriers prevent any deep understanding of the underlying themes and imagery.
Many anime fans watch for the spectacular animation and the breathtaking leaps of imagination. Who needs an understandable storyline when you are being taken on a high-tech mystery tour of a far-off galaxy?
The result of the above is that anime sometimes appears to have little respect for the boundaries of taste and decency. Graphic violence, sex and sexual violence often appear within a medium which, in our western experience, has traditionally been free from such incursions.
Adult themes are starting to be explored through animation in western animated films (the backstory of O-Ren in Tarantino’s Kill Bill is a good example), but this is largely as a result of Japanese influence and ‘cartoons’ are still often seen as a children’s format.
A great deal of anime would seem to appeal to a young audience, populated as it is by teen and pre-teen characters, furry fantasy creatures and robots. However, there is sometimes a mismatch between the theme and the presentation and appeal, and this has presented difficulties for the BBFC.
Some of the most problematic anime works for the board have been those in which children are presented as sexually active. The characters in anime works are often presented as childlike, with their big eyes and high voices. They can change form according to their mood and a character that appears adult in one scene can look like a toddler in the next. Sometimes the only way to tell which character is which is through the consistent nature of their hair colour and style.
In addition to their childlike features, characters are often presented in school uniform, which usually takes the form of a sailor-style top and shorts or a mini-skirt. Until relatively recently, Japanese university students were required to wear uniform and it is sometimes the case that these uniformed characters are actually supposed to be at college.
However, there is a clear link between school uniforms and the notion of underage sex and the Board is always mindful of this when making classification decisions. Cuts have occasionally been written at '18' for such content.
For example, in the series LA Blue Girl Returns, characters presented as children (dressed in uniforms, physically small) are explicitly involved in sexual activity. It was felt that the link could potentially encourage an interest in underage sex and these scenes were removed.
Other scenes in the same work were removed due to their focus on sexual violence. Women are penetrated by a tentacled beast in explicit detail and, again, we felt these scenes contravened our guidelines. Such ‘tentacle rape’ scenes are a feature of a branch of anime known as hentai, a Japanese term meaning ‘strange appearance.’ The term has come to be used to describe pornographic anime works.
As a form of expressing sexual fantasy, hentai works can include depictions that are deemed unacceptable by society, or run counter to social norms. Such fantasies are often depicted in the extreme, demonstrating subconscious desires or purely carnal motivations.
Sexuality or sexual violence is often perpetrated by fantasy creatures or by humans with abnormal anatomy. Despite the fact that this sexual activity is drawn, the Board treats these explicit works as it would live-action sex and explicit detail has been removed or pushed up to the R18 category.
Examples of works which have been cut for sexual detail include Mission of Darkness and Alien of Darkness. Both these works were also cut for instances of sexual violence, which very often goes hand-in-hand with explicit sexual content. A further work in the same series, Sex Beast – Idol of Darkness, was rejected as there was barely any salvageable material once the explicit sex and sexual violence were removed.
Despite these examples, cut works remain a very small percentage of the anime product which comes through the Board. Most works are passed at the '12' category, perfect for Manga Entertainment’s stated target market, ’12-19 year old British males.
Find out more:
BBFC Guidelines
Saturday, May 10, 2008
history of manga
Ishinomori Shotaro passed away this year on the 26th of January. He was famous as the author of A Manga Introduction to the Japanese Economy. He was also widely know abroad thanks to the English translation of the same work. Ironically, however, the success of this work has actually given rise to misunderstandings about the nature of Japanese manga. In this installment I will be discussing this work and its author, Ishinomori Shotaro
Several years ago I was visited by a newspaper reporter from a certain developed nation in Europe who wished to discuss Japan's thriving manga culture. The reporter's first words to me were, "Japanese manga can be divided into three categories, economic manga, erotic manga, and violent manga. "This comment came as quite a surprise to me and I was sad to think that Europeans had such a distorted view of Japanese manga. Like the proverbial troupe of blind men who try in vain to identify the elephant, it struck me that Europeans had no concept of Japanese manga as a whole.
