Manga, Anime & Mac II: The Cool Japanese Bomb

Manga used to be associated with comics for children, but japanese manga and anime has a lot of diversities, we know it like a violent and porno expression by our ignorance, and we ask us if it´s a good material for children yet.

But there are several variables styles of anime and manga, by age, professions, for every taste you can think about.

There is manga for girls (shôjo), for boy (shonen), for man, for women (lady´s manga), historic manga, erotic manga (sukebe), porn manga (hentai), manga for gays (yaoai), for teens, and the manga just for children…

There are anime and manga done for diverse professions: for yupies, for cops, for secretaries… and we can find more divisions inside each clasification, by example, ther are dramatics mangas inside shôjo manga style (“Candy, candy” OVA), comedy (“Marmalade Boy”), terror and suspense (“Perfect Blue”), magical mangas, for lesbians girls, historic female mangas, about school life, etc.

We´ll do a “flashback”:

Osamu Tezuka (Osaka, 1928-1989) manga´s God, was one of the manganime forerunners. A pioneer in the World of Comics, you can watch his simple lined draws, with big expressives eyes , and the shaking action of his comics inside cult works like “Atomic Boy” or “Janguru Taitei (Kimba, the White Lion)”.

Tezuka, was a great admirer of the European cinema, he incorporated new techniques from films at his manga works, that they produced revolutionary characteristics to this sort, like first planes, special points of view, slow motion for example… The movie “Metropolis” (2001) directed by Tarô Rines, is an anime film based at an original manga written and drawn by Tezuka.

Another antecendents locate the origin of manga around the end of XVIII Century, when tales where written with short draws on “parchment” that mixed medieval nipon images with signatures explaining the Japan history, there where done for a few polite people. Actually, manga is made for massive public. A public who becomes bigger and bigger.

Tezuka used his own draws and incorporated to the anime the same technical which used then Hanna-Barbera (Los picapiedra). At 1961 he founded an anime company, where he began the more popular actual styles, by example “Mecha”, manga y anime with robots, was “TESUO ATOM” his first mecha.

Let´s talk about something closer to us: everyone will remember Mazinga Z and Dr. Kabuto, 13 episodies where showed at spanish tv at 1978, such was it sucsses that 13 more episodies were showed later. “Mazinga Z” is a Go Nagai work, produced by Toei Animation Co. Ltd, same producer company of “Los caballeros del Zodiaco” and the famous anime “Dragon Ball” which was published like manga too at spain. “Drangon Ball” was a great sucsses here and was showed during ten years around latinamerican diferents tvs.

Actually great sucess here is “Shin Chan”, a Yoshito Usui´s work, which on tv programs here at Spain and at latinamerica too.

If there´s something peculiar on manga productions, should be the psicologich description of it´s personages. This caracter was introduced by Tezuka sensei -the god of manga- in manga productions:

“…til now, great number of manga published…were drawn since a bidimensional perspective, like a theatre play. The actors interaction was designed just like one person watching them from the platea public seats. I realized that it wasn´t possible to reach psychological descriptions or powers using this technique, so Ibegan to incorporate films techniques at my compositions. I used old german and french movies, which I had seen at my student age, like example. I used first planes and angles, of course, and I tried to use many panels or several pages to even capture faithfully face movements or expressions that previously had been handled in a single panel. That way I ended up making long works of 500 or 600 pages more than 1000 in just a short time… In addition I thought that the manga´s potential went far away than making laugh; and I began to use drama and revenge scripts and I made histories that not always had a happy end (…)”

(Tezuka´s biography traslation)

One of the anime where we found a clear example of this psychological dimesión of its personages is “Perfect Blue” (1988), directed by Satoshi Kon it is based on the history of Y. Takeuchi. This anime it´s really a psychological thriller that maintains public in suspense. In this anime appears a Perfoma that Mima, the protagonist uses to connect to Internet in several sequences of the film.

Also the use of the language that is used in each manga style is important.

An example is the way to write shôjo manga(manga for girls), difference of shônen manga (manga for boys) also in the specific jargon of its dialogues, which can take to more of a reader off guard being like a duck in a garage, a little loose.

