84 - They're not just cartoons, they're *stories* 💢
Hey there, !
Another one of those meditative reflections on my nerdy interests - skip if you ain’t interested and go to the recommendations section for some fun links!
1.
I love libraries. From a young age, it was a weekend ritual - go to Chinese school Saturday morning, head to Box Hill afterwards for food, and then get dropped off at a library (either the Kew one or the Box Hill one) to read for a few hours while parents were shopping for food.
My sister and I would gravitate straight to the comics section - reading Tintin, Garfield, Peanuts - whatever we could get our hands on. My favourite was Asterix - I think I was old enough to understand some of the puns that were liberally littered throughout (Vitalstatistix, Cacofonix, Geriatrix, Fulliautomatix etc.), and I loved how the Gauls would outwit the Romans in so many different ways!
Many a weekend was spent snuggled in on a beanbag at the library with these comics, reading and reading and reading, until my parents came to pick us up…by which time we would borrow a bunch of books from the library anyway!
Oh, to be young and free :D
2.
I don’t actually remember the first time I picked up anything manga-like. It was probably Doraemon or 老夫子, both in Chinese, shown to me by my parents or cousins while I was in Hong Kong. I didn’t really understand them at the time, but just like any good comic, you can tell what the jokes are supposed to be by looking at the art.
There was also this specific cartoonist (Tsai Chih Chung /蔡志忠) who did a retelling of a number of famous Chinese texts (like the Journey to the West), but in comic book form. He also wrote cartoons based on a number of philosophical texts, such as Laozi and Zhuangzi. With my extremely limited Chinese, I was still able to understand it, and I ended buying nearly his entire collection of books to bring back to Australia!
Apparently he’s been translated a lot - example below:
So wise.
3.
Manga (漫画) is the Japanese word for comics or cartoons that originate from Japan. There’s a distinct style for manga, using different shaped panels, dialogue, and ‘sound effects’ to help tell the story. It’s usually in black and white for quick drawing and release schedules every week, and there are a number of genres (which appeal to girls (shoujo) or boys (shounen)).
The one story that I remember starting my obsession with reading manga was Death Note. This was one of the most psychologically thrilling mangas I’d ever read - I remember staying up til 3am a few nights to get through the entire story. It was incredible - and because I had come across it after it was already all finished, it was the first of many binge reads.
It had so many twists and turns, amazing characterisation and a story that, at the time, had not been seen before. It was incredibly compelling, and straddled the line of morality really well (what if you could kill anyone in the world by just writing their name down?).
The detective part of it (trying to find out who the killer was) was so freaking compelling, and so fun to follow along with. It’s like a really good Sherlock Holmes novel, except the killer has a supernatural way to kill people and Sherlock is a weird Japanese dude who loves eating sugar cubes. I remember when I went to Hong Kong, I bought a replica Death Note to be cool and edgy…
…I swear I never wrote any name in it!
4.
From there, I became an avid manga-reader, reading a number of popular hits such as Naruto, Bleach, One Piece… I remember going to the library to try and find Dragon Ball, and instead found Hunter X Hunter which I still to this day find to be one of my favourite stories of all time.
These stories are incredibly straightforward in appealing to a young male mind. They’re pirates, ninjas, gods, superpowered people, time travellers, flashy swords, ridiculously named techniques, and that believing in the power of friendship gave you a +100 power increase at any time. There’s also manga like Food Wars (essentially, competitive cooking) which is kinda horny for no particular reason, but you gotta hand it to them - they know their audience!
There have been countless manga I’ve stayed up late reading because they’re so good. My habits are so much like streaming now - if I can binge it, I want to binge it all at once, and I do! There have been a few - Demon Slayer and Assassination Classroom for example - where I just chewed through them over a couple of days, staying up late to keep reading and reading and reading.
Even now, I religiously log on every week to read a number of series - including:
- Jujutsu Kaisen (what if curses were superpowers?)
- Dr. Stone (what if the entire earth was petrified into stone?)
- My Hero Academia (what if people had superpowers (again)?)
- One Piece (what if pirates existed and had really cool powers?)
- Dragon Ball Super (what if we kept milking the Dragon Ball franchise forever?)