Needless to say, there is no such tripartite division of Japanese ma nga. In terms of content alone there are many other genres of manga, including sports manga, romance manga, literary manga, historical and joke manga. While there is such a thing as erotic manga, there are no established genres devoted specifically to economics or violence. As for violence, the difference is only a cultural one (Japan has a lower incidence of violent crime than the United States and Europe), and "economic manga" are just one part of the larger genre of 'information manga" (also known as expository or textbook manga). Moreover, these information manga are not regarded very highly among manga.
Information manga exploiting the illustrative function of the manga form to serve as study aids for children have existed since before the Second World War. With the extraordinary development of manga as an expressive form during the 1970s, so-called "academic manga" began to appear in general magazines mostly read by businessmen. They do not necessarily have a narrative structure, but the protagonists are shown applying themselves to the study of the origins of and various anecdotes about food, liquor and annual festivals.
It was in this context that A Manga Introduction to the Japanese Eco nomy appeared in 1986. Unlike most manga in Japan, this work was released not in serialization but in book form from the start. Nonetheless, its three volumes sold a million copies, and it was even read by people born before the war. In this way even those who had previously shown no interest in manga and who did not belong to the so-called "manga generation" were compelled to recognize the expressive power of the manga form.
This led to the appearance of ever more manga dealing with subject matter such as history, science, and classical literature. At the same time, manga even began to be employed as a public relations tool by governmental agencies. As a whole this new category of manga began to be referred to as "information manga," "expository manga," or "textbook manga." In some cases, they were referred to, with some measure of irony, as "educational manga for grown-ups."
Several years ago I was visited by a newspaper reporter from a certain developed nation in Europe who wished to discuss Japan's thriving manga culture. The reporter's first words to me were, "Japanese manga can be divided into three categories, economic manga, erotic manga, and violent manga. "This comment came as quite a surprise to me and I was sad to think that Europeans had such a distorted view of Japanese manga. Like the proverbial troupe of blind men who try in vain to identify the elephant, it struck me that Europeans had no concept of Japanese manga as a whole.
Needless to say, there is no such tripartite division of Japanese ma nga. In terms of content alone there are many other genres of manga, including sports manga, romance manga, literary manga, historical and joke manga. While there is such a thing as erotic manga, there are no established genres devoted specifically to economics or violence. As for violence, the difference is only a cultural one (Japan has a lower incidence of violent crime than the United States and Europe), and "economic manga" are just one part of the larger genre of 'information manga" (also known as expository or textbook manga). Moreover, these information manga are not regarded very highly among manga.
Information manga exploiting the illustrative function of the manga form to serve as study aids for children have existed since before the Second World War. With the extraordinary development of manga as an expressive form during the 1970s, so-called "academic manga" began to appear in general magazines mostly read by businessmen. They do not necessarily have a narrative structure, but the protagonists are shown applying themselves to the study of the origins of and various anecdotes about food, liquor and annual festivals.
It was in this context that A Manga Introduction to the Japanese Eco nomy appeared in 1986. Unlike most manga in Japan, this work was released not in serialization but in book form from the start. Nonetheless, its three volumes sold a million copies, and it was even read by people born before the war. In this way even those who had previously shown no interest in manga and who did not belong to the so-called "manga generation" were compelled to recognize the expressive power of the manga form.
This led to the appearance of ever more manga dealing with subject matter such as history, science, and classical literature. At the same time, manga even began to be employed as a public relations tool by governmental agencies. As a whole this new category of manga began to be referred to as "information manga," "expository manga," or "textbook manga." In some cases, they were referred to, with some measure of irony, as "educational manga for grown-ups."
