This week’s manga recommendation is a manga about… surgery (Next week: Manga about Firefighting). People may run away, but before you do, know that this manga is by the legendary Osamu Tezuka, known in Japan and around the world as “The God of Manga”. I believe the title is fitting for Tezuka: like a real god, he’s created some great things, some bad things and some totally unnecessary things. His mediocre works aren’t bad by “general” standards, though his best works are, simply put, sublime.

 

Black Jack (Osamu Tezuka)
(22 volumes)

There are Black Jack anime movies out there, but you should avoid these movies because (a)Tezuka didn’t direct them, and (b)Like Doraemon, Black Jack is a collection of short stories that is meant to be read in large batches.

 

Plot
Black Jack is a series of stories about a brilliant but ruthless surgeon, who operates unlicensed because of the enormous fees he charges for his services. Black Jack is a peculiar-looking fellow, almost the antithesis of what we expect doctors to look like – he has hair like Cruella de Ville, a black cloak like Dracula (I actually based East Seawood’s cloak on his!), and scars all over his face. He looks like a villain, but is the hero of the story, and despite his cold facade, he really has good intentions.

Now, if I had made the story sound like something about a misunderstood loner with a heart of gold and a core of inner strength; it’s the wrong impression. Black Jack is a doctor, NOT a hero – he does things that I would consider heroic, but this is a mature story that doesn’t necessarily see heroic behaviour or noble sacrifice as rewarding. Black Jack doesn’t always succeed in saving his patients, though alot of the time it’s through no fault of his, but through fault of circumstance or of human weakness. Many of the stories have happy endings, and many do not.

 

Why I recommend this story
This particular Tezuka manga has a special place in my heart, because it was the first Tezuka work I read. My manga-mad cousin first handed this to me when I was 15, and while he explained how good it is, I wasn’t initially impressed. A story about surgery?? How terribly exciting. Not to mention the art seemed really dated and unattractive. It went straight to the bottom of my manga pile, under the DragonBall and Swords-and-Sorcery manga.

After I read all my new action adventure manga, I decided to give Black Jack a try, and then I found I couldn’t put it down. It wasn’t like anything I’ve read before, and it actually held my interest. Up until Black Jack, what I mainly read have been Shonen fighting-and-adventure manga, and rarely ventured outside that world because other stories had little appeal to me. I wasn’t much interested in the (repetitive) romantic problems of Japanese High School girls, so alot of popular 90s Shoujo bored me. Popular 90s Shounen were mostly DragonBall-offshoots, and fairly formulaic. What I found in Black Jack were stories that was NOT formulaic, and about things other than whether I’m going to save the world and/or get the guy of my dreams. This manga opened up a whole new universe for me.

While this manga uses surgery and weird illnesses as it’s main premise, it’s not really what the stories about. These are stories of humanity examined through a medical perspective, and so have the characters at the heart of the drama rather than whatever the Disease-of-the-Week is. That is why I’m able to recommend Black Jack to just about anyone – here is something that SEEMS to be aimed at a niche market (doctors?), but is infact universal in its appeal.

Well, look what I found on my computer! In 2001, I attended a course on philosophy called “Changing Perceptions of Human Nature”. If I had known all they would talk about were Western Philosophers, I wouldn’t have attended it. Nevertheless, I did learn alot of useful things, and it turns out that one of the assignments in the course required students to keep a journal. I wrote 5 journal entries: and I posted this one up because it gives some insights into what I consider when I write my stories. The entry is about the work of Erving Goffman, who was my favourite philosopher in the course. Descartes is an idiot. (And I think I got a bad mark for this assignment).

 

My Views on Goffman
Goffman’s views on human nature is particularly interesting for me, because he believes that the concept of the self is created through social encounters and the way people try and present themselves in a certain social situation. Certainly, he is not the only philosopher to look at human nature through a social perspective, but he is different in the sense that he uses a dramaturgical approach in his arguments. Having a great deal of interest in writing myself, I find his views rather surprising and should I say – helpful. While characters created for literary purposes are no substitutes for real people, his thoughts give structure and framework to a creative process that otherwise cannot be learned from a book.

The basis of the self and its behaviour in Goffman’s work is the Primary Interpretive Framework (PIF), which is a set of assumptions about appropriate behaviour in certain social situations each person learns in early childhood. To draw literary parallels, You can say that this is the first and most crucial step in creating a character for a story – determining the background and a past for the character. Surely, you wouldn’t expect a character living in 11th Century Europe to have similar behavioural or speech patterns to those living in the 20th Century – each period are governed by different social rules. To heighten the sense of reality in a story, the relevant characters must first speak, think and have the morals the reader would expect them to. Only when the social code of the times have been created can the characters start to interact, and the story start to unfold.