Essentially, anything that’s popular and new and keeps my interest. There’s a chapter a week, or every month, which keeps the story going (and the investment per week low), meaning I’m more likely to read them since they’ll take less time to read :D.
All in the name of efficiency, really…
5.
On that note, I don’t really watch anime, but I’ve been told that I should get into it more. The animation these days is WAY better than the times when I watched Dragon Ball Z and saw Goku charge up a Kamehameha or Spirit bomb for 3 episodes, throw it, and then have it fail, meaning I need to wait ANOTHER 3 EPISODES FOR IT. There were some great series (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) that I liked when I was younger, and I have only really got into anime again since it’s more accessible on streaming services now (One Punch Man).
I will say though, based on my belief in the efficiency of content - it’s much easier to digest reading manga, rather than watching a 40min episode of anime. I can start and stop manga at any time, whereas for anime I feel like you have to watch the episode all at once to make sure you’re following the story! And honestly, I’d probably speed it up (no hate just facts).
I’ve been told to watch Attack on Titan, Demon Slayer, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Jujustu Kaisen, Haikyuu and many others - any other recommends? :D
6.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t leave at least a few recommendations above and beyond the titles up above - here are some that I’ve read that may be a little off the beaten track:
Katekyo Hitman Reborn! is the story of a high-schooler heir to a mafia family (a clumsy loser who doesn’t know he’s the heir) being trained by a world-famous hitman…who’s stuck in the body of a baby. Hilarity ensures for about 100 chapters or so, until it suddenly tone shifts into this really interesting plot, bringing high schoolers along the ride of a massive mafia war.
Psyren tells the story of a guy who keeps getting time travelled to the future, seeing the apocalypse that’s about to happen, and then gets sent back in time to try and stop it. What a premise! When I watched Dark it reminded me of this constant back and forth shifting between time periods, and how the future can affect the past and vice versa.
Shaman King is about a young boy training to win a 500 year battle to become the king of the shamans - with dynastic families vying for power, souls of previous shamans, naturalistic powers and training sequences that show off amazing art styles. The author came back and redid a bunch of art because he wasn’t fully happy with it - I was so happy to revisit the manga when he did!
There’s not really an end to this post - I’ve wanted to write something about manga for a while and this is it. If you have any recommendations please let me know!
If you haven’t ever read manga before, I’d recommend you try it out - probably with something like Dragon Ball Z. If you really want to get into anime I’d actually recommend Avatar: The Last Airbender not only because it’s accessible via Netflix but also because you’ll better understand internet memes with it as well :D (okay yes it’s not anime but it’s close enough so stop nitpicking)
Go on - there’s a whole universe of stories out there for you to explore!
Chat soon :)
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✔️ Real Life Recommendations
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Chargrill Charlies - literally just went to this last night; an amazing diner-style place that sells the normal grilled chicken and chips, salads, and burgers. I think the main thing I was impressed by was the amount of food I got for not that much? Like it was $14 for a half chicken and chips, but I was absolutely stuffed! Can’t say the same for a lot of other places…
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Daughter-in-Law - a fantastic Indian place in the city - a little pricey but well worth a trip to. We had a tasting menu and the entrees were divine - beautiful little dishes of a variety of food (kingfish, fritters) - and the curry plate was exactly what I usually want but can’t get - a variety of different curries, with both rice and naan, in the right quantities so I can try every combination possible. Cocktails were also quite good - highly recommend!
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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How Soviet Children’s Books became Collectors’ Items in India - a story about how the USSR published a bunch of books in Indian that became nostalgic items of worth for Indians who have now grown up. There really are niches for anything, huh?
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Google Earth’s latest update - this is really exciting, a cool new step into how we can look at the Earth. This time, we can see the dimension of time - how places have changed over time, and how the environment has changed thanks to us polluting, disgusting humans.
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Missing hiker’s location pinpointed by random guy at home based on a photo - story in title; essentially, a hiker takes a picture of where he is, and then his battery dies. Man at home works out where he is by the clues from the photo, and cross-referencing with the topography of the area using satellites. If you want to read the breakdown, go here!