Week 7 | Miyazaki & Studio Ghibli

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

It was really fun getting the chance to take a look at the original manga version of Nausicaa having already seen the movie adaptation. The movie does a great job of staying faithful to the manga (at least from what I can tell after reading volume one), so the part that was most interesting to me while reading was the art.

As a departure from Miyazaki's usual animation work, the art of the manga gives a unique glimpse at his penmanship. While the films he directs are largely attributed to him, they are still the work of a studio and their voices get added to the overall flair of the film. The Nausicaa manga is instead purely Miyazaki's work, allowing his artistry to run free.

To me, the art shines the most in the environment drawings of the Sea of Corruption because it let's Miyazaki flex artistic muscles we don't usually see. He has a very distinct style and rendering when it comes to characters. Distinct to the point where it makes watching the Castle of Calgiostro kind of funny when Lupin, in normal Lupin form, interacts with a very Ghibli-esque girl. So it's really refreshing seeing a whole different side to his work. The line work is really a treat for the eyes since it's not something that Miyazki can express in animation that mainly shows object dimension through value shading. Wrapping around forms, the etch lines really add a whole new depth to his art that I can't get enough of.

(Also, I really understand the Miyazaki-Moebius relationship now and why they love each other so much)

Week 6 | Curated Recommended Reading

Works That Are Golden Kamuy Adjacent

1. Delicious in Dungeon

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Summary: After wiping out to a dragon, a party of adventurers goes back through a dungeon to revive their lost party member and are forced to cook the monsters they encounter for food.

Adjacent-ness: Cooking, detailed world building, and storytelling that isn't afraid to be comedic while taking on serious topics, Delicious in Dungeon is definitely the manga to check out if you like Golden Kamuy. Even the facial expressions are just as good.

2. Katanagatari

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Summary: Yasuri Shichika, a swordsman whose sword is his body (it sounds weird, but let's just ignore that for now), lives quietly in exile until strategist, Togame, requests that he help her collect the 12 Deviant Blades for the shogunate.

Adjacent-ness: The base of the relationship between Shichika and Togame is quite similar to the relationship of Sugimoto and Asirpa, a girl enlists the help of an "immortal weapon" to collect a treasure. While playing into many Shounen tropes, Katanagatari takes an experimental look at the genre and features some great fight animation.

3. Otoyomegatari (Bride's Story)

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Summary: Set in 19th century Central Asia, Bride's Story follows the stories of several relationships and their daily lives of marriage, family and growth.

Adjacent-ness: Boasting an incredibly well-researched insight on the cultures and customs of Central Asia and richly detailed art, Bride's Story is another great read when looking to learn more about another culture.

4. Fullmetal Alchemist

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Summary: Two alchemist brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric, search for a philosopher's stone to restore their bodies after a failed attempt to bring their late mother back to life. 

Adjacent-ness: Perhaps considered one of the quintessential manga/anime, Fullmetal Alchemist explores a deep war story interwoven with a fantastic cast of characters and comedic breaks to create a really compelling experience.

5. Princess Mononoke

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Summary: After suffering an infection from a demon boar, Ashitaka searches for a cure and gets himself involved in a conflict between nature gods and humans.

Adjacent-ness: Golden Kamuy heavily explores the Ainu culture's world view on respecting nature and animals, which are referred to as gods, or kamuy in Ainu. Princess Mononoke expresses a world where the animals of the forest are literally all-mighty gods, and continues to explore the relationship between human and nature.

Week 5 | Romance Manga

Nodame Cantabile

I was pretty surprised when reading this manga for romance week because to me, it didn't really feel like a romance manga (for good reasons, but I'll get to that). Taking on a slice of life tone, Nodame Cantabile by Tomoko Ninimiya follows the journey of Megumi Noda, or Nodame as she calls herself, and Chiaki Shunichi. While the two are both enrolled in the same music college studying piano, Nodame messily wanders through life without a care in the world while Chiaki aims to be a world renowned conductor with talent and money already in his pocket. Worlds apart, the two surprisingly discover they live right next door to each other and thus begins the strange daily adventures of Nodame and Chiaki.

When I said that this manga didn't feel like a romance manga, it doesn't mean that the two main characters don't have any chemistry, it's that the romance plays a secondary role to the overall story in my opinion. I believe that the main story of the manga is watching the growth and maturity of the titular character, Nodame. In the beginning, she starts as a carefree student only playing silly songs like the "Clean-up Song" and "MojaMoja Suite" she wrote herself. However, underneath her strange (and I mean really, really strange) characteristics lies an incredible talent for piano playing. It's not until she meets Chiaki does she begin to express her own drive to become a great piano player so that one day she may be able to perform a piano concerto with him as the conductor. However, Chiaki simply acts as the catalyst for her goal while her efforts are always portrayed as hers and hers alone, driven mad by her own passion and perseverance. It's these kinds of stories that I'm always happy to read, two people mutually lifting each other up to reach their best potential. So while I was glad when I reached the point in the story when the two become an official couple, I was much more interested in seeing the growth in both of their characters, especially in Nodame who grew to be a very independent individual striving to better herself.

