week three: gekiga
This week, we read Cigarette Girl by Masahiko Matsumoto. It's drawn not necessarily in the style of gekiga - the style is really simplistic and cartoony - but the themes are surprisingly mature. Gekiga is a style of manga meant for a mature audience and drawn more realistically to lend itself to that serious vibe. When David defined the term of gekiga, the first things I thought of were seinen and josei manga, or manga aimed at older men and women. The typical style of the 60's gekiga reminded me of the 1988 film Akira, a landmark Japanese adult animation film. The same with Ayako from the first week of reading, Cigarette Girl sort of threw me in a loop. What I expected from the art was NOT what I got from the thematic elements. I think the one about the woman getting the abortion made me the most sad, because of how... realistic it was. The poor girl was essentially tricked into sleeping with her boyfriend, who leaves her because she's pregnant, and her new husband i...
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