As an avid manga reader, I felt like it was necessary for me to read the classic Astro Boy, but I also took time to explore a different form of manga with Buddha. While I thought Buddha was neat and I loved the American-influenced art style, something in the story really clicked with me.
Astro Boy is a well known and iconic character in manga and anime, partially because of his cute and appealing appearance. I did take more time to read volumes from this series compared to the other. Something I really liked about the Astro Boy manga is how Tezuka nonchalantly inserts a small characterized version of himself in the beginning of the manga. Sometimes he talks directly to Astro Boy and sometimes he talks about his feelings towards some relevant topics. What I love about this is that Tezuka establishes this friendly connection between him and his readers, as if he was holding a nice conversation with you. In addition to that, it takes me back to Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, where he talks about bringing in the reader to listen to what the comic has to say through the art style of the speaker. If Tezuka simply drew realistic pictures of himself, I feel like his appearances would have much less meaning to them. Nonetheless, it’s adorable that he makes himself interact with his own characters like they’re family.
Astro Boy has definitely started a new age of manga art. The cute art style in this manga is hard to explain why it’s so appealing, but it shows how manga readers are drawn to this “ideal” appearance in characters. In manga today, most central characters are drawn to be attractive because it drives people to read or watch them act out their story. Could it be out of desire for an idealistically pleasing human to our eyes, or is it simply because they look cute and we want to know what they do and why they do it? Sometimes I feel like an aesthetically appealing character develops an emotional connection between us and them. As if they are pure and perfect to us, we don’t want them to get hurt, they’re a beautiful, human piece of artwork and we want to root for them because of that.
That’s kind of how I felt watching the movie Summer Wars. The concept of such an adorable and happy anime family fighting to save the world made me feel an emotional connection towards them and want to root for them. If the animation consisted of realistic-looking characters, I would feel a lot less drawn to every character individually and altogether, I would probably slightly care less if Love Machine nuked their house. Or not, who knows?
I’ll be honest, I would have cried if Uncle Wabiskue died from his own creation.
I guess I would compare it to how people tend cry more when an adorable dog dies in a book or movie, rather than a human!
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