We are going to give a jump to return to Japan, not only is the country that cradles manga, is the country that more mangakas englobes, although some of them work with U.S.A. companies already. Several of the more important mangakas are mac users, they use it well like development tool of the part of its creative process, and it isn´t strange to see macs built-in in mangas and anime.

And speaking about macs we remembered like Frederik L. Schodt tells at his book “Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga”, -one of the animemanga principal publications- , some uses of macs for the production of anime, either like complementary tool to illustrate the drawings, that continue becoming by hand firstly, or to create visual or sonorous effects, as the music of the anime.

In 1982 “Akira” is published, of mangaka Katshuiro Otomo. This manga obtained excellent critics and sketchers of the stature of Moebius described it as “a masterful piece”.

The anime version of “Akira” (1989), directed Ohinata Kayoko, shows a background music made with a keyboard connected to a Mac Plus.

Katshuiro Otomo also took part in the accomplishment of “Metropolis”, mentioned previously. Its production was done during five years.

And several of great mangakas of present time use mac. Between mangakas macusers -Gilles Poitras has mentioned in his interview already-, we found names of the stature of Masamune Shirow, Kishiro Yukito, GTO (Great Teacher Onizuka), Gunsmiths Cats, Asamiya Kia or Monkey Punch, and an establishment of mangakas women exists in addition, who do shôjo, some of them are also macusers.

In 1985 Masanune Shirow begun the episodies of “Applessed” manga, a futurist work. In 1980 “Dominion” was published too, “The Gosht in the Shell”,“Orion”, “Naurohad”…etc. later

The Cyberpunk enters at manga scene by Shirow´s work. Hundreds of mangakas appeared then, followers of the style of this mangaka sensei, with an aesthetic very mechanical and personnel, a teacher describing urban science-fiction histories.

The characteristics of Shirow´s mangas are the incorporation of the traditional techniques of animation used in old Japon already, we are talking about “mechas”: machines and are protagonists robots and humans appeared (like in Blade Runner movie) and hybrids, and He usually makes psychological descriptions of the personages and uses to display female cops heroins.

Between the followers of Shirow we tell about Taku Kitazaki, “Angel Cop” manga´s drawer.

Masamune Shirow uses traditional techniques of drawing for his manga: pens and pencils, transparencies. And a reference to his good taste for macs becomes in “Intron Depot, nº s 1 & 2”. His manga animes used to be done at Studio Proteus, where we asked about macs, but they don´t used them on anime production; nevertheless, Masamune Shirow is a veteran mac user and had designed mice of futurist design also, following his usual aesthetic, which are for mac, for OS 9 and for X system too.

Mangas, toys and computer mouse designed by Masamune Shirow

Yukito Kishiro , mangaka of “Alita, combat angel” explains at Yukitopia the process of the elaboration of a manga cover done with his mac.

And the manga style more popular: the erotic and porn manga, hentai, although it´s the less abundant. “Vanity Angel” is very known in this area, by Kaori Asano. The stars are two friends, that they share everything betwen them, so her boyfriends too. One of them when being excited causes volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, storms and other peculiar phenomena. It´s magic shôjo style.

Around manga shôjo female writters, usually manga for girls uses to be done by ladies, Wataru Yoshizumi,is a mangaka macuser: “Marmalade Boy” is one of her works. She uses mac for inet connections and to look for info for her works and she´s very famous about her “free talk”, with a lot of fans. Freetalk is the autobiographical info that she adds inside her mangas, like on a diary or weblog: She prefers hand written letters, faxes or sms, keitai, than e-mails, because she thinks that a written letter by hand comunicate feelings better. She is friend of some known mangakas girls like Miho Obana author of “Kodomo no Omocha” and Fujita, who is the one in charge to give life to the series “Kero Kero Chaimu”, with them usually Wataru goes to play billiards. She went tripping with Naoko Takeuchi, another mangaka girl ( “Sailor Moon”, “PQ Angels ) too.

A peculiarity of the personages of Wataru is that usually they follow the last tendencies of the fashion and shows the coolest accessories of the moment. A mangaka girl macuser very fashion!