Week 10: Manga

For this week on Japanese Manga, I read the first volume of Tezuka’s Buddah. I’ve always been very interested in Japanese manga, having spend many a long nights during middle and high school working my way through several hundred chapter series. Even in 9th and 10th grade I chose Japanese as a foreign language to learn, a choice that I am positive was inspired by my love of these comics and the culture behind them. I read everything I could get my hands on, from more ‘shojou’ titles such as Ranma 1/2 and Clamp series to action packed Shonen. I will even admit to having looked up a few yaoi comics out of curiosity. 

However, I never read any Tezuka before now. I was amazed by how I was sucked into the story and I definitely see why he is considered the father of manga. There were definitely distinct differences between Buddha and the more modern manga’s I have read, but that was expected considering the volume I read was released in the 1970s. The style was very different from the typical ‘manga’ style that developed in later years. This was actually more reminiscent of Disney or Comic strip styles. 

The artistic style was actually rather misleading to me. Here were these rather cutely drawn characters, but the story itself was very very violent and sad. The ending where both Chapra and his mother are killed together was completely shocking to me even if the book had already been full of death. Chapra and his mom had basically been the protagonist throughout the first volume but yet by the final chapter, they were slain together in a way that would have fit right at home in Game of Thrones.

Considering the title of the book, it wasn’t surprising to see how much this book dealt with eastern cultures. Tezuka is Japanese, but Buddha is set in India. Buddism is the 2nd largest religion within Japan so it does make sense for a Japanese author to basically retell the origin of the religion even considering the geography distances. There are a lot of interesting parallels though with this story and the bible. The one that popped out the most was the swarm of locus. I also noticed Chapra asking Tatta to be his brother, just like in Barefoot Gen when Gen asks Ryuta to be his brother. I wonder if this is a common thing in Japanese culture.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book and will probably find time over Christmas break to sit down and read past just volume 1. Considering this isn’t even Tezuka’s most popular work too, I will definitely be reading other titles by him. Wasn’t what I expected, but I was pleasantly surprised.