Week 9: Shojo and Josel: Banafish

Image result for banana fish

Akimi Yoshida is known for her working and expanding the border of romance manga. Her work Bananafish is considered one of the best manga in 20th century Japan. The first impression I read this manga is that her drawing style is really influenced by Katsumi Otomo, the original artist of AKIRA. Shojo manga is one of the famous manga genres in Korea where I lived and I love shojo manga so Bananafish was easy to start reading.

Ash is perfect when we just see him. He is smart, handsome and he got hard training from Mafia so that he is able to shoot a gun, even perfectly. Such an ideal boy. However, actually, his mother left him alone and the mafia boss with a sexual obsession with young boys abused him.
I think he symbolizes people who do not know love or how to love. He is grown up in bad circumstance and cannot feel normal emotions. He should have hidden his emotions and feelings to live in the world. However, he met a boy named Eiji. He is the first and only person who comes to Ash and sees him as a "person".

Personally, I think the details of Eiji's emotion and thinkings need to be described more because I think he is shown pretty much the same as the one-sided character.
However, the letter Eiji wrote, the context there shows what kind of person Eiji is. Ash looks stronger, he is a mafia. But the real strong person was Eiji I think. He is a savior of Ash and he knows the real love and Ash finally learns Eiji's, true love.

I am not sure it is categorized as BL (boy's love), but I think the relationship between two isn't just a "love". Sure there is love, but the communication and connection they share include that belief, hope, reject. Just all the emotions people can feel to another who the one strongly depends on mentally.
Bananafish is a drug which controls a human's emotion. But a character said to Ash not to control the emotions but you will be a devil. I think this is the main theme of the work. Be true to your emotion and feelings and that is the key for connection and love.

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Questions

1. What makes the difference between manga and graphic novels? Not just manga is from Japan, I want to know the differences between them within contents and backgrounds and storytelling? 2. How manga and anime evolve and how did the cultural background effect?
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Week 4: Alternative Manga and "I saw it!"

Manga has the power to send the message with drawings and story. Most of the Japanese manga I read had a long storyline, but with the chance of reading "alternative manga", I got more interest in short mangas and the characteristics of short mangas. I want to keep more focus on the manga we had in class "I saw it" which is a short manga by Keiji Nakazawa. The basic plot is an autological story that the story of himself about suffering atomic bomb in Japan. I am from South Korea which went through Japanese colonial occupation in WW2. I learned the history of WW2 from the perspective of Korea which was a colony of Japan. This comic book was my first step to see the history with the perspective of Japan, especially the 20th century. I was shocked by the realistic description of the actual situation and harm of the atomic bomb. I first thought just that this is horrible but now I realize that is the power of documentary manga. Showing the reality to the audience with
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Sliver Spoon: Week 14

Hiromu Arakawa has been one of my favorite manga artists since I watched Fullmetal Alchemist. Her storytelling and character designs are amazing. However, what makes her manga more special is the message she wants to give to the audience and how she deals with it. Silver spoon is basically a story of a high school boy who has no dream but came to an agricultural school just because he needs somewhere else to live. I only read the first chapter so that I cannot cover the whole thing. However, I can see she wants to say something with a story where a boy grows up not only physically. Already in the first chapter, I can see the change of emotion and think of the character and we could think about how the story will go. He came to school without no dream related to agricultural stuff. He entered the school with the best grade and after seeing some classmate, he thought they are not that smart and kind of look down on them. However, the classmates start the conversation about agriculture
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