Manga

Manga is the japanese word for all comics but in the west it has come to refer to the comics created specifically in japan.  Normally I wouldn't think it's appropriate to categorize things by where it's made, because it should just be looked at for it's storytelling and art, but in Japan comics are integrated in everyone's lives from a very young age.  This is a sharp contrast to how comics are viewed in the west.  In the United States especially comics have always been sort of a “nerdy” thing, but more recently with the Marvel and DC movies comics have become to evolve into something more accepted and mainstream, but definitely not a way of life like they are in Japan.

Definitely my favorite type of comics, as I've read everything from traditional shonen manga such as DragonBall and several series in Weekly Shonen Jump, historical fantasies like Vagabond and Rurouni Kenshin, and brutal science fiction like Gantz.  I think the appeal of manga is the fact that it's so clean and the comics are seen as more of an art form with perfect compositions in every panel and the attractive black and white line art.

This week I read several titles, but I think I'll focus on Buddha by Osamu Tezuka, and write about the others in an additional post.  Although I've read tons of manga and continue to keep up with a multitude of weekly serializations I've oddly never read any thing by the God of comics himself.  I'm obviously familiar with his works such as Astro Boy(but never read it) and I've even watched/read series that closely follow Tezuka's style like Cyborg 009 and Kikaider.

Buddha, was a great read with a perfectly paced story, compelling characters, interesting plot elements, and that classic style that's instantly recognized as Tezuka.  In Buddha the reader will find every classic manga aesthetic with a hero's journey to evolve and make a new life, a heroine in need of help, super exaggerated facial expressions, and japanese referential humor mixed in.  These aren't the only defining points of Tezuka's work, but it's obvious that he played a key factor in patenting most of these characteristics in the comic form in Japan.  The entire time I was reading Buddha I would see these comparisons to other manga and I'd think to myself “oh! That's where that came from” and I think that was a really cool experience for me, to go back and find out a sort of history of what I love to read. 

I think it's interesting that there is so much nudity in this manga, especially the younger characters. I think it's just more accepted in Japan as a culture than it would be to the western audience, and I've seen it in many other Japanese manga/anime across the board, and never in something produced in the United States.  It's also, like many shonen manga, relatively violent with characters experiencing extreme amounts of hardship in their lives, even though it's written for a seemingly younger audience.  This convention is usually exclusive to manga, but I've noticed in recent years traditional American comics are infusing some of these elements into their own pieces.

Anyways, time to move on, I'm going to post an additional post on manga as I've also read, Mushishi and Blade of the Immortal.