Manga Thoughts