week one: 4KOMA

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week seven: gender and sexuality

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This week, I reread My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness  by Nagata Kabi, which is an autobiographical manga that details her sexuality and also her experiences with mental health. I was first recommended this manga about a year ago by an LGBT friend on tumblr, who was living in Japan at the time as a University student. I read it in one sitting that day, stunned by the sort of blunt honesty and contrast between the sweet drawings and the rough life the author had. It's a pretty intense read, but I really enjoyed it. Japan isn't that great when it comes to LGBT issues, even though it's definitely a part of the developed world. Asia has a big problem with moving forward from traditional societal views. This was a very intimate, genuine autobiographical story and I was particularly impacted by how the author depicts having anxious thoughts, depression, and guilt over her own "inadequacies." She actually published a sequel last year, and the first volume was ...
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week fourteen: satoshi kon

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I love Satoshi Kon. His films are wildly inventive, with stunning camerawork. I first watched Paprika in high school, maybe when I was fourteen or fifteen, and I FLIPPED OUT. It was one of the coolest anime I'd ever seen at the time, right up there with Summer Wars. It was so different and  weird  and fantastical. There's a beautiful level of artistry Kon has with his films, and Tony Zhou from Every Frame a Painting really sums it up the best. He uses space and time in ways that are insanely creative. From cutting frames down to give just a glimpse of action that will register in the audience's consciousness, to using editing to reveal answers to a question in a non-linear way. Match cuts, jump cuts, seamless background transitions, breaking the 180 rule. All aspects of why Kon is rightfully considered a master filmmaker who pushes the medium to exciting new places. I agree that American films have... been "inspired" or perhaps "stolen" Kon'...
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silver spoon

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Arakawa Hiromu's Silver Spoon 1. What is your reaction to the text you just read? I found Silver Spoon to be incredibly enjoyable. It's a slice-of-life manga, but informative in all things farming (in Hokkaido). It reminded me somewhat of a manual. Arakawa has this lovely habit of being very intentional in her work and showing progress of a character developing. We all know Hachiken is going to shape up to be a great farmer in the future, but we're just excited to see how he'll get there. Obviously, the art is fantastic and appealing. How it starts out makes me intrigued because I want to know what's happening. Hachiken is a stand-in for the audience at this point, because he thinks farm school is a breeze while literally knowing nothing about it. I remember reading this for the first time many years ago right after I finished reading Fullmetal Alchemist, and I was disappointed by the easygoing nature of this manga, so I never made it past the first cha...
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