This leads onto the next part of Goffman’s theory – that “underlying all social interaction, there is a fundamental dialectic between reality and appearance”. When the characters meet each other in a scene, there could well be story elements under way that the characters don’t know about. Some characters may know things that others don’t. You cannot set up a situation and assume all the characters know the backstory – it’s not realistic to assume that. Characters who have just arrived at the scene will either have to figure out for themselves what is going on, or ask someone there to explain to them. Like real life, that person may not necessarily explain what is truly happening for their own reasons. And so you have a situation where everyone has their own motives, with the reader being the only one who knows what is truly happening.

Which brings us to another part of Goffman’s theory; the way in which the performed character’s self emerges through activity in conjunction with other characters or with props. From a writer’s point-of-view, this is the most important part of developing a character – not only do you have to impress the character’s designated personality upon the reader, but you also have to create character dynamics between the different characters’ personalities. I must say that at times the relationships between the characters are even more important than the personalities the characters originally have – because there are certain elements in a personality that can only be drawn out through interacting with another character. A heroic character can express their heroism through actions, but no one is going to know that this same heroic character has a jealous streak in them unless they are placed in a situation (with the right characters) which brings out this trait.

Overall, I’m fairly impressed with Goffman’s ideas; they may not necessarily apply to real life, but they apply to situations that try to imitate life – the creation of worlds in literature and film. From a philosophical stand-point his ideas may be no more valid than that of other philosophers, but I find it certainly has more relevance with my life and my understanding of humans than the other theories offered.

Not manga or comics-related, but documentaries that have made a strong impression on me. Cinema has always been one of my strong influences, and cinema would include documentaries, so I watch these with strong abandon too. Here are some great documentaries I’ve seen, and would recommend to people.

 

1) The “Up” Documentaries (ie. 7Up, 14Up, 21Up, 28Up, etc)
28Up onwards directed by Michael Apted
The “Up” documentaries is one of the most long-running and profound documentaries ever made. This documentary series traces a group of 7 year-old children from Britain in the 1950s, and every 7 years, returns to see how their lives have progressed. The subjects of the documentary comes from all sectors of society, as the original question posed was whether Britain’s class structure was breaking down. After 42 years, however, this becomes a moot point. What is a far more interesting about this documentary series is seeing the subjects at age 7 and age 14, speculating about their future lives, then see them grow into adults, into middle age with their own children, and comparing what they once were with what they are now (49Up is the latest in the series).

This documentary series may be the only one I’ve seen in which everyone has something to learn from. If you’re a writer or an artist, you will benefit greatly from seeing this. It poses to the audience a universal question: what makes us who we are NOW, at this point in time? Is it our upbringing? Our personalities? Or just the plain randomness of life? This series doesn’t answer those questions, but it gives plenty of ground to ponder on. Highly recommended.

NB. This series has produced 5 spin-offs: 7Up USA, Japan, South Africa… can’t remember the rest.

 

2) American Movie
Directed by Chris Smith
If you’re an artist of any sort, you’ll find something in this movie to identify with. American Movie is a story both sad and funny about a 30-year old man called Mark Borchardt. Mark’s dream is to direct a become a movie director (preferably in Hollywood), despite the fact that he can only do odd jobs, seems to be going nowhere, and makes short horror movies with names like “The More The Scarier 3”. He may seem like a loser, and in a way he IS a loser in the way all unsuccessful artists are “losers”, but he has a drive and determination you can’t help but admire.

… If I have made this movie sound like a Disney documentary, then I didn’t mean to. It is anything but cute and heart-warming. Mark’s life is a struggle every single day, and while this documentary will make you laugh in disbelief, you won’t come away from it feeling warm and fuzzy. It’s a portrait of a driven, desperate man; not a 104-minute feel-good movie propounding the nobility of artistic sacrifice.

 

3) Crumb
Directed by Terry Zwigoff
A documentary ABOUT a cartoonist. Not a manga-ka, but the famous Robert Crumb (more like the “infamous” Robert Crumb). If you haven’t seen his work, see then this documentary first because you may be alarmed by what he draws. This man specialises in taking inspiration from the dark, grotesque side of human nature, and in this documentary where Crumb and his family are interviewed, you get to see why

What is surprising about this documentary is the honest and articulate way Crumb and his brothers talk about themselves and each other. Frankly, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing half the time – this documentary has to be seen (heard) to be believed. You’d think people with lives like this would at least try and tone down the details, but no. Crumb and his brothers see themselves with startling clarity, and this movie made me wonder how many other families out there are like this one. It’s a scary thought.

