Week 4: I saw it

I never really read any manga that where this heavy and I am really shocked seeing it through this artists perspective. Growing up post WWII must have been an insanely bleak and difficult time for the children growing up. I though the color was a good choice to add to the book because it shows in full detail what the artist witnessed as a kid, and the use of color assisted to how graphic it was. The thing that was inspiring to me was the fact that he took his hardships and world perspective and turned it into his passion and career to share his perspective and create a dialogue on the topic. Its one of the most important times in human history and people need to know how horrible and traumatic nuclear war and fallout is.

Class Questions:

I am surprised there wasn’t really any reflective commentary on the war or the US, Wouldn’t there be things like resentment, hate, despair, towards the US? things to the extreme being expressed by the characters in the story for such an extreme topic?

Did he not have a say in how his mother would be taken care of after she passed away? It felt almost like he related it to the atomic bomb dropping because he didn’t have a say on behalf of his family’s traditions or wills.

Was this super close to the authors personal experience? When was the first time the author fully realized why and what happened that day, and how it fully impacted the globe. As a child during that instance, I could imagine it must have been something out of his comprehension and needed to reflect on it as he got older.

Week 3: Cigarette Girl, Masahiko Matsumoto

Cigarette girl is truly a slice of life. I feel like to an extent we can all relate to Hidari-Sans weird quirks and antics. The first thing that popped out to me about this manga was the the jurastic style change compared to the past 2 stories we read. This is a more goofy and simplistic style with pretty structured line art. It feels like everythign is just more refined and cohesive artisticaly compared to pheonix which jumped around a lot from past, to modern day and different ways to render and portray people. Cigarette girl is in my opinion a statement on the times social norms and highlighting Matsumotos realistic perspectve. All the romantic, cultural, and adult themes are addressed in the story and I think gives me a perspective on what life was like for that time in japan.

I did some reasearch on line and found that this Gekiga was one of the first that matsumoto had an english translation for. During the 70's It makes me think how much manga was truly accessable to the western counteries, and how many manga artists were thinking about adapting their stories for english readers.

There were a few main themes I was thinking about when reading the sequence of 11 stories. Each character in the end really struggles with some form of unforfullemnt. Things like solitude, isolation, and melincoly are very prevelant during the manga, and the artstyle's goofy playfullness almost contradicts the topics covered almost creating an unspoken layer of ironey.

Overall I really liked the comics and Im really happy I got exposed to Matsumoto's work. I plan on reading more of it in the future!

Week 2: Phoenix Dawn, Tezuka

Phoenix Dawn holds no punches in being a very cool and unique mature book. It has a lot of things that really appeal to me like mythology and history. Something that I really like is the overall aesthetic of the book. For some reason all the old comics like Dragon Ball, and Mega Man have this really cool cartoon vibe that just feels timeless. Something I noticed while reading the Manga was that the panels were really inconsistent with the art. Sometimes they would have really detailed shots, and some were really poorly drawn. Sometimes the characters would look more like Disney cartoons, and sometimes it would look like a Sailor Moon comic. To me this adds to the authenticity of the fact that its a really old Manga that really paved roads for future styles to come. Artists weren't payed very well and were charged per page, so I can see why some of it was super simple and almost gestural. Finally something that I really liked was it had a lot of action in it, they cover topics like death, war, sickness, religion and love. Overall I really enjoyed it, and I can see know how art style and topics of books reflect on the time they were created.

I did some more research and also found that there was a movie adaptation on the Manga that I want to watch, I think color and animation really adds to the drama of the story. its also interesting to see how the Manga was adapted to Anime for and how the character designs carried over to animation given on how loosely drawn they are.

My Manga

My Manga by Chase Emilio