A friend of mine recently asked me to write something about manga for a national broadsheet, the Manila Bulletin. Instead of shocking kids with my rabid fujoshi fangirlings, I decided to take the safe route and explored the different aspects of monsters seen in manga. I’m not entirely an avid of monsters in manga, but I took this as an opportunity to explore their presence and their effect in manga. It turned out to be more interesting than what I had expected. I hope you guys enjoyed reading it too.

Manga and Monsters

Published June 28, 2008 in the Manila Bulletin. Online on June 30.
Manga may appear to be literature for children yet they speak to us of change that is universal to many. No matter what shape or form, change will happen in our lives…

I hate monsters.

Ever since I was a kid, I abhorred the idea of Halloween because of the various monster specials shown on TV. They eat you, consume you, and even in your sleep, they haunt you. And for years I tried my best to evade these monsters the way you try to avoid bullies in your school. Don’t look at them straight in the eye. Keep calm, ignore them, and just walk away.

And yet here I am, years later, reading my manga, suddenly staring at one monster straight in the eye. Just like that high school bully, they’ll find their way to get back at you.

Finding a monster in a Japanese comic, most popularly known as manga, is like finding a cockroach on your cupboard. Having a monster in their manga is a natural occurrence and it revels at that moment when you scream on top of your lungs.

For a tight-lipped society like Japan, monsters not only spark interest because of their strange looks but also because of their ability to elicit change. This is why they’re called bakemono by the Japanese – things that can change. This ability to transform himself or his surroundings is the very heart of the Japanese bakemono. And in manga, we see these in various shapes and sizes that it’s interesting how even if I change the genre of comics I’m reading, one way or the other, I’ll end up facing a monster.

Children’s manga is bombarded with bakemonos. Instead of seeing drooling sharp-toothed beasts, they have talking trains, electric yellow kittens, and humanized bread.

Doraemon

The most famous of these monsters is Doraemon, a blue cat from the future who has a strange pocket filled with various toys and devices.

In this comic, Doraemon returns to the past to change the wayward ways of his creator, Nobita. In his youth, Nobita was a slacker and would rather play around than rather than do his homework. More than that, he was also spineless and was often bullied and taken advantage of by his friends. Doraemon’s arrival boosts the young Nobita’s spirit and helps him to change into a good boy.

Doraemon may not be the usual monster that you can imagine. He is more of a cat than the beast that we would usually attribute to a monster. However, by definition of the bakemono, Doraemon is no different than the threatening beast. Doraemon’s role becomes integral because Nobita needs him to change his bad habits.

This bakemono has a very simple role yet proves itself to be an important and crucial tool for change. Through monsters like Doraemon, children understand the importance of change and how they should be open to it. Change brings about new and interesting experience that can probably teach you a lesson or two in life. As the readers of mangas such as Doraemon grow older, a different kind of bakemono is introduced. One that most of us are familiar with.

Boy’s manga

The heart of bakemono in manga is in boys’ manga. Writers in boys’ manga are a little adventurous in terms of creating monsters. In stories like “Kekkaishi” and “Naruto,” bakemonos take the familiar shape of big beasts with scary faces.

Particularly in Kekkaishi, different types of bakemonos exist not only to change the people they’re with but also to exhaust a power that lies beneath the town.

The ayakashi, the name of the monsters in Kekkaishi, are examples of the traditional monsters that we see in our imagination. They can be wolverines, ghosts, or giant owls. In order to get the power beneath the town, the ayakashi wreaks havoc in the school. It is the duty of the kekkaishi to stop these ayakashi before they can even harm people outside the school. What is interesting is despite the destructive nature of the ayakashi, their presence also brought in a positive change to the main character, Yoshimori.

When Yoshimori was young, he was careless as a kekkaishi. He did not enjoy his job and often left it to his comrade, a fellow kekkaishi named Tokine. One night, a strong ayakashi arrived in school and tried to attack Yoshimori. Tokine came in to save him but severely injured her arm in the process. Yoshimori witnessed all of this and swore to himself that he will become a better kekkaishi so that no one will be hurt like Tokine did. Yoshimori’s story is a common example of how a bakemono’s presence can turn young boys to heroes. In boys’ manga, the monsters usually serve as triggers that riles up the heroes of that story to rise up to the challenge. They serve as tools to change boys to heroes.

But the bakemono in boys’ manga can also take a more familiar form – one which we’d least expect as a monster.

In Kazuo Umezu’s Drifting Classroom, it was the school that turned into the bakemono. One day, a great earthquake shook Tokyo and all of a sudden, the Yamato Elementary School disappeared into thin air. The students of the school were in deep shock to find themselves in a different world after the earthquake. There was nothing but sand outside their school. Students cried for their families while teachers held on to their sanity just to keep the kids calm. The school’s sudden disappearance triggered a change so drastic that many were pushed to kill and harm others in order to survive. The Drifting Classroom is a simple yet brilliant example of introducing young readers to another monster. It may appear that the school may be the bakemono, but in fact it gave birth to another bakemono, man’s inner demons.

The Drifting Classroom shows to readers how the bakemono need not be the giant monster from the future but the very teacher whom you trusted. The breakdown of the teachers and their sudden violent rage illustrates how a human can be corrupted when all hope is lost. It is scary to see how these individuals, whom these kids trusted a lot, suddenly start killing each other in frenzy.

For me, a man’s inner monster is more frightening than King Kong and Godzilla combined. I can forgive monstrous beasts because I can barely understand their consciousness, but I cannot seem to let ordinary humans turned killers slip away. Seeing them consciously decide to harm someone is frightening.

Monster

Such was the case in Naoki Urasawa’s work, Monster. In this story, a talented neurosurgeon named Kenzo Tenma was framed for a murder he did not commit. Years later, he realizes that one of his patients, Johann Liebert, was responsible in committing the crimes that Dr. Tenma was accused of. The story of the manga revolves on Tenma’s drive to clear his name as well as understand Liebert’s motivations in committing the crimes and framing him.

Monster is a great example of a story that actually explores the internal monster that lies within us. Not only do we see Liebert as the monster, but also how the people around him, particularly Dr. Tenma, have turned into a monster as well. It’s interesting how Urasawa built his characters to be innocent and kind-hearted in the beginning and eventually showing how they’re truly sinister after Liebert has affected their lives.

In this story, you have doctors choosing patients to save rather than treating them all equally for power. You have scientists manipulating minds of children to make them killing machines. You have sons and daughters killing their parents with no remorse. Even Tenma, the protagonist of this story, trades his scalpel for a gun. A person, who was once a savior, is now a killer. These bakemono that appeared in Monster is within our scope of reality. The comic illustrates how the bakemono is not only outside us, but within us as well. And as long as we know that it has the capability to exist, it remains a constant threat in our life.

From here, we learn that there are two faces to the bakemono in Japanese comics. There are monsters that exist outside of us and there are those that exist within us. Both have the ability to harm people and both also have the ability to teach people how to overcome it. And no matter which manga I’ll be reading, I will end up finding a monster there, not simply because the Japanese love it and it thrills them to see change in their supposedly conformist society, but because this is their way to show to people about the reality of change.

Manga may appear to be literature for children yet they speak to us of change that is universal to many. No matter what shape or form, change will happen in our lives. If I must say, the chronic presence of the bakemono in manga is only a reminder of that old scientific saying that the only thing constant in life is change.

And as long as this equation is true, then I’ll be expecting that monster in that manga I’m reading. I guess, that’s the cue for me to face my darkest fears.