Thursday, May 8, 2008
check out this article
MANGAPHOBIA: MANGA FOR PEOPLE WHO HATE MANGA
Are you mangaphobic? Maybe I can help. I fully sympathise with anyone who has been put off trying manga by their so-called 'manga style', the set of alien, alienating clichés of big Bambi eyes, teeny noses, cutesy smiles, mad haircuts, speed lines and sweatdrops. You can almost be forgiven for saying that all Japanese comics look the same, because a great deal of those put into English to date superficially do, since they have been cherry-picked to tap into the built-in niche following for their animated versions among 'otaku' SF/fantasy cartoon fans. Anime on TV, DVD and the cinema screen continues to be a highly effective ambassador for manga, but manga are so much more than anime. I wonder if it's the welter of anime imports that may have distorted public perceptions and created the false impression that all manga conform to certain standardisations of subject and style found in fantasy anime. In fact, just as superhero comics don't represent the entirety of American comics, so the preponderance of anime-related or anime-looking manga in the West represent merely one narrow band of the full spectrum of this massive mass medium. Don't dismiss manga till you've tried to see the full spectrum.
Another deterrent for mangaphobes is the outlay for stories that can run to 12, 20 or more volumes. It still surprises me that most publishers don't indicate anywhere how many there will be in a saga. Sometimes this is excusable, because the series is still running in Japan, so no one knows yet when it will end. But if it is already completed, I for one would like to know from the outset the total number of books I'm being expected to shell out to get the whole kaboodle (sometimes you can find out on the publisher's sites). Luckily prices are getting better, now that Gollancz Manga have brought out their line of Viz titles at under a fiver and several bookstore chains are pushing 3-for-2 deals. Before you buy, other options are to check out the sneak peeks in free samplers or online or see what titles you can take out from your local library.
Another grumble from some is having to read manga 'backwards'. More accurately, you have to read the pictures and balloon order right-to-left, but of course the dialogues inside the balloons read left-to-right, so you're processing in two directions at once. True, it can be disorientating at first, but persevere and you'll be surprised how you get used it. Remember, it's also more respectful to the artists than having to flop their panels as if in a mirror just so we can read them more easily.
So if you're wary of trying manga, but are open to suggestions, I'll start by shamelessly plugging my own deliberately broad-ranging, eye-opening guide, Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics. I heard that one Gosh! customer, a true manga aficionado, bought over £180 worth of books that he discovered through its pages. As for other reference works, don't be too disheartened by the generic types - a buxom she-devil and a strapping swordsman - on the cover of 500 Manga Heroes & Villains (Collins & Brown). Inside, expert and champion Helen McCarthy casts her net far wider to encompass all manner of characters, from sports, history, business, girls romance, horror and others. To impose some order, she classifies them into eight A-to-Z lists of: male or female heroes; anti-heroes; male or female villains; teams; and two catch-alls, 'non-humanoid & semi-human heroes and villains', and 'historical, mythical & literary heroes and villains' from Nefertiti to Hitler. A minefield of information, this 352-page directory fortunately comes with an index, so if you don't know the characters' names, you can always find them by looking up their creators or the titles of their manga. Or just dive in and see where she takes you.
A sensitive interpreter of the culture, Helen packs her entries with facts, plot synopses and real insights to many series, several tantalisingly untranslated as yet (notably by Tezuka). By writing about various characters, good, bad and in-between, from the same story, she can reveal its themes from multiple perspectives. She adds some more in-depth spotlights on creators like Akira Toriyama, Go Nagai, Leiji Matsumoto, and megastars like Lupin III, Godzilla and Golgo 13. Not every entry can be illustrated, but with over 160 images, mainly covers, there's much to look at too.
No short survey can be exhaustive; as she says, "half the challenge of doing a book like this is deciding what to leave out". What she has chosen to put in inevitably reflects Helen's tastes, which generally veer towards manga linked with anime, her other passion. Now anime movies are capable to doing so much (look at Hayao Miyazaki), but still they tend to be dominated by versions of manga's space operas and epic fantasies, because Japanese directors on a tight budget find such fare too expensive to film in live-action. For cheaper live productions, they turn to the wealth of manga's other diverse and engaging genres.
