|
|
 What I Did During My Husband's Vacation: I Read Dororo and Real
Written by Barb Lien-Cooper
While my husband was away at the New York Comic Convention, I was stuck at home. Not such a bad thing, as New York in February is COLD compared to where we live. Well, I missed him a lot, so to make myself feel better, I picked up some manga that he likes that I haven't bothered reading yet.
I tried Black Jack, but it was a bit too old-school for me. Inventive, yes. Wildly imaginative, heck yeah. A classic, probably. But definitely old-school.
Much more successful on the Osamu Tezuka old-master scale for me was Dororo (Vertical). Now, I knew of this manga before, because Park insisted I watch the live-action feature based on it with him awhile back. Now, if you're looking for a blockbuster that's light, goofy, and fun, instead of grim and gritty like, say, almost every comic-book movie adaptation that came out last summer, you might like this slightly campy, exciting, supernatural samurai flick. In other words, if you liked Hellboy and The Great Yokai War, then Dororo's your film.
Anyway, Dororo the manga series is also pretty neat. After I got used to everyone in the book looking like Astro Boy, it went down smooth as a sundae. Dororo is about a young thief who teams up with a demon-slaying swordsman with an interesting secret about himself. Okay, it's not exactly a secret--it's the main set-up of the book. Dororo's best buddy is made up of artificial parts because years back demons stole his body. To get his body parts back, one by one, he must kill demons he encounters. Kinda like Inu-Yasha, except unlike those pesky sacred jewel shards, which went on and on and on until everyone was frustrated, Dororo knows not to overstay its welcome. The story is quick-paced, quick-witted, fun, a little goofy, a little poignant here and there, very engrossing, and just plain good. Definitely a cut about the normal sword-and-sorcery fight manga.
But the cherry on the ice cream of my manga reading the weekend my husband braved the cold was Takehiko Inoue's Real (Viz). Now Takehiko isn't quite an old master, but he's definitely an old pro at writing top-notch manga. Note that I'm not into sports manga, in the main. My husband is, but the genre is often a tad repetitive and formulaic for my tastes. But when I read the first volume of Takehiko Inoue's Slam Dunk (Viz), I have to admit, I got into it, as old school as it was (Slam Dunk, perhaps the best selling manga of all time, came out in the 1980s, I think). Anyway, if you're into basketball, Slam Dunk's cool.
But I'm not talking about Slam Dunk, I'm talking about Real. Now, you might wonder why, if I liked Rebound, I didn't pick up Real when it first came out. I didn't because I found the subject matter of the series to be intimidating at first.
Real concerns wheelchair basketball.
My mind went several places when I saw that. Would it depress me? Would it be faux-inspiring, like an after-school special? Would the characters all be brave and bold and unrelentingly cheerful and never let their physical problems get them down? Would I be preached at by the series? Would my emotions be deliberately wretched and played with in a way that made me feel manipulated?
So I decided not to read the series, in spite of my husband's obvious interest in it and enjoyment of it. But while he was away, I got curious and dragged down a volume of the series. And soon after that, another. And soon after that, another. By the time I was finished, I was angry and disappointed that I didn't have any more of it to read!'
So the answers to my questions above were all No. I wasn't depressed at all by the series. Real can make you sad, but it never asks you for the sort of pity that some books use because the author thinks pity will hook you, when usually it just alienates. Real refuses to sentimentalize or idealize its characters. Instead, we see the physically-challenged members of the team go through the stages of grief, especially anger and depression. Knowing that they'll eventually work through this grief so they can deal with their physical, mental, and emotional challenges makes the process both interesting and, as strange as this is to say, entertaining. There are no easy answers with this series, no fake tales of inspiration with chipper heroics. There's also no preaching in the series. We're here for the stories, not for the after-school-special message that some less experienced authors might bring to the work. We're not told that differentially-abled people can and do lead fulfilling lives. We know that already. Instead, we get to see HOW they get to that point. We get to see the process of moving toward acceptance and moving ahead. It's not an easy process, it's not a fast one, but it can and is done.
To me, Real isn't about sports or handicaps. Instead, it's about how people find hope to cope after their dreams have been put seriously off-track by tragedy. And the fact that dreams can be delayed, deferred, disabled, but never totally crushed unless we allow them to be is what gives this manga its universal appeal.
Real is real life. It's also real, real good.
As a side note, one thing I'd like to see at the end of Real's editorial notes every volume is one simple link. It's to the official website of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association. It's kind of a cool sport, amongst other things. But since Viz hasn't done that (yet!), let me:
http://www.nwba.org/
: :
|
30 August 2010
MangaLife: On Culture
Share 25 August 2010
Words of Truth and Wisdom: I Put A Spell On You
Share 11 August 2010
Words of Truth and Wisdom: Filters
Share 6 August 2010
Maybe You're Not Using It Right :On Japanese Load Words
Share
|
