And a fast used manga addendum...
*Oh, you know what’s sort of kicking my ass right now? Sanpei Shirato’s The Legend of Kamui, two volumes of which were collected by VIZ back in the day, after the obligatory early serialization via Eclipse (and probably VIZ themselves in some form). I got them both used for about $10 online. Shirato is one of the big names in manga, I believe either a literal co-founder or at least one of the chief forces behind the creation of the famed alternative manga anthology Garo (it’s named for one of his characters), so I was actually kind of floored by the Kamui material I’ve read. Here’s Hayao Miyzaki:
“Shirato Sanpei was a man who reached the wrong conclusions about the historical view of the class system. I think he ran right into those mistakes when writing 'Legend of Kamui'. There's no way anyone survived in his world, not if they all had to become such killers. If the world were truly filled with such hate and destruction, if that were how history was made, then everyone would surely have been dead by the Edo period. That's the point that would have been reached.”
Now the stuff VIZ collected isn’t the vintage 1964-71 Legend of Kamui, but its 1982-87 continuation, created in collaboration with Akame Productions (which I presume is some sort of support staff, like Saito Pro - I notice they’ve been around since the ‘60s too). But wow, this isn’t really at all what I was expecting; I guess I’d anticipated something more… austere from an alternative manga legend, but this is all-out, hands-dirty ninja action sex & violence, with fight sequences lasting dozens of pages in every chapter, gore splattering everywhere - it’s real showmanship. It’s also heavily reminiscent of Kazuo Koike’s and Goseki Kojima’s Lone Wolf & Cub, though I don’t know if that was Shirato’s influence on them, or if he was picking up some influence himself by 1982 - still, right down to the little explanations of miscellaneous aspects of historical life, it feels very much familiar. I also recall seeing Shirato’s art looking much more loose and cartooned back in the ‘60s; his stuff here is very scratchy and heavily realist, quite handsome and contemporary (for 1982 or thereabouts).
But yeah, there’s a shitload of slicing and dicing, gorgeously mounted violence, in between the reflections on paranoia and the abuses of feudal lords. Maybe I should have listened harder to Hideshi Hino, who credits Shirato for changing the world of manga with “spectacle” comics. Strange that so little of so eminently marketable a comics legend is available in English, but maybe a lot of other people have made the mistake of presuming that Shirato is less accessible than he is. I mean, these are really great action comics. Even stranger that I can’t seem to find I single website with any samples of his art. Oh internet, how can you let me down...
“Shirato Sanpei was a man who reached the wrong conclusions about the historical view of the class system. I think he ran right into those mistakes when writing 'Legend of Kamui'. There's no way anyone survived in his world, not if they all had to become such killers. If the world were truly filled with such hate and destruction, if that were how history was made, then everyone would surely have been dead by the Edo period. That's the point that would have been reached.”
Now the stuff VIZ collected isn’t the vintage 1964-71 Legend of Kamui, but its 1982-87 continuation, created in collaboration with Akame Productions (which I presume is some sort of support staff, like Saito Pro - I notice they’ve been around since the ‘60s too). But wow, this isn’t really at all what I was expecting; I guess I’d anticipated something more… austere from an alternative manga legend, but this is all-out, hands-dirty ninja action sex & violence, with fight sequences lasting dozens of pages in every chapter, gore splattering everywhere - it’s real showmanship. It’s also heavily reminiscent of Kazuo Koike’s and Goseki Kojima’s Lone Wolf & Cub, though I don’t know if that was Shirato’s influence on them, or if he was picking up some influence himself by 1982 - still, right down to the little explanations of miscellaneous aspects of historical life, it feels very much familiar. I also recall seeing Shirato’s art looking much more loose and cartooned back in the ‘60s; his stuff here is very scratchy and heavily realist, quite handsome and contemporary (for 1982 or thereabouts).
But yeah, there’s a shitload of slicing and dicing, gorgeously mounted violence, in between the reflections on paranoia and the abuses of feudal lords. Maybe I should have listened harder to Hideshi Hino, who credits Shirato for changing the world of manga with “spectacle” comics. Strange that so little of so eminently marketable a comics legend is available in English, but maybe a lot of other people have made the mistake of presuming that Shirato is less accessible than he is. I mean, these are really great action comics. Even stranger that I can’t seem to find I single website with any samples of his art. Oh internet, how can you let me down...
posted by Jog at 11:59 PM
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