Sketchbook2k9 - GEKIGA
I was studying some character portraits from a manga called "the push man and other stories" by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. The manga has a cutesy drawing style but it isn't so cute as to bring out the blushes within our cheeks. The stories are highly realistic and most of them are dramatic stories focusing on the social issues around Japan. I'm not sure how accurate these stories are but I'm guessing there is a believable source just because of of the relatable news that we see around our social world today. The manga seems to show our ever evolving society and the more we develop the more decadent we get. The manga seems to point out the dirtiest sides of mankind the the atrocities that we are capable of committing. I highly recommend this manga for those who are more interested in the graphic novel medium. This manga is not light hearted and I believe the casual reader may feel a bit uncomfortable because of the dramatic nature of the comic book.
Japan is the one country, other than America that has a industry based on manga and animation, mediums based on storytelling and drawing. We can say the golden age of comics, manga and animation has passed but Japan is still consistently producing entertainment thought these mediums. The general interest in manga and anime is now pretty much worldwide due to the help of the internet and man people are starting to show more interest in to diving deeper into the medium. When we jump into the ocean called Manga there is a history of evolution that the manga culture experienced and one of the forefathers of this medium is Yoshihiro Tatsumi. He is not as famous as Osamu Tezuka, the so called god of manga, but he is an influential figure who pushed the boundaries of the medium and founded the "Gekiga" style. It is loosely translated as dramatic pictures and the motive of this movement was to differentiate itself from the immature manga style, akin to American comics, manga's predecessors. At the time manga was aimed at targeting children but the Gekiga style sought out to communicate with older audiences due to its niche style. The same could be said with the influence of underground comic book culture in America.
You can find out more about GEKIGA at this wikipedia link below.
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