This week I read some Buddha.
A lot of this comic reflected a bunch of motifs I have seen in a most Japanese manga/anime I have watched. First of all, in a lot of early anime in particular, there is a lot of violence against women and children. I mean, in this comic a man is whipping a boy and his mother because the goods got stolen. There was also an episode of Speed Racer where a man was whipping a car and then was whipping his daughter because he didn't want her to ride in Speed's car--and that one got banned in the US. Secondly, there is no filter. Everybody regardless of age or gender gets slapped and/or punched. This is Japan. They have tentacle porn, shojun, manga, anime, otakus, the works. I mean I just read a page where these kids peed on this one kid and he punched them all in the gonads. Sometimes I just question why there are some things in manga and anime, but then I just go with it because you might as well.
Another interesting thing that the Japanese have in their work is an acute connection with the environment/nature. In this comic in particular there is the sense of the connection between Tatta and the tiger and other people and their interactions with animals. This goes way back to the Japanese belief in harmony and zen, they respect nature. This is different from the Eastern side of this, our side, where we strive to master nature rather than live with it. What I really like about Japanese manga is that people seem to become friends really quickly, it's like once people have a common view they are thick as thieves.
There are a lot of aspects of Speed Racer in this manga, I mean, they are both Osamu Tezuka, and you can really tell in particular pages 48-49 with the classic stretched torso pose and implied violence from the multiple "BAM"s written across the next page. One of the kids in this comic looked just like Astro Boy, he almost had the same face and hair, I think his name was Tatta. This comic in particular has a lot of sound effects for movement. I was reading one page where there was an army coming in and the entire thing was just: Booms, Snaps, Rumbles, Gallops, and Phoofs.
I've also seen Millennium Actress as well as basically every other film Satoshi Kon has made. When he died I was seriously heartbroken. I really like Paprika and Perfect Blue better as films because they explore the psyche more and had a lot more of a unique flavor to them: I mean in Paprika you are running around in a circus like dream world where anything goes and Perfect Blue leads you down a rabbit hole where you question the main character's sanity. I would say Millennium Actress is the tamer of the bunch. I have only seen this movie once because it was kind of repetitive to me after awhile of always running and searching for someone. I think this film does give a very good sense of Japan more so than the other two just because there is so much of the things Setsuko Hara that explore the past genres of Japanese history. And this movie in particular really weaves seamlessly through her past and her present and takes the two interviewers with her.
I've also read all of Scott Pilgrim as well as seen the movie which was actually a really good representation of the book, which I wasn't expecting. I think the most exciting thing about this comic was that Scott Pilgrim was like one of those 8bit games. I mean, I am not a gamer myself, but it really had an appeal all to its own because nobody had really done that before. You get extra lives just like a game, and there are different bosses and it makes sense as you are reading it, it's not jarring at all. And Scott Pilgrim seemed like a real story about this guy in Canada. And it's cheeky as hell. There's a guy with Vegan powers and this comic has probably the best collection of one liners ever. My favorite line from the comic would have to be
Scott: "What's the website of amazon.ca?"
Wallace: "Amazon.ca?"
The comic is snarky and sarcastic and it really stands out to me. I don't really read copious amounts of comics on my own because books are more appealing to me. And at the same time I really don't have time with the amount of coursework as a senior CA, but I made time to read all of the books freshman year because they were so goddamn appealing and fun to read.
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