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The Barbelith Manga Primer

  
 
Baroness von Lenska
04:42 / 10.09.08
I hope Randy won't mind too much if I take the ball he dropped over here, and run with it. The idea of a manga primer strikes much closer to home with me than many of the topics that seem to crop up in Comics, and I know from experience how confusing it can be to navigate the scads of Japanese origin comics lining modern bookshops, or how off putting that impenetrable wall of paperback-sized colorful volumes can be at first glance.

The most helpful way of getting around the manga kitchen is to keep in mind the way most manga is published in Japan: in massive, phone book sized compilation magazines aimed at extremely specific audiences sorted by factors as general as gender or age, or specific as chefs and office jockeys. It's a different world, where the prevalence of genres within genres within genres almost makes distinction futile. Most of what makes it Stateside (I'm not very familiar with European publishers, but I know the manga industry in Germany is stronger than in the US) can be lumped within the shonen (young boys), shojo (young girls) or seinen (adult male technically, but generally less gender centric than the previous) categories. Each contains its own tropes, trademarks and outright cliches, but the scope can be fairly far reaching. Shonen and shojo make up the majority of the most visible manga in the US, and anyone who's seen any anime, ever, will catch on quickly enough--ninjas, giant robots, school girls, romantic comedies, blurry action scenes with lots of Adam West style visual sound effects, etc. A fair comparison for seinen is DC's Vertigo imprint--character or plot driven stories usually with some fantastic or imaginative element aimed at adults and mature teens.

Mind you, those Wikipedia articles I linked above are very likely to give a totally different picture. Put that other picture in another brain cabinet--the Japanese categorization of manga vs. its US offshoot are entirely different, often conflicting, rarely overlapping beasts. Manga in the US is still, to a great extent, unmapped territory, and keeping that in mind, I offer some of the most hidden, exotic, isolated island jewels within the great expanse of Japanese comics.

2001 Nights by Yukinobu Hoshino
Completed
A very high ranking candidate for my personal favorite comic, ever. Beautifully written, artfully paced philoso-fi manga chronicling humanity's slow, arduous journey from early spaceflight, to space colonization and exploration, to alien contact, to greater wisdom, enlightenment and spiritual ascent. 2001 Nights is a book that can't quite be pegged as any one thing--the science is hard, the philosophy profound, the characterization and underlying message of the series complex, aching and beautifully optimistic without ever falling into twee. Save a handful of arcs, each issue is generally a short story, or series of short stories, that all ultimately connect and intertwine in ways that are genuinely, sometimes shockingly, moving. The first issue opens at the peak of a second Cold War. US and Russian leaders are secretly flown to a Russian space station in order to hold peace talks while experiencing space euphoria. Lofty subject matter be as it may, and although there is a real lack of continuing characters, Hoshino uses the science and science fiction settings and themes wonderfully to illustrate personal growth, and our innate longing for the divine. In spite of all the spaceships, terraformed planets, aliens and androids, 2001 Nights is easily the most human manga I've read. I truly, truly love this book.

Mushishi by Yuki Urushibara
Recently completed
One of several mangas I adore from the fantastic Afternoon magazine (a publication that could almost be considered a genre unto itself). Slow moving and thoughtful, Mushishi weaves Japanese folklore with mysticism-weighted spiritual concepts inspired and taken from a surprising range of traditions. Mushishi is a rare breed among spiritually-themed pop culture stories in its reluctance to name any of the concepts or traditions it borrows from. Rather, it shows an uncommon understanding of its subject matter, and simply uses the ideas in ways that are respectful and accurate, although the window dressing has changed. Mushishi understands that what matters is the heart of a living tradition, not the clothes it wears or the names it uses. The manga is almost identical in plot to the anime of the same name; each installment is a self-contained story following a healer/doctor/shaman/freelance scientist named Genko as he unravels mysteries surrounding the mushi, organisms of pure essence or undiluted life, without bodies or forms, whose presence often disturbs human beings. Often somewhat morose in tone, Mushishi deals with themes of isolation, disconnection, loss, death and the endurance of many kinds of love through the hardships of living, filtered through the voice of a man who is in some sense straddled between the world of separate form and the Absolute beyond. Lonely and despairing as the visible themes may be, there is a sense of benevolent, imminent transcendence that pervades the work; underneath all of the surface suffering, there is holy light, undiluted, undying pure essence of life. Seems to have been highly influenced by the Harikikigaki, a 16th century Japanese work personifying various illnesses and disorders as strange beings imperceptible by an average person.

