In Japan, anime and cartoons are very popular and read among people with different ages. According to Wikipedia.com, “Manga” is the Japanese word for comic and print cartoons. There are many topics and issues happening in manga such as, romance, comedy, horror, and more. With that reason, manga readers are not limited by their ages because they may read various subject matters. Furthermore, Japanese government supports the production and publication of manga, hence, influencing other countries like US and France to produce their own creation of manga. Altough the US already known for its literature, however the US versions of manga are very popular as well. Moreover, manga and US traditional literature are very different in many ways.
1. The readers: The readers for traditional literatures are very narrow compare to people who read manga. From kindergarten children to the elders, they enjoy reading manga because of the broad range of topics.
2. The structure: Lots of pictures make the readers easily comprehend about a story. That’s why reading manga is much more enjoyable rather than reading literature with multitude usage of words.
3. The way of reading: Reading manga can be very tricky for people who don’t know how to read it. Traditionally, reading manga is from top to bottom and from right side to left side. On the other hand, English literatures are written from left to right like universe customary reading.
4. The topics: Manga covers topics and issues nearly almost about everything. The stories include love theme, action theme, political theme, and more whereas literature focuses on more serious style of writing.
5. The point: Readers may agree to the fact that reading manga is more enjoyable than reading literature. Literature reading often requires critical thinking in order to get the point of the stories. In contrast, Manga is easy to read and understand because of its pictures and the less usage of words because the pictures itself already center the stories.
One of examples of manga is the comic “Bleach”. The story is about the adventure of a high-school boy who has the ability to see and interact with ghost. With his power, Ichigo (the high school boy) tried to save the people around him. Readers can easily follow the story because of the excessive use of pictures. Readers may feel different vibe each time they turn the page and each time the story developed. The advantage of images form is that the reader should not think or try to picture the setting on their head because it simply drawn already. Conversely, words create extra work for imagining setting and condition purpose. In page 32 until 34 of Bleach (Death and Strawberry), the pictures deeply emphasize the fighting between the hallow and the shinigami. There are mainly pictures in the page and the reader may feel the intense action-fighting through the pictures.
“Bleach” relates in religious and mythical concepts of Christianity and Japanese mysticism. In “Bleach”, Rukia (Female Death God) transferred some of her power to Ichigo with the intention to help her defeat the evil spirits. Instead, Ichigo soul’s took nearly all of her power and combine the power with his own. That is why it is easy for him to destroy the hollow and make him a “Death-God” like Rukia. Similarly to Christian believes, Jesus was once also a human then he becomes God who is eternal. Both “Bleach” and Christian believes share the knowledge of transformation from human to fully divine God. Furthermore, “Bleach” also relates with Japanese mysticism concept which principally derives from Shinto and Buddhism religion. The story stretches the notion of good and evil spirits. Ichigo fights the evil spirits (Hallow) and become a shinigami (good character) which helping soul spirit from hallow attack is the main job. Similarly to the manga, Japanese religion also practices the good deeds and very spiritual. It focuses on how humans are fundamentally good and the bad deeds caused by evil spirit.
In my opinion, one of “Bleach” main lesson is about the good deeds of helping others who need helps. In the second chapter, Ichigo were tested for his “helping others” ability by Rukia. Previously, he stated that he doesn’t want “to help strangers” but later he was helping a kid-spirit who was get attacked by the hallow with his own sword (page 12-20). In addition, as the story developed, Ichigo fought numerous hallows to protect others. However, the story also tells us about the viciousness that the world faced. Ichigo encounter the other fact of his duties of not only fighting hallows but also fighting other shinigamis in soul-society, who try to test his skill and ability of his new profession. With this, it says that human also face betrayal and disloyalty by the one who they think is their good friends or good spirits.
No comments:
Post a Comment