This morning, I was reading through my feeds to see a translated interview of Hagio Moto by Matt Thorn. I was rather surprised to find Hagio-sensei to be a girl. All this time I thought that the writer of one of my favorite SF stories, They were 11, was a guy. I ahve never read the manga and only saw the anime through a friend and I was breathtaken. I was rather surprised to see that she was a girl. More so, she’s one of the Magnificent 24!! So I just had to read it and sure it was fun to see her experience as a writer and how she is paid this much money for a page (which then made my wonder… “do mangakas take advantage of the amount of cash they earn per page that’s why sometimes… they waste pages on long and pining battle scenes?”) What was interesting to read though was when Moto-sensei mentioned…
She said this in lieu of reading Ozamu Tezuka’s Shinsengumi!. For her, seeing characters express their feelings and being caught in their emotions was the heart of being a mangaka. My heart went a flutter just thinking of all these nostalgic moments in manga where I have wept, leapt, and tore my hair out in frustration for the next chapter. And true enough. There is a strength in manga which I seem to not find much in anime. It is this aspect of feeling the character, as though you were that character or his best friend.
Anime is all about the visuals, like a wikipedia entry or a webpage that doesn’t like to use the cut option. Everything is laid out and all the cards are shown. Not all animes are like this, however weekly animes tend to be as predictable as cheeseburger. They expect you to accept the character for who he is. Unlike in manga wherein you grow with the character.
Growing with the character is something that I think you can grasp stronger in manga. It is in manga where page by page you discover more about the character and mangakas make every effort to make a panel say a thousand words. There is an inner mystery that only the mangakas reveal and only those who get affected can discover. And so true. God, I can attest a lot of scenes that have swept me off my feet and have literally taken me to their world.
Ahahaha! I can only imagine a number of anime nuts who could possibly hate me for this entry. But this isn’t an entry about an age old debate. Anime and Mangas are two entirely different mediums and you can’t compare an apple pie and an ice cream sandwhich. Both are great in their own right and have their own strengths and weaknesses.
I wrote this because well, friends always find me silly crying, whining, laughing over a manga. They’ll say “Dude! It’s just manga.” But to me, the emotions felt in a manga are real. The emotional connection between a character and its reader is no different to that of the reader and his friend. Its true and as pure or deceitful as it gets. Just like real life. Hence, I know how you feel… exactly how you feel.
waaa! That “They were 11” story… sounds freaky. and very interesting 😀 It’s nice to know that a lot of manga with very deep meanings still exist. I’m sick of dumb girls in maid outfits. >:
Hagio Moto? Hagio Moto was not the one who wrote monster. It’s Naoki Urasawa. Moto-sensei wrote They were 11, one of this classic anime OAVs I saw in my youth. The story is about this ship off into space and there’s a murder that happened in the series. The thing is, the trip is set for 10 people only, and it turns out they were 11. With one murdered and another murderer lurking in the ship, they had to figure out whodunnit. It’s similar to this series called Sunshine. The plot was really deep so I was surprised that it was written by a girl mangaka.
The anime monster is quite an exception. It was rather faithful to the manga, then again, I think Urasawa wouldn’t have wanted otherwise.
I totally agree with you in the changing world view of mangas. There’s so much I didn’t know about Japan that I figured out only through Japanese mangas and animes. There were also different kind of emotions that I did not understand that I understand through these works. I think it’s not only akin to manga but to a lot of literature (and spin-offs there of such as anime, films, and documentaries). Its interesting, isn’t it?
the person you’re talking about… is this the one that created monster?
whoever that dude is, s/he changed my life. if you’re affected by the manga through utterly moving emotions, i got affected through making my “world view” change. monster is really dramatic, and it portrayed situations … usually of desperation.
seeing characters get more desperate than i am, somehow, i got strengthened and my motto became “There are people there in more desperate situations.” during the time i was watching that, i was in a quarter-life crisis, not being able to take the course i really like and all. (that was also when i started ignoring my studies)Everyday i came back from school, I’d watch my daily dose of monster and my spirit just came back to life. hahaha.
(I’m not a manga fan – but an anime fan. I hate reading.)