Antique Manga: Grey
Jan. 20th, 2014 05:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerLooking through a big remaindered-and-used book store, I happened to notice a wrapped-up package on an upper shelf near the back issues of comics on the top floor. Recognising what was inside the plastic got me thinking back to university, where I'd been in the science fiction club for a while. The club was neither large nor very active, but it did have an office crowded with old books. One day in that office, I found on the shelves something somewhat between a black-and-white "floppy" comic book and a thick, "respectable" graphic novel, an artifact from the early days of trying to sell manga over here, one instalment of a "post-apocalyptic dystopian science fiction action" series called Grey. At the time, though, it still wasn't that dissimilar from the way what manga could be found over here was presented; I suppose I must admit what really made it stick in my mind was the scene where the titular Grey's female companion goes to take a shower just before another attack starts, leading to the memorable exchange "You fight better without your clothes." "Because I don't want to die naked!"
Now, long years later, I was looking at a bundle of issues of Grey just like the one I'd once seen. Counting the numbers on the spines, I was a little relieved to see the bundle had the first nine; even supposing the manga had continued beyond them (whether it had actually been published over here or just cut short from lack of sales) I was still willing to take the chance on what story was there, just for the sake of seeing "how it was once." It was also cheaper than buying the issues back in the late 1980s would have been.
Things started off with what I supposed to be another suggestion of how things were sort of different then, an introduction by Harlan Ellison. He discussed a story of his own and might have given away one development partway through the story, although (trying to be vague myself for whatever good or ill that amounts to) it was several issues in before I saw how things were shifting from what might get a first-glance comparison to The Road Warrior to something people back then would be swifter to call "from Japan." It was around then too, though, that I picked up on the "Part Four of Nine," "Part Five of Nine," and so on on the copyright pages, and started to at least hope I had a complete set.
Before then, I'd at least been wondering if what I'd read was really "all there was," if chapters hadn't been sliced out from the Japanese-language original with the thought a more compact work would be more salable. It had been published by Viz, after all, and I knew that right from the start Viz had been willing to compromise on the mere suspicion of bad publicity from outside, and no matter that "compromise" was already a dirty word for those inside. From some of the frontal moments, though, I did have the feeling that even if things had been toned down by some foreign hand it couldn't have been by much, and as the story moved into what I've alluded to it did feel things were moving at a brisk yet consistent speed.
For that matter, for all that the characters had short, snappy, and seemingly "Western" names, there were moments where it didn't seem the manga had any thoughts of one big part of what had made "compromise" a dirty word in the first place, namely trying to blur how it had come from a foreign country. In the house ads at the back, I noticed people could order the Grey OVA for a mere hundred and twenty dollars. The ads didn't specifically say whether the videotapes would arrive from Japan unsubtitled, but I can imagine someone willing to spend that much money just might understand what they were getting. (However, I also happened to think the OVA was a one-shot deal, and to collect the six-episode OVAs that were the first to be released with subtitles a few years later might have cost about as much in the end.) The art was mirrored from the original, of course; Grey's helmet having English lettering on it must have kept the retoucher busy. In the final push to try and convince fans to "read backwards," the argument was made that to mirror art was to make its weaknesses stand out; there were times when I wondered about the eyes seeming a little off in three-quarter views, although the odd elongation of the ends of their noses didn't seem "subtle" to me.
As I got to the final instalment, though, I did start thinking it was one of those conclusions where there's a lot of hurrying around but no special insights into how the characters have developed, and being as compact as it was it wasn't quite a case where the journey mattered more than its eventually ending. However, that might have just made me think a bit more about the contingencies that had put it where it was, the facts of publisher and genre that must have made it seem salable in the late 1980s. The house ads also mentioning that Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind was first being published at the same time and beginning to promote Urusei Yatsura (although I recall that second manga had trouble "taking" and was cancelled early) also provide intimations of the contrast between what's remembered through simple accident and what's remembered for what's said to count; even looked at that way, though, it was still an interesting thing to have experienced at last.
Now, long years later, I was looking at a bundle of issues of Grey just like the one I'd once seen. Counting the numbers on the spines, I was a little relieved to see the bundle had the first nine; even supposing the manga had continued beyond them (whether it had actually been published over here or just cut short from lack of sales) I was still willing to take the chance on what story was there, just for the sake of seeing "how it was once." It was also cheaper than buying the issues back in the late 1980s would have been.
Things started off with what I supposed to be another suggestion of how things were sort of different then, an introduction by Harlan Ellison. He discussed a story of his own and might have given away one development partway through the story, although (trying to be vague myself for whatever good or ill that amounts to) it was several issues in before I saw how things were shifting from what might get a first-glance comparison to The Road Warrior to something people back then would be swifter to call "from Japan." It was around then too, though, that I picked up on the "Part Four of Nine," "Part Five of Nine," and so on on the copyright pages, and started to at least hope I had a complete set.
Before then, I'd at least been wondering if what I'd read was really "all there was," if chapters hadn't been sliced out from the Japanese-language original with the thought a more compact work would be more salable. It had been published by Viz, after all, and I knew that right from the start Viz had been willing to compromise on the mere suspicion of bad publicity from outside, and no matter that "compromise" was already a dirty word for those inside. From some of the frontal moments, though, I did have the feeling that even if things had been toned down by some foreign hand it couldn't have been by much, and as the story moved into what I've alluded to it did feel things were moving at a brisk yet consistent speed.
For that matter, for all that the characters had short, snappy, and seemingly "Western" names, there were moments where it didn't seem the manga had any thoughts of one big part of what had made "compromise" a dirty word in the first place, namely trying to blur how it had come from a foreign country. In the house ads at the back, I noticed people could order the Grey OVA for a mere hundred and twenty dollars. The ads didn't specifically say whether the videotapes would arrive from Japan unsubtitled, but I can imagine someone willing to spend that much money just might understand what they were getting. (However, I also happened to think the OVA was a one-shot deal, and to collect the six-episode OVAs that were the first to be released with subtitles a few years later might have cost about as much in the end.) The art was mirrored from the original, of course; Grey's helmet having English lettering on it must have kept the retoucher busy. In the final push to try and convince fans to "read backwards," the argument was made that to mirror art was to make its weaknesses stand out; there were times when I wondered about the eyes seeming a little off in three-quarter views, although the odd elongation of the ends of their noses didn't seem "subtle" to me.
As I got to the final instalment, though, I did start thinking it was one of those conclusions where there's a lot of hurrying around but no special insights into how the characters have developed, and being as compact as it was it wasn't quite a case where the journey mattered more than its eventually ending. However, that might have just made me think a bit more about the contingencies that had put it where it was, the facts of publisher and genre that must have made it seem salable in the late 1980s. The house ads also mentioning that Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind was first being published at the same time and beginning to promote Urusei Yatsura (although I recall that second manga had trouble "taking" and was cancelled early) also provide intimations of the contrast between what's remembered through simple accident and what's remembered for what's said to count; even looked at that way, though, it was still an interesting thing to have experienced at last.