Evidence of these comes from a recent Japan Foundation manga-to-film season around the UK. Audiences could discover Cromartie High School (ADV Manga) based on Eiji Nonaka's wacky Pythonesque skits about the pecking order and posturing of Tokyo's dumbest punk pupils, among them a mute Freddie Mercury lookalike, a gorilla and a tin-can robot. If you never thought table tennis was your thing, the film Ping Pong will grip you with Taiyo Matsumoto's tale of tabletop rivalries and speeding balls; now that the DVD is out, could Viz please get round to translating this sports gem? A recent classic in the shojo or girls' genre is Kiriko Nananan's single-volume Blue (Ponent Mon) about the deepening friendship between two schoolgirls, made into a movie in 2001.
Manga's freewheeling storyworlds are the key well-spring of some of the strongest hits on the big and small screens, from 2003's Old Boy (Dark Horse) and last year's Nana (VIZ), friendships and romances among touching twenty-somethings from the manga by Ai Yazawa. While the film of Dragon Head (Tokyopop) may not have topped the polls, the original 10-volume manga by Minetaro Mochizuki is a chilling post-earthquake shocker, highly recommended, as is Lady Snowblood (Dark Horse), the source of the movie that "inspired" Tarantino's Kill Bill.
Two of my current favourite translations are also lined up for the cinema, but why wait when you can catch the compelling manga now? Naoki Urasawa's Monster (VIZ) is an 18-volume rollercoaster ride, already adapted into an anime TV series. The prospects for Japanese super-surgeon Tenma at a renowned German hospital look promising, as long as he lets himself be exploited by the hospital's callous director and by his fiancée, the director's spoilt daughter Eva. Status, funding, publicity, are the director's prime concerns, so when it comes to saving lives, a famous opera singer is much more important than some lowly Turkish labourer. As Eva tells him, "After all, people's lives aren't created equal."
Tenma won't accept this ethical compromise. His career and life, however, unravel after he ignores an order to operate on the city's mayor and decides to save a critically injured boy, whose twin sister is in shock and whose parents have been mysteriously killed. Tenma loses everything to save this one child's life. His faith that he did the right thing begins to falter, as others around him inexplicably die. Some ten years later, he comes face-to-face with the angelic-looking killer and realises the horrors he is unwittingly responsible for. How far will Tenma go to stop this "monster" he saved from death? Drawing in a low-key, naturalistic style, Urasawa unfolds his drama with clinical precision and stokes the tension as Tenma becomes a prime suspect in the mounting multiple homicides.
My other tip is Death Note (VIZ) about the lethal relationship between bored student genius Light and a bored death god called Ryuk, whose Death Note falls into his hands. What would you do if you found a notebook with instructions on how it can kill whatever human name is written inside it? Watching the TV news, Light decides to test it on a killer holding hostages in a school. When reporters announce that the criminal has died from a heart attack, Light is almost convinced it works, but decides to try it out on the street.
Here, Light's superiority and self-righteousness surface as he ponders, "Start looking around you and all you see are people the world would be better off without." Spotting a biker harassing a girl and overhearing his name, he writes it into the Death Note book followed by the words "Traffic Accident". Before his eyes, almost instantly the biker is mowed down by a juggernaut truck. Light's revulsion and guilt, however, soon give way to a mission to "clean up" the world. "I'll make a world inhabited only by people I decide are good!" Complemented by Takeshi Obata's beautifully crisp artwork, writer Tsugumi Ohba's moral dilemmas are fiendishly clever, as cool-hearted know-it-all Light tries to evade Interpol's tricky unseen super-agent, code-named 'L', in an escalating cat-and-mouse game with the lives of millions.
A prescription of class acts like these, rich in characterisation and plot, might just help you conquer your mangaphobia once and for all.
The original version of this article appeared in Comics International, the UK's leading magazine about comics in 2006.
