Five Stars for FullMetal

It wouldn’t be “manga week” if I didn’t talk about my favorite series: ‘FullMetal Alchemist’. I’ve read it start to finish at least three times. FMA is a shounen series, following two teenage brothers.

The story itself is very sad with so many dark overtones. These siblings, Edward and Alphonse, have lost so much. Their father left when they were very young, their mother died a few years later, and in an attempt to bring her back Ed lost two limbs and Al lost his physical body. They relied on the kindness of a childhood friends and her grandmother. But Hiromu Arakawa counters this heaviness by filling as much humor as she can into the writing. Ed hates to drink milk and gets into heated arguments over his insecurity about his height. One of the characters, Major Armstrong, is so over the top you have to laugh at his family pride and never missing the opportunity to show off his muscles. Almost every character has some kind of quirk that can bring about a smile. She also adds humor by playing with how the characters are drawn. Arakawa will simplify and exaggerate features for comedic effect, and she’s quite successful at it.

FullMetal Alchemist takes the reader on an emotional journey. We grow up with the protagonists. We see them through their struggles and their triumphs. I cry at certain parts every time I read the manga. Every time! But I never get tired of reading FMA.

SnK

‘Shingeki no Kyojin’, or ‘Attack on Titan’, is a manga that just recently exploded in popularity. The first season of its anime counterpart premiered this summer, bringing with it a booming number of new readers. I am included in that amount. The manga debuted in 2009, but I didn’t start reading it until the beginning of this summer when I wanted to figure out what the hype was about on tumblr.com centering on some new anime.

The base story line itself is pretty simple. There are these giant humanoid monsters called “titans” that eat humans. The population is down to a handful, maybe a few hundred survivors, which are living inside a walled city. It isn’t until later chapters that new facets of the story start to appear. The lack of information explaining these aspects keeps me reading.  All these characters are dedicating their lives to the military to kill titans but then some of them can transform into titans? And not all of them are on the good guy’s team?? Most of the titans are just lumbering, incoherent reverse-snack machines for humans but every once in a great while one will come along that possesses higher functioning brainpower.

Not to mention that our main protagonist’s father seems to know what’s up with why some of these kids can turn into titans (most of the main cast are around the age of 15, and then there’s a big jump to at least 30 years old for other characters). Of course, the father is in hiding and his secrets lie in the basement. Without these little touches to enhance the storyline of ‘Shingeki no Kyojin’ is about 95% gore and tears.

I know this class is focusing on comics, but on a side note, I’d like to very quickly mention the anime. First of all, and most importantly, it sticks extremely close to the manga. For almost every scene you could hold up the book and travel panel by panel on your television. Another point I would like to make is how well animated the series is. There are all kinds of mid-air acrobatics going on that flawlessly follow through to the next action sequence. The 3D techniques meld smoothly into the traditionally animated realm of ‘Attack on Titan’.

Manga Blurbs

Something that I found curious about ‘Mushi-shi’ the first time I read it is that this manga does not have a continuing story arc. The chapters are set up more like “mini-sodes” and then we’re off to a different mischief making spirit in the next chapter. The story does keep the same protagonist though; Ginko, a witchdoctor type of character who has the knowledge to dispel or help people live in peace with mushi. I do like how the story is set up so that the sections are literal chapters of Ginko’s life.

I also decided to read some of ‘Buddha’ by Osamu Tezuka. I can’t quite pinpoint the style of this manga yet. I feel like the characters at the very beginning have more details. As the story progresses the people and animals get the same amount of detailing and simplified. ‘Buddha’ takes place in India, but the language is American city slang. The panel layout reads fairly easily though. For some reason it took me a minute to remember that Tezuka made ‘Astro Boy’, which on my list of least favorite series. 

‘Scott Pilgrim’ isn’t something that I would group into manga. I believe the artist is Canadian, and I feel like the style fits more into late Western cartoons. I read the first few volumes from a friend, and greatly enjoyed the humor. (I was disappointed with the movie, there were a few good lines, but I felt like it fell short) The comic has a sassy flair to it and relatable characters. It also reads in the Western left to right, same as ‘Buddha’. Traditional manga reads right to left.

Comics from Across the Pond

I chose to read ‘The Nikopol Trilogy’ by Enki Bilal from our selection this week. In a nutshell the story was very weird. I loved the concept of futuristic, post-nuclear, alien inhabited Europe. Originally I thought the Egyptian god characters were just oddly specific aliens, but they were supposed to be actual, immortal gods. I still don’t understand why they were in Paris (besides “our spaceship broke down and oh by the way Horus has gone renegade).

