The event may serve as background or it may be the central mystery to be unraveled.īiomega begins at the the inception of a manufactured crisis. The survivors of the tragedy may be mostly everyone or may be a few lucky ones. The cataclysm often takes one of a few standard forms – human technology or society cracking apart, the sudden appearance of a hostile alien presence, a disaster caused by incomprehensible physics – all can be fairly superimposed on the atomic bombing of the Japanese mainland. Onward!įor historically understandable reasons many Japanese stories begin with an earth-shattering cataclysm.

Sweeping generality, self-aggrandizement, broadly insulting. It’s staring into the mirror of your lack of interest in the world around you. Reading such works exclusively, that is, outside of the context of a more general reading in the humanities, is not really reading. Okay, this is totally provisional and written on the fly, but: take any genre not a traditional subject of humanistic study, e.g., genre fiction, leadership books, teen fiction, comic books, inspirational or devotional books. And while I’m not willing to extend the same welcome to comic books, long-form comic art can, I think, be considered books, with an odd caveat.Īctually, now that I think about it, this caveat applies to more than just comic books. Obviously the graphic novel, of which manga form an important and growing subcategory, has been gaining cultural acceptance, mostly because of film adaptations of works by Frank Miller (Sin City, 300) and Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, Watchmen, From Hell, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). I wasn’t sure whether to write about this one, partly because of the embarrassment, but also because of the basic question: is it a book? The conclusion I’ve reached is a conditional yes. (Good god, I just want to take myself out behind the portable classrooms, punch myself in the stomach, and take my lunch money. And again, I’m only interested in the bitchin’ type, though the boundaries blur, and you can find some aspect of each type in most anime or manga.

Manga, which provide the original source material for many anime, run the same continuum from nasty to dull to bitchin’ that you find in anime. (NB: I only watch the incredibly badass kind.) Another recent interest is manga, the Japanese comic books you read backwards because the Japanese want it that way. Among them is an interest in anime, the Japanese cartoon series that range from the desperately perverted to the merely stupid, to the incredibly badass. I base this claim not on any profound depth of nerdery in any one area, but because the list of my nerdly interests covers almost everything uncool (or subversively cool). In fact, I make the only slightly outrageous claim to be the king of all nerds.

Biomega, Vol. 1 by Tsutomu Nihei