Are you mangaphobic? Maybe I can help. I fully sympathise with anyone who has been put off trying manga by their so-called 'manga style', the set of alien, alienating clichés of big Bambi eyes, teeny noses, cutesy smiles, mad haircuts, speed lines and sweatdrops. You can almost be forgiven for saying that all Japanese comics look the same, because a great deal of those put into English to date superficially do, since they have been cherry-picked to tap into the built-in niche following for their animated versions among 'otaku' SF/fantasy cartoon fans. Anime on TV, DVD and the cinema screen continues to be a highly effective ambassador for manga, but manga are so much more than anime. I wonder if it's the welter of anime imports that may have distorted public perceptions and created the false impression that all manga conform to certain standardisations of subject and style found in fantasy anime. In fact, just as superhero comics don't represent the entirety of American comics, so the preponderance of anime-related or anime-looking manga in the West represent merely one narrow band of the full spectrum of this massive mass medium. Don't dismiss manga till you've tried to see the full spectrum.
Another deterrent for mangaphobes is the outlay for stories that can run to 12, 20 or more volumes. It still surprises me that most publishers don't indicate anywhere how many there will be in a saga. Sometimes this is excusable, because the series is still running in Japan, so no one knows yet when it will end. But if it is already completed, I for one would like to know from the outset the total number of books I'm being expected to shell out to get the whole kaboodle (sometimes you can find out on the publisher's sites). Luckily prices are getting better, now that Gollancz Manga have brought out their line of Viz titles at under a fiver and several bookstore chains are pushing 3-for-2 deals. Before you buy, other options are to check out the sneak peeks in free samplers or online or see what titles you can take out from your local library.
Another grumble from some is having to read manga 'backwards'. More accurately, you have to read the pictures and balloon order right-to-left, but of course the dialogues inside the balloons read left-to-right, so you're processing in two directions at once. True, it can be disorientating at first, but persevere and you'll be surprised how you get used it. Remember, it's also more respectful to the artists than having to flop their panels as if in a mirror just so we can read them more easily.
So if you're wary of trying manga, but are open to suggestions, I'll start by shamelessly plugging my own deliberately broad-ranging, eye-opening guide, Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics. I heard that one Gosh! customer, a true manga aficionado, bought over £180 worth of books that he discovered through its pages. As for other reference works, don't be too disheartened by the generic types - a buxom she-devil and a strapping swordsman - on the cover of 500 Manga Heroes & Villains (Collins & Brown). Inside, expert and champion Helen McCarthy casts her net far wider to encompass all manner of characters, from sports, history, business, girls romance, horror and others. To impose some order, she classifies them into eight A-to-Z lists of: male or female heroes; anti-heroes; male or female villains; teams; and two catch-alls, 'non-humanoid & semi-human heroes and villains', and 'historical, mythical & literary heroes and villains' from Nefertiti to Hitler. A minefield of information, this 352-page directory fortunately comes with an index, so if you don't know the characters' names, you can always find them by looking up their creators or the titles of their manga. Or just dive in and see where she takes you.
A sensitive interpreter of the culture, Helen packs her entries with facts, plot synopses and real insights to many series, several tantalisingly untranslated as yet (notably by Tezuka). By writing about various characters, good, bad and in-between, from the same story, she can reveal its themes from multiple perspectives. She adds some more in-depth spotlights on creators like Akira Toriyama, Go Nagai, Leiji Matsumoto, and megastars like Lupin III, Godzilla and Golgo 13. Not every entry can be illustrated, but with over 160 images, mainly covers, there's much to look at too.
No short survey can be exhaustive; as she says, "half the challenge of doing a book like this is deciding what to leave out". What she has chosen to put in inevitably reflects Helen's tastes, which generally veer towards manga linked with anime, her other passion. Now anime movies are capable to doing so much (look at Hayao Miyazaki), but still they tend to be dominated by versions of manga's space operas and epic fantasies, because Japanese directors on a tight budget find such fare too expensive to film in live-action. For cheaper live productions, they turn to the wealth of manga's other diverse and engaging genres.
