Week 8: Diversity of gender and sexuality in Manga and Anime

Gender and sex are the main controversial subject these days. Especially in a conservative country like Japan, I had never thought Japanese manga was open to LGBT subject so the class this week was very refreshing and great.

The manga "My lesbian experience of loneliness" was impressive. It was not just about sexuality, it was more about finding myself and emotional progress of a person. She, the creator has depression and how her lesbian experience and circumstance around her makes her change was relatable and touching. I was afraid to be a "grown-up" "woman" when I was puberty, the image "woman" should have like the depiction of sexuality and make-up looked weird to younger me. Now I know that was because of wrong imagery of media and "female" just man biological sex, and I do have to do those things to be a woman but still what she felt was pretty similar to younger me. That helps me emphasize to her.
Ran-Ma and "My brother's husband" are both pretty famous back in my country, too. I think Ran-Ma deals the sexuality and story brightly so that gives an easier approach to people who never had experience with reading these kinds of manga. Also, "My brother's husband" was very meaningful since it is created by a bisexual man who knows exactly what gay people feels. I know anyone can make characters different from themselves but still, a work about themselves has more meaning and powerful message associated with their experience.

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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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