I knew reading the material for this week would be lots of
fun, but be really difficult. I’m a big fan of World War Two stories and
history so this week was easier for me. The first piece of literature that I
read this week was Barefoot Gen.. First I want to say the comparison between
the anime and the manga is very strong. The artist who adapted the manga did a
very good job with keeping the beauty of the beginning of the film and the
absolute horror the story has to tell in the second half. Work like this really
makes the medium seem very adaptable and any story could be told through a
comic or anime. Anyways, Barefoot Gen is
a great story with real facts and the shows the real horror of World War Two.
At the beginning of the story we are introduced to Gen and his little brother
Shinji, and we immediately feel for these kids. They are working in the field
with their father and are starving, because there is an overall shortage of
food in the city of Hiroshima. The way
this is written we are already forced to feel sorrow for these kids. The story
itself is already known before you read it; because everyone should know all
the things we did to Hiroshima during World War Two. I think this story has a lot of comparisons
to Maus in the way it is reflecting on what happened during the War.
Maus really pushed the way of story telling at that time,
the way the artist depicted different groups in the story is really smart. The
Jews are mice and the Germans are mice and the polish people that weren’t
Jewish were depicted as pigs. I think that made the story more relatable in a
way. The artist put the different kind
of people into categories for the reader can immediately understand the
segregation these people undertook. The reason I think its relatable is because
with story telling there is lots of description to differentiate the groups in
the story, but with the three different animals we immediately know the groups
and can understand them immediately. Also, with World War Two Hitler was committing
genocide to these groups of people. So grouping them like this makes so much
sense for the story.
Anyways, with the story I think the beauty of this story is
how it is written. A father and son interaction reflecting on his experience is
genius; it feels very authentic and true. I think what Maus did for the comic
world was revolutionary because now all stories written in graphic novel form
can be literally anything. We can’t have any pre-conceived ideas of the story, because
now there is no limit to what story can be written and drawn. Before most
comics were made for kids or just were really playful and cute to fit the Sunday
newspaper.