Record of a Yokohama Shopping Trip by Hitoshi Ashinano
Ongoing
Another lovely, thoughtful series from Afternoon, Record is set in idyllic rural Japan after the world has ended and humanity is leisurely dying out. The post-postapocalyptic tale of of a female robot running a coffee shop in a peaceful, sharply depopulated vast, lonely world. Huge, gorgeously illustrated spreads depicting winding country roads, flooded countrysides, sunsets against the crumbling ruins of Osaka skyscrapers and other scenes of beautiful, inspirational desolation are staples of the series. There is no overarching plot, no real conflict, a great deal of mystery but none of it is ever addressed and only a handful of characters. The best way to look at it is strange, skewed small town slice of life set after industrial civilization has completely crashed, taking most of the world with it. Somewhat reminiscent both in art and mood of some of the jokeless Buttercup Festival strips, but totally unique and peerless in its ability to create beauty, wonder and very human stories from such a despairing, tragic premise.

Haibane Renmei by Yoshitoshi ABe
Tragically unfinished
Yoshitoshi ABe is quite possibly my favorite mangaka/anime creator. Probably most notorious as the creator and character designer of/for the challenging, irreal Serial Experiments Lain, ABe's dōjinshi (independently published comic) Haibane Renmei (The Federation of Charcoal Feathers) explores nearly all of the same material as Lain (reality, isolation, connection, the im/possibility of communication, suicide, loneliness, salvation, God, the nature of love, dreams, solipsism, enlightenment and spirituality) without any of the confusing, Lynch-meets-Gibson-they-have-lunch-with-Chris-Carter storytelling of Lain. Haibane Renmei follows the life of a nameless young woman who falls from the sky one day, emerges from a giant egg in someone's basement, sprouts wings and can't remember who she was before any of this happened. Despite the bizarro premise, most of the series plays out in very slice of life fashion. There are, to my knowledge, only four issues/volumes of original material (the anime spawned a spin off comic that ABe had no involvement in) available. After ABe scored an anime deal for the title, the series discontinued, and was finished in film rather than comic. Although short, I think the comic stands well enough on its own, if only for ABe's jaw droppingly beautiful full color art, and the aching fourth issue/volume. Ultimately a series (in both formats) about loss, and the irreversible separation of death, and how that separation need not sever our connections to one another. If a friend moves to another continent, and our letters have no way of reaching each other within our lifetimes, must we stop writing completely?

So, that's a decent start, I think. I'll likely add more to this thread as I think of it. As far as I'm concerned, anything goes; reviews and recommendations, history lessons, cultural anecdotes, academic views and critical analysis, questions, answers, spontaneous thoughts, aesthetics and art talk. As long as it's manga, throw it here, and we'll see where we end up with this.
 
 
Seth
12:10 / 10.09.08
Great thread, and a great opening post.

Look, I was always going to do this sooner or later, and in my defense my stance on the series has changed dramatically in the last year and a half or so since I wrote it up for the opening post of the anime primer. So, to be true to form and get it out of the way early on...

Bleach
Ongoing
On first glance it's the same mix that made Buffy so fantastic up until the end of Season 3, in its mix of comedy, action and horror with super-powered high-school kids and sword wielding psychopomps battling hungry angry ghosts. What it's actually about is a hundred year battle of wills between two shadowy master manipulators for the power to control two diametrically opposed Purgatories, and possibly even Heaven and Hell themselves. Their primary weapons in this war are the lives of a couple of hundred insanely lovable characters, a cast of battle hungry nutters, agent provocateur spymasters, emotionally scarred nobles, weird occultists, demented afterlife scientists, moronic comedy sidekicks, whimsically individualistic exiles and an entire limbo dimension populated exclusively by masked Spaniards. Bleach unashamedly sets its stall out to be the archetypal shonen serial (in true WWE style every problem is solved in the ring, with gloriously unhinged special moves and last minute second winds happening only when the protagonist has spent a long time being smashed into the steel steps), but it uses the generic conventions of progressively more powerful and crazy battles to explore themes of friendship, redemption, how and why people seek power, the Japanese obsession with rank and honorifics (in more recent stories drawing direct parallels to Social Darwinism), and crucially to misdirect the audience (get used to having to sharpen your analytical abilities to work out what's actually going on, because many vital details are left in the subtext). Author Tite Kubo has created a megalomaniacally conceived universe in which he continually underplays his considerable plotting abilities with what is either a longsighted humility or a perversely gigantic ego, forever teasing the reader with the promise of fresh revelations to come in a format that appears disarmingly straightforward. Nothing and no-one are entirely what they seem, and as if that weren't enough his art is frequently exceptional in its expressive faces, diverse character design, well-judged pacing and panel lay-outs, effortless flair for movement, breakneck velocity and in later chapters uniquely expressionist inking.