The art is simple, but it never really feels like it is lacking. It's a charming match to the daily life events and light hearted attitude. Ninomiya does a great job of conveying the mood and movement of the music in a visual medium, making me itch to check out the anime version and hear the actual songs themselves.

While I have positive things to say about the manga, that doesn't mean it's free of any downfalls. One of the prominent characters plays into the "old pervert" trope. Which. Is. Never. Necessary. The continued use of the character's sexual harassment of women as a joke leaves an awfully sour taste and the fact that the author is a woman makes it even more baffling as to why she would choose to write this character trait in. Ninomiya also frequently feeds into the negatives of body image and fat-shaming. On multiple occasions, the female characters relate their beauty solely on their body size and idealize weight loss even if its caused by illness or starvation. Fat characters are rarely referred to by their proper names, instead they are derided with insulting nicknames. First serialized in 2001, Nodame Cantabile is definitely dated, especially when characters take out their Nokia phones and fax letters to each other. It's just a shame when I'm happily reading and have to see these things happen all too frequently in the story.

My face when Ninomiya is back on her bullshit again

I rate Nodame Cantabile with a piano duet played in mongoose costumes.

Week 4 | Documentary Manga

I Saw It

Raw and unidealized, I Saw It is an autobiographical account of manga artist, Keiji Nakazawa, as he recounts his experience surviving the Hiroshima bombing as a child. Having already read this manga during the Literature of Comics class, it's interesting to revisit this piece with first impressions already out of the way and see that it still is as powerful as the first read. The haunting images of zombie-like people dragging their own skin behind them continues to be one of the most powerful realities that one could not fathom to be possible. While the manga is dedicated to Nakazawa's experience with the after effects of the bombing, the manga is perhaps even more a dedication to his mother who continued to support his dreams of being a manga artist despite their family's hardships. While the manga ends on a more positive note with him fully involved in his manga career, I Saw It remains as a reminder that the effects of the bombing last much longer than just the first flash.

Nakazawa's work serves a great educational purpose by telling the tale of the bombing from a victim's perspective. In the American education system, the Hiroshima bombing is simply taught as an act that was "necessary" to end the war quickly to save American lives, as if it was an act of heroism. The bombing lasts one line in a textbook and immediately after, the American victory is given a full paragraph. The western world continues to turn its eyes away from the calamity of the bombing while it continues to boast its victories, and it makes me think it's no wonder we are in such a nuclear predicament nowadays. It's hard for people to grasp the true gravity of a nuclear bombing when we only hear about it in news headlines. Written in an easy to understand comic format, I Saw It is an incredibly important piece that conveys the true horrors of nuclear bombing that is rarely ever spoken of.

Disaster Drawn

Hillary Chute's analysis of Nakazawa's work in her book, Disaster Drawn, offers a deep look at the formation of the documentary genre within manga and comics. I was really interested by her comparison of I Saw It to Art Spiegleman's Maus, another piece I had previously read in the Literature of Comics class. While the former is a direct account illustrated by Nakazawa himself, Maus tells the tale of Spiegleman's father and his experiences during the Holocaust. I'm curious how this sort of second-hand storytelling affects the portrayal of the events in the book, especially since his father reveals himself to not be the most reliable storyteller as he chooses to omit parts of his life.

Week 3 | Gekiga

Cigarette Girl

Cigarette Girl is a collection of various self-contained (minus Happy-chan) short stories by gekiga artist, Masahiko Matsumoto. The stories take place in Japan during the early 1970s and tell the tales of people living their everyday urban life in a time when Japanese people felt increasingly insecure about their financial outlook due to a lull in the economy, rising urban housing costs and lower standards of living. Nothing quite gets resolved with the characters, but just like life, sometimes things don't get the pleasant closure like they do in books and movies. Rather than thinking of these stories as depressing (though that doesn't mean I'm going to call them happy), they are simply quiet stories of life being life. It's kind of like the feeling of sitting outside alone on a mild day and letting the wind blow your way while listening to the leaves rustle. 

Matsumoto does a pretty good job with conveying that while things might not happen how you want or expect them to, life simply goes on, we move on. A lot of the stories end with the main character simply walking the streets alone as the sounds of the city surround them, but it doesn't feel particularly sad, it simply feels like the character's story will continue even after the last panel. Perhaps it's a bit uplifting to see these characters do their best in an unforgiving environment, but nonetheless the things that happen to them still suck.

The simplistic art style of the manga plays a big contrast to the topics, making the weight of the unfortunate events seem more subdued then they would actually appear when presented in real life. It helps sell the overall tone Matsumoto hoped to achieve, but it still feels pretty jarring and makes it hard to really step into the shoes of these characters. 

So while Cigarette Girl was not a page-turning thriller like Ayako, it has its value for exploring a more hushed, adult subject matter, especially as a contrast to the more "cute" style stories Tezuka was producing at the time (I don't really know if can say anything anymore though after reading Ayako).

I rate Cigarette Girl with 16 guys whose lips are popping right out of their heads.