 

4) Hoop Dreams
Directed by Steve James/Frederick Marx/Peter Gilbert
Hoop Dreams is about young black basketballers who dream of being NBA stars. About 25 make it each year, out of a crop of about 40,000 high schoolers. This is the story of two such young men, coming from the wrong side of the tracks and taking on basketball in an effort to leave the streets. When you live in a neighbourhood where there’s a drug dealer around every corner, anything is preferable to having to spend the rest of your life there.

And here, the story is not only about the sporting hothouses American high schools are, but about the lives of those who live in less-than-ideal neighbourhoods. This is the story that makes me get pissed off about the way hip-hop culture glamourises violence, black violence, poverty and ghetto life. If you’ve never met anyone from a inner-city ghetto, well, here’s the story that will show you the names, the faces and the dreams of the disadvantaged young black men who grow up there. And you’ll see why things such as desperation and disadvantaged backgrounds should never be turned into a marketing ploy. The people in this film, especially Mrs Agee (One of the subject’s mum), deserve so much better than this.

 

5) Bowling for Columbine
Directed by Michael Moore
No introduction needed, really. Michael Moore’s a funny guy, and he genuinely asks some important and interesting questions about the USA’s love affair with guns. This documentary is a compelling view for non-Americans, as the American fascination with gun ownership is something that is quite unique in the world. Many people all the world over own guns, but mainly as a hunting tool, or it’s a necessary part of their profession. Only in America do people buy guns for self-defense, and that’s where all the trouble starts.

Just try and start a debate about whether Americans need to own guns with Americans. The fervity of their defense against their right to own firearms can be alarming (why get so worked up?). There IS indeed a cultural difference here, and it goes beyond all the usual suspects like violent movies, video games and goth music. They have ALL that in Australia too, and many people don’t lock their doors here either (like Canada). It seems to be borne out of a national fear that something is out to GET you, so you have to protect yourself first. Either way, this documentary doesn’t have the answers, but asks plenty of provocative questions.

This week I’ve put up the 13 pages of “TwinSide”, as well as the assorted bits and pieces. I’ve also been doing a colour wallpaper or two, but won’t be putting it up yet – though my output may slow down a bit because of this.

 

Doraemon (Fujimoto Hiroshi and Motoo Abiko)
Has been around since 1970

Now for another very, very famous manga you’ll never have heard of if you live in an English-speaking country – Doraemon, the story of a blue robot cat from the future and his human “owner”, Nobita. It’s no exaggeration to say Doraemon is one of the most iconic manga characters of all time – not as famous as Astro Boy or Hello Kitty, but in some countries just as recognisable. Show a picture of him to children in any East Asian country and they instantly know who he is. What seems like zillions of children grew up on this manga and anime series in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

 

Plot
Since this is a children’s comedy series, the characters remain static, and the plot is relatively simple and episodic. The main character is Nobi Nobita, a fourth-grader who is a failure at everything he does. He is so hopeless his great-grandson from the future has to step in and send him a robot companion, Doraemon. Doraemon is a free-thinking robot with a wide array of futuristic high-tech toys, which he attempts to help Nobita with in everything from passing tests to winning fights with the local bullies. However, as the gentle moralistic nature of children’s stories dictate, the toys are often misused, resulting in a lot of laughs and a few subtle lessons. In the end, everything works out okay – this is a comedy series after all.

 

Why I recommend this story
I used to dislike this story when I was a teenager – I thought I was too grown-up for “childish” stories. Well, you might as well say “TinTin” is childish. The truth is, children’s stories can be wonderfully entertaining for adults to read, and many have things in them which adults may understand better than the target audience. Doraemon is such a story.

Apart from the endlessly amusing gadgetry and all the goofy ways they are misused, there are also some surprisingly touching scenes in the story. The moral content is subtle and rarely preachy, and the more recent stories have an sociological or environmental bent. This makes it educational and entertaining in the best possible sense, and while children may not necessarily appreciate everything in this series, adults certainly will. I, for one, appreciate the way the author is able to work so much into the material without making it seem pretentious.

Then there is the protagonist Nobita; which works as a point of identification for children, and as a metaphor for the flaws adults sometimes find in themselves. Nobita is one of those archetypical characters that everyone can see something of themselves in. He’s lazy, stupid and cowardly, yet has a kind heart and can be counted to make the right choices at the end of the day. Nobita’s inner battles between his slovenly self and his nobler self is often the driving force of the story.

In the end, Doraemon is a rare gem, and one of the few children’s manga I can recommend to adults. However, be warned: even if you’re able to find an English version of this, it’s a story best read in large batches. Reading one or two stories isn’t going to impress. Needless to say, people looking for sweeping epics better look elsewhere, because the drama in this is defintely small-scale, though no less entertaining.