It is great fucking fun.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
18:48 / 10.09.08
I'm dead glad that somebody other than me started this, because it's good to kick off with somebody who clearly knows what they're talking about. My exposure, in the couple of months that I've been buying & reading, has mainly been to the more obvious things - manga that pop up when you search for the form on Amazon, that kind of thing. Not exclusively, but mainly.

Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms by Fumiyo Kouno is probably my favourite so far. It's a one-shot book about Hiroshima - not the bombing itself, nor the immediate aftermath thereof, but the town and its people. Three snapshots of life, focusing on two young women, related to each other but separated by years. The first part takes place in 1955 and follows Minami as she ekes out a living, makes her own clothes and falls in love.

The second and third parts are chiefly about Nanami and her family and friends, with part two set in the 1990s (I think) when she's a child, and part three taking part in the current day, when she's in her early 20s.

The whole thing is about learning to live with devastation and not allowing it to destroy your spirit, about the things that people leave us when they leave us. It's not at all what you'd expect from a comic "about Hiroshima" - it's sweet and gentle, and it has one moment of pure, uplifting beauty right at the end that had me in tears. There's an undercurrent of anger to the first part that does come seeping through the cracks every now and again, and one of sadness and loss in the last two thirds of the book, but the main feeling it leaves you with is grace, peace.

Wonderfully drawn, too. A lot of the backgrounds in other manga that I've read are very scientific - heavily architectural, a very tight control of perspective at all times. The art here is far more naturalistic and pretty.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
19:30 / 10.09.08
In a far more obvious choice:

One Piece by Eiichiro Oda.

One Piece, like Bleach, is a Shonen Jump series. Unlike a lot of Shonen Jump's output, though, it's not all about the fighting.

It's about PIRATES. Not just pirates, PIRATES. Monkey D Luffy is, when the series starts, a young boy who hangs around pirate haunts and idolises them, especially his hero, Red Shanks. In a moment of stupid hunger, he eats Shanks' latest treasure, the demonic Gum-Gum Fruit, and gains the ability to stretch himself like a seafaring Mr Fantastic, but the inability to swim. Some years pass, Luffy becomes a young adult and decides that now's the time to head out on his quest for the One Piece - mythical treasure of the legendary Pirate King, Gold Roger - and declare himself King of Pirates.

I've only read the first three volumes so far, but they're absolutely fantastic. Luffy's one of the greatest characters ever created in any medium - constantly optimistic, with a sense for adventure and an ability to see the best in people. He's like Yotsuba with attitude and a straw hat.

The timing in this series is impeccable. When Luffy first meets Nami, the girl who he decides will be his navigator - *he* decides this, not her, because that's how Luffy do, he can see the things that drive people, the good inside them, and he goes straight for it and doesn't allow them the opportunity to do themselves down or back out of a good opportunity - she tells him that she'll join up only if he agrees to take down the evil pirate Buggy the Clown and his crew. It's a bluff, nobody's fool enough to try and face up against Buggy, she's not actually expecting Luffy to agree.

In the very next panel he's already halfway out the door, a huge grin on his face, on his way to deal with Buggy.

I'm going to go back to Yotsuba here, because you know that tingly warm glow you get inside from reading that book? That aching caused by wishing that the world was actually like that, that you knew (or were) people that immune to depression, loneliness, etc? One Piece has that same gift.

It's explosively drawn - 'dynamic' doesn't even begin to do justice to the panels. There's a constant barrage of TA-DAs and BOO-OOOMs in the backgrounds which often *replace* the backgrounds.

It's just superb, alright? I don't know what the anime's like - as with Bleach, the manga comes first and the anime plays catch-up - but I know people who love it. As far as the big franchise, 'comics' manga goes, this is the best I've read so far. I adore it.

Try and get the US, Viz Media-published volumes if at all possible. From what I've seen myself, the UK Gollancz ones are of vastly lesser quality.
 
 
Razor Wind
18:02 / 20.09.08
Genshiken: The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture by Kio Shimokou

For those of you who've attended university,have you ever looked back and wondered at how it changed you? The people you've met,the societies you joined and the pressures of class turned you into a different person.