The first section of the book captured my attention. I was curious as to what was going on and why the main character was significant. Bilal did this wonderful thing, by using a person who was in a time capsule, the reader also got just enough information about how this world functioned as it was explained to the protagonist.

The second section confused me as to if I was in the same storyline. It started out with a female protagonist in London. But then we got flash backs of a continuation from events and characters from the first chapter. These sudden cuts were very jarring. The change of protagonist sucked me out of the story, to be honest. I kept reading to see if Nikopol came back. He ends up falling in love with the female alien introduced. She skips around the world with Nikopol and Horus and ends up bearing Horus’s child, which is seen on the last few pages of the book.  

By the last chapter I was forcing myself to finish. I had to at least read to the end, which was strange as well. I am curious about what happens to Nikopol’s son, but the rest of the story lost my interest.

The art style itself was rather nice. I liked to harsh, bold lines that fit in with the war-ravaged world. On a serious comic note, I do not think the story would have held together without color. The details of the dialogue would have been lost to the reader. Actually, a lot of details would have been lost or difficult, such as hair color or body paint. The color looked like marker or a softer paint effect, and was very well applied.

'March: Book 1' by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

This week we have another graphic novel based off of real events. Stylistically, ‘March: Book 1’ is enticing and realistic without overburdening the reader with detail. The gray scale gives plenty of information in 4 or 5 shades, occasionally going to strictly black and white for emotional effect. The layout of the pages runs smoothly. There is a nice mix between pages full of panels to a single page of one powerful image. This visual breaks are paced excellently and much needed. The only factor that jarred me from the story was when some of the transitions from present to past or vice versa was unclear. I had to search for the little time stamp hidden in the corner of the page. It felt like I just jumped space and time and had to desperately look for a road sign or newspaper.

The story itself is quite engaging. At the time it is portraying, segregation is still going strong. Looking at the dates, it really wasn’t that long ago. It’s intriguing to think of how Mr. Lewis’s life could have been so different if he’d listened to his parents and just “laid low.” He got in trouble for going to school. He probably would have become a minister or chicken farmer if it weren’t for his courage. This was only a third of his story, but Lewis was an integral part of the civil rights movement, being extremely inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. I’m a big supporter of non-violence. And it just made me angry to read about how people treated each other in this book. One particular comment that irked me was one white male saying, “Go back to Africa.” These protesters are American born citizens. It just made me angry.

On a lighter note, I found it quite amusing that they referenced a comic about Martin Luther King Jr. in a comic book that had a section about how much of an inspiration he was to Lewis.

'Maus' by Art Spiegelman

‘Maus’ was a very heavy read. Not excruciatingly long, but the dark subject matter seemed to stretch the book. Knowing that this is a true story evoked different emotions than if it was an alternative history fiction novel. This story made me very sad for what Spiegelman’s father went through, even though he could be unpleasant at times. 

Something important that stood out to me was the use of language in ‘Maus’. The conversations seemed logical and naturally paced. There’s even a point in part two of the story where he pokes fun of how he can edit conversation in his book. His father’s broken English was realistic to me, but over the course of the book got grating to read. I found myself editing his speech in my head to be grammatically correct. Showing his own progress on how he made the book helps the reader understand the long process of converting his father’s memories to pages.

I also think it was smart to portray the “characters” as animals instead of humans. I’m not sure if I could have handled this book if it was full of drawings of tortured people. I would probably just be silently crying the whole time while reading. We have a different connection to animals. It also helped to easily identify the races or religions of the characters. He used another animal’s head as a mask to show how the Jews had to hide their identity as best they could to sneak around. However he did have some struggles with deciding on animal aliases. He made a Frenchman his father met in the camps a frog, but his wife is French and ultimately decided to make her a mouse as well. There is a sibling rivalry between Art and his “ghost-brother” who did not survive the war. I find it strange to be compared to a memory. On the last page of part two, his father calls him his brother’s name, Richieu.

Stylistically, the story is quite simple and this aids the legibility. The art does not compete with the subject matter. There are subtleties in some of the panels that I think are great details. In one cell on page 125 of part one, when his parents are trying to remain free under Germany’s control, the road is actually shaped like a swastika. The chapter illustrations are usually more detailed than the story pages. Most of them are very dark, with both heavy line weight and subject matter.