Manga

For week ten in our history of comics journey we’re talking about manga and the Japanese comic tradition. Here we learned about the king of the Japanese comic industry, Tezuka. The man launched his comics all throughout Japan creating unimaginable success, thus launching comics into new renaissance. Inspiring a wave of new comic creators in the 90s like Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Inuyasha and Ranma ½.  Takahashi was my introduction into Japanese media, when Inuyasha was broadcasted in the US. Once I got a taste of that I went onto the other works of Takahashi, so I was already familiar with Ranma ½ before this last class. So for the assignment I decided to revisit my youth, reread Ranma ½. It’s been a good six to seven years since I read it last and reading it now gave me so much nostalgia it was astounding. Ranma is a story that’s quite different than the stories that were written at the time, Takahashi has a knack for writing unique plot lines usually having some sort of mystical/historical element. In Ranma, Takahashi used an interesting transformation technique by making the trigger, water, which is an important and unique aspect to the plot. The author also creates alluring character dynamics and she displays a creative take on  masculinity. By making the main protagonist a macho male martial artist and giving him a curse so whenever he touches water he turns into a girl. A great thing that I learned from reading the manga was that the manga and the anime are exactly the same, so you can drop one and pick up the other and you’ll still know what’s happening.