Manga Thoughts: 7 Billion Needles
Jun. 23rd, 2011 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerMy posts on manga all seem to amount to complaints and lamentations. Feeling a bit stung by this, when I did finish a manga series instead of joining in a general fit thrown over a few panels being drawn over in the North American release and abandoning a whole swathe of other titles as collateral damage, I thought I ought to say something positive. It so happened, though, that a few casual references stretched out my explorations...
Seeing comments that "7 Billion Needles" by Nobuaki Tadano was based on "Needle," a "Golden Age of Science Fiction" novel by Hal Clement, piqued my interest, and I started reading a story about Hikaru Takabe, who shuts out the rest of the world with music playing through big headphones even as a mysterious light from the skies seems to disintegrate her on a high school trip... and then she's back to her withdrawn normal, but with a new voice in her head trying to motivate her to seek out another alien presence. The work can be seen as a "emerging from a shell" story, and my thoughts that "Hikaru" reminded me most of all of the male lead in Macross receded a bit when the final volume included as a bonus a sort of "pilot story" named "Hikikomori Headphone Girl," "hikikomori" being a Japanese term I had heard associated with "people who won't leave their house."
At only four volumes, the series didn't stretch my patience, but in some ways starting into the third volume for the first time left me with an odd, uncertain feeling that the story had wrapped up its initial concept altogether and was going off in an oblique direction. On rereading the whole thing, though, I was able to see the progression better, and I suppose that was a bit of a relief: beyond the usual complaints about titles being edited, something that might have corroded my interest in manga was criticism about titles running too long and falling apart in the process. One criticism I did see about this particular title was "the female characters all look the same"; that crops up often enough with anime and manga, though, that I was able to not dwell on it for most of the manga. In the fourth volume, though, when Hikaru's aunt features, I did have to admit she looked an awful lot like the teenaged characters.
I did wonder at points about whether the connections to Hal Clement's "Needle" were also drawn in Japan, although that novel certainly could have been translated. When I began to wonder about reading it as well, though, I had to order a used copy online, and had a few uncertain thoughts about "the history of science fiction being lost"; however, I now have the impression the book has been reprinted as part of a small-press collection not that long ago. I had read Hal Clement's "Mission of Gravity" before, and "Needle" seemed to match my impression of him as being interested in distinctive and unusual alien lifeforms and careful scientific extrapolation. In that sense, "Needle" was a less "extravagant" work than "7 Billion Needles"; in place of "body horror," superpowers, and the fate of humanity at stake there was a detective story where the detective just happens to be a jellylike alien able to exist inside a human body. One small point of extrapolation that caught my attention involved the teenaged host Bob Kinnaird being able to return by prop plane to the tropical island where "the Hunter" moved into him, the better to track down the Hunter's quarry without having to worry about every human on Earth, because the island is being used by expatriate Americans to generate synthetic oil from bacteria; this was in a novel copyright 1949.
While I've noted the connections "officially" drawn between the manga and the novel, some comments on the manga have pointed just to another manga, "Parasyte." I had already bought that series, so I reread it as well. There are similarities, but also differences; "Parasyte" involves a whole species of aliens who replace human heads and can reshape those heads into grotesque weapons, the protagonist having been saved by having worn headphones of his own so that the alien burrowed into his arm instead. With this series, I've seen criticism that the artwork skates on the edge of "awkwardness," but perhaps this may help it to feel a bit more "timeless" to me than slicker art would have. Instead, the only thing that really seems to date the story is plot points involving phone calls not being picked up; nowadays, manga characters would probably carry mobile phones.
Seeing comments that "7 Billion Needles" by Nobuaki Tadano was based on "Needle," a "Golden Age of Science Fiction" novel by Hal Clement, piqued my interest, and I started reading a story about Hikaru Takabe, who shuts out the rest of the world with music playing through big headphones even as a mysterious light from the skies seems to disintegrate her on a high school trip... and then she's back to her withdrawn normal, but with a new voice in her head trying to motivate her to seek out another alien presence. The work can be seen as a "emerging from a shell" story, and my thoughts that "Hikaru" reminded me most of all of the male lead in Macross receded a bit when the final volume included as a bonus a sort of "pilot story" named "Hikikomori Headphone Girl," "hikikomori" being a Japanese term I had heard associated with "people who won't leave their house."
At only four volumes, the series didn't stretch my patience, but in some ways starting into the third volume for the first time left me with an odd, uncertain feeling that the story had wrapped up its initial concept altogether and was going off in an oblique direction. On rereading the whole thing, though, I was able to see the progression better, and I suppose that was a bit of a relief: beyond the usual complaints about titles being edited, something that might have corroded my interest in manga was criticism about titles running too long and falling apart in the process. One criticism I did see about this particular title was "the female characters all look the same"; that crops up often enough with anime and manga, though, that I was able to not dwell on it for most of the manga. In the fourth volume, though, when Hikaru's aunt features, I did have to admit she looked an awful lot like the teenaged characters.
I did wonder at points about whether the connections to Hal Clement's "Needle" were also drawn in Japan, although that novel certainly could have been translated. When I began to wonder about reading it as well, though, I had to order a used copy online, and had a few uncertain thoughts about "the history of science fiction being lost"; however, I now have the impression the book has been reprinted as part of a small-press collection not that long ago. I had read Hal Clement's "Mission of Gravity" before, and "Needle" seemed to match my impression of him as being interested in distinctive and unusual alien lifeforms and careful scientific extrapolation. In that sense, "Needle" was a less "extravagant" work than "7 Billion Needles"; in place of "body horror," superpowers, and the fate of humanity at stake there was a detective story where the detective just happens to be a jellylike alien able to exist inside a human body. One small point of extrapolation that caught my attention involved the teenaged host Bob Kinnaird being able to return by prop plane to the tropical island where "the Hunter" moved into him, the better to track down the Hunter's quarry without having to worry about every human on Earth, because the island is being used by expatriate Americans to generate synthetic oil from bacteria; this was in a novel copyright 1949.
While I've noted the connections "officially" drawn between the manga and the novel, some comments on the manga have pointed just to another manga, "Parasyte." I had already bought that series, so I reread it as well. There are similarities, but also differences; "Parasyte" involves a whole species of aliens who replace human heads and can reshape those heads into grotesque weapons, the protagonist having been saved by having worn headphones of his own so that the alien burrowed into his arm instead. With this series, I've seen criticism that the artwork skates on the edge of "awkwardness," but perhaps this may help it to feel a bit more "timeless" to me than slicker art would have. Instead, the only thing that really seems to date the story is plot points involving phone calls not being picked up; nowadays, manga characters would probably carry mobile phones.