Hey, wonderers,
This is one long-overdue post, as I’ve been writing it and rewriting it in my mind for a month now.
The simple answer is this: sequential storytelling.
Both Hokusai and Piranesi used the art of “printmaking” to tell (sometimes serialised) stories through images and annotations: woodblock prints generally known as ukiyo-e in Hokusai’s case & etchings, a method of modeling metal in Piranesi’s case.
Even more so, manga as a term is attributed to Hokusai (it is, of course, the Japanese name for comics) — you can read more about it on British Museum’s blog & discover a bit about his Manga Sketches, collections of studies with bits and pieces of the Edo period, mythology & more:
“The vast phenomenon of popular manga publishing in Tokyo, as we enter the Reiwa era (from 1 May 2019) of new Emperor Naruhito, is startlingly reminiscent of the vast phenomenon of popular print and illustrated books published in Edo in the late 1700s and early 1800s. One big difference, however, is that the industry that produced single-sheet popular colour woodblocks (ukiyo-e) declined rapidly in the early 1900s. We can think about where the urge to create all those cheap, strikingly beautiful pictures might have gone.”, says Tim Clark, Head of the Japanese Section at British Museum.
Whether pop sequential art and other forms of print that involved correlations of words and pictures are related or not, and whether my subjective interpretation is far-fetched, I leave it to you to decide…
After all, turning our eyes to the works of Piranesi, they uncover a love for ancient Rome and for fantastical worlds of splendour and horrors — my favourite from the ones that I’ve seen so far is the series of Carceri d'invenzione (Imaginary Prisons). And I choose to interpret it as a whole, a story of pain and redemption:
Trained as an architect, Piranesi revels in re-creating architectures of the past or of a potential future, imbuing them with an obsession for details and quite the emotion.
Just juxtapose the image above with Hokusai’s “monsters” for a bit:
Don’t you feel the same awe at their level of mastery and their use of imaginary worlds?
Beyond his “waves” which are so well-known in today’s mind, Hokusai was a master of characters and the spaces they inhabited:
In the end, that’s what manga stories do as well at their best (as art usually tends to do) — paint images of lives and emotions that leave us in wonder.
So here are 3 that you should definitely try & experiment with for yourselves:
Satoshi Kon’s Opus
Satoshi Kon was the artist of blurring boundaries and meta-commentaries. With Opus, which remained unfinished unfortunately, he manages to reach the top of what meta is: a mangaka or manga artist entering the world of his ongoing series, meeting his characters, and trying not to get killed. I can’t say more without spoiling it, so you’ll have to trust me on this one!
Tite Kubo’s Bleach
Apart from the scandal surrounding its final arc, Bleach was one of the great shōnen series, with a plethora of characters, crazy fight scenes & again the supernatural. I’m still amazed by Tite Kubo’s patterns and grandiose effects — think soul reapers fighting devious souls in-between the living world, Soul Society, and more. So cosmic-scale wars and “power-ups”. Yet, the manga manages to stay within the formula (boy with special abilities saves humanity) and beat the formula through its artistic vision.
Adachitoka’s Noragami
Yes, I have a taste for (mostly) fantasy and sci-fi. So my third on this list is Noragami, a story about a stray god who needs to do odd jobs in order to survive. This one is imbued with a lot of Japanese mythology and beliefs, so it’s quite good in making you want to know more about it (a god dies if it is forgotten). It’s also a story about redemption, loss, shifting identities — with a lot of fights, once more.
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Hope I got you thinking about sequential storytelling and you’ll let me know your favourites ;)