Genshiken follows the activities of an atypical university anime/manga/gaming club,where resides the type of otaku that are too geeky for the rest of the clubs. Along the way and over three years of uni,it tackles doujinshi,otaku dating,unrequited love,Comiket,cosplay,drawing yaoi manga,getting a job after graduation and others.

What makes it exceptional are its characters — you feel like you know them as soon as they open their mouths. Sasahara,the new fish; Madarame,the hardcore one; Saki,the outsider/normal who just doesn't get why they've let this stuff take over their lives;Kasukabe,her otaku boyfriend and Oono,cosplay fangirl. Later volumes introduce Ogiue,fangirl-in-denial and one of the best characters I've seen in manga.
Shimokou captures the awkwardness of fanboyism,both the shyness that drove someone to seek comfort in such things and the loneliness and shame that often accompanies it. As another reviewer put it,"...it's the perfect portrayal of growing up geeky.". In other words,you'll see a lot of yourself in these characters :-).

Funny,heartwarming,awkward (the scene where Madarame tries to apply dating-sim logic to talk to Saki about an unsightly nosehair is comedy gold and intensely uncomfortable at the same time),Genshiken is well worth your time.
 
 
Razor Wind
18:38 / 20.09.08
P.S. The anime is great too.
 
 
DaveBCooper
13:31 / 30.09.08
On the basis of this and other recommendations elsewhere on the 'Lith, I bought the first volume of Bleach last night.
I have to say, I could barely read it. The speech balloons seemed to cover half the panels, and the perspective and backgrounds shifted so often I simply had no idea what was going on. I gave up after about 50 pages, feeling disappointed and faintly annoyed.
But I'm keen to try more manga, so I think I'll give 2001 Nights and Genshiken a go. Recently finished Death Note, and enjoyed that a lot, can anyone recommend anything in a similar vein? Thanks.
 
 
Seth
13:19 / 01.10.08
On the basis of this and other recommendations elsewhere on the 'Lith, I bought the first volume of Bleach last night.
I have to say, I could barely read it. The speech balloons seemed to cover half the panels, and the perspective and backgrounds shifted so often I simply had no idea what was going on. I gave up after about 50 pages, feeling disappointed and faintly annoyed.

Perseverence is rewarded. Kubo's style develops to the point where a great deal of the story can be followed from the art alone... for at least the last three or four years almost every issue has had the clarity of that "silent" issue of X-Men that Frank Quitely and Grant Morrison put out a few years back.
 
 
Razor Wind
20:22 / 01.10.08
It's almost inevitable that a manga's artstyle changes and improves over the course of a series as the author gets a feel for it. You can see Bleach's starting to change in the second volume as KT learns not to cram everything in,and by the third one it really opens up as he starts to let the pictures do the talking. It may also be worth remembering that 1)Japanese text takes up a smidge more space than English,so you often get huge speech bubbles with a four-word phrase floating around inside because you couldn't resize it 2)nearly all manga is published in graphic-novel size before it's shrunk down and bound into the standard paperback-sized volumes,so what might be dynamic and sweeping at the larger size becomes too small to impress.

Genshiken is a more dramatic example. Volume 1 is much more heavily-inked and realistically drawn than the rest of the series — by the second and third Kio Shimoku learned to draw more economically and simply.
 
 
Seth
11:19 / 12.01.09
Do we want to take this discussion elsewhere?

It looks increasingly likely that Barbelith may not be around much longer. There are people in the Policy forum petitioning to get it closed down. I've got about enoguh time in my life to conduct an online discussion on something I enjoy, but not not really to engage with board politics or try to change anyone's mind.

Ultimately the decision to close Barbelith would be made by made by Tom Coates. He hasn't expressed much of an interest in this place, and I wouldn't be surprised if one day he just decided to turn it off. We may not even have this place available as an archive. It could happen at any point and we may not get prior warning. That possibility becomes exponentially more likely with petitions like the one in the Policy at the moment.

I've enjoyed all the anime threads immensely and have quite an ongoing investment in the Bleach threads in particular (both of which I've saved on my hard drive).

I do not want that enjoyment to be contingent on a disinterested board-owner, in much the same way as I don't think anyone else's decision to leave Barbelith should be contingent on that board-owner choosing to shut it down.

If you want to continue these discussions somewhere other than Barbelith then please send me a PM with your email address or contact me at seth dot cooke at virgin dot net. I won't be posting in this thread any more and will resume the discussion elsewhere (at the moment it's looking likely that it'll be an invite only mailing list of some sort, with potential to grow into something else if there's interest).

Contact me if you would be interested in participating in a discussion of anime and or/theory-Bleaching elsewhere.
 
  
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