Evidence of these comes from a recent Japan Foundation manga-to-film season around the UK. Audiences could discover Cromartie High School (ADV Manga) based on Eiji Nonaka's wacky Pythonesque skits about the pecking order and posturing of Tokyo's dumbest punk pupils, among them a mute Freddie Mercury lookalike, a gorilla and a tin-can robot. If you never thought table tennis was your thing, the film Ping Pong will grip you with Taiyo Matsumoto's tale of tabletop rivalries and speeding balls; now that the DVD is out, could Viz please get round to translating this sports gem? A recent classic in the shojo or girls' genre is Kiriko Nananan's single-volume Blue (Ponent Mon) about the deepening friendship between two schoolgirls, made into a movie in 2001.
Manga's freewheeling storyworlds are the key well-spring of some of the strongest hits on the big and small screens, from 2003's Old Boy (Dark Horse) and last year's Nana (VIZ), friendships and romances among touching twenty-somethings from the manga by Ai Yazawa. While the film of Dragon Head (Tokyopop) may not have topped the polls, the original 10-volume manga by Minetaro Mochizuki is a chilling post-earthquake shocker, highly recommended, as is Lady Snowblood (Dark Horse), the source of the movie that "inspired" Tarantino's Kill Bill.
Two of my current favourite translations are also lined up for the cinema, but why wait when you can catch the compelling manga now? Naoki Urasawa's Monster (VIZ) is an 18-volume rollercoaster ride, already adapted into an anime TV series. The prospects for Japanese super-surgeon Tenma at a renowned German hospital look promising, as long as he lets himself be exploited by the hospital's callous director and by his fiancée, the director's spoilt daughter Eva. Status, funding, publicity, are the director's prime concerns, so when it comes to saving lives, a famous opera singer is much more important than some lowly Turkish labourer. As Eva tells him, "After all, people's lives aren't created equal."
Tenma won't accept this ethical compromise. His career and life, however, unravel after he ignores an order to operate on the city's mayor and decides to save a critically injured boy, whose twin sister is in shock and whose parents have been mysteriously killed. Tenma loses everything to save this one child's life. His faith that he did the right thing begins to falter, as others around him inexplicably die. Some ten years later, he comes face-to-face with the angelic-looking killer and realises the horrors he is unwittingly responsible for. How far will Tenma go to stop this "monster" he saved from death? Drawing in a low-key, naturalistic style, Urasawa unfolds his drama with clinical precision and stokes the tension as Tenma becomes a prime suspect in the mounting multiple homicides.
My other tip is Death Note (VIZ) about the lethal relationship between bored student genius Light and a bored death god called Ryuk, whose Death Note falls into his hands. What would you do if you found a notebook with instructions on how it can kill whatever human name is written inside it? Watching the TV news, Light decides to test it on a killer holding hostages in a school. When reporters announce that the criminal has died from a heart attack, Light is almost convinced it works, but decides to try it out on the street.
Here, Light's superiority and self-righteousness surface as he ponders, "Start looking around you and all you see are people the world would be better off without." Spotting a biker harassing a girl and overhearing his name, he writes it into the Death Note book followed by the words "Traffic Accident". Before his eyes, almost instantly the biker is mowed down by a juggernaut truck. Light's revulsion and guilt, however, soon give way to a mission to "clean up" the world. "I'll make a world inhabited only by people I decide are good!" Complemented by Takeshi Obata's beautifully crisp artwork, writer Tsugumi Ohba's moral dilemmas are fiendishly clever, as cool-hearted know-it-all Light tries to evade Interpol's tricky unseen super-agent, code-named 'L', in an escalating cat-and-mouse game with the lives of millions.
A prescription of class acts like these, rich in characterisation and plot, might just help you conquer your mangaphobia once and for all.
The original version of this article appeared in Comics International, the UK's leading magazine about comics in 2006.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
