Holy lord, that bastard was long. I mean long. I mean like [Apatow joke] long.
This epic graphic novel follows the life of Yoshihiro Tatsumi, from a young manga fan to a writer to, apparently, a manga master.
I don't know much about manga, so don't take my ignorance here as a slam on ol' Yoshi.
The best parts were the stories from his personal life, and the small details about living in post WWII Japan were interesting. For example, it was years after the war before Japanese citizens were allowed to drink Coca-Cola. It was all saved for the occupiers, I guess. Ah, freedom.
I do have to say, based on a few incidents in this book, Japanese teens of the 50's and 60's were grossly uneducated about sex. At one point, Yoshi is gettin' bizay with a young lady, and she asks him what that hard thing is. Not in a, "Is that a hard cock in your pocket or are you just happy to have someone touch the hard cock in your pocket" kind of way. In a way where you realize, holy shit, this teen doesn't even know that a penis gets hard at some point along the way. If she saw a boner in a boy's pants, she would assume that it was...well, I don't know what she would assume. It does make me wonder if Japanese underpants are different, and if they may be better designed for the suppression of teenage boners. Or maybe they're just too busy studying all the time. But too busy to know that a boner is a thing? I just don't know about that.
On the flipside, most chapters start with little historical bits that don't really mean a lot to me, what was going on culturally, especially pop-culturally, in Japan at the time. The big movies, the big songs, and so on.
Here is where the review borders on culturally insensitive. Brace yourselves.
I had a hell of a time connecting to these parts because they all read like this to me:
[Japanese name] came out with [bizarre magazine name] which revolutionized manga with its [Japanese word] style.
I shit you not, there must be a couple hundred different Japanese names in this book, and being only a seven-year student of Japanese, wink, I had a hell of a time keeping them straight, and eventually I just skipped them over if I had a sense that the characters weren't sticking around long. It would be like a Japanese person reading an American book, and the names were Joe, Joey, Joseph, Jake, John, James, Jamie, and any other bullshit name you can think of with a J in it.
Johnny.
On the plus, this almost seems like a book made for Western audiences, by which I mean the boys look like boys, the girls look like girls, and the characters look different from each other. It's super not okay to say that all people of a certain type look the same, but I think it's okay to say something like, "All the men Frank Quitely DRAWS look the same," and it's honestly a problem I have with a lot of Japanese comics. But this one, between its differentiated characters (Flop of Hair in Front Guy, Beret Man, Glasses Dude) left-to-right style, and fairly consistent layout is a breezy read for most comic folks.
The art is tidy and well-expressed, and there's a definite impressive quality to the simplicity of the drawings that is worth a looksie. Outside of that, I can't honestly think of much reason to read this unless you're a fan of the man or really interested in the history of manga, but a history ending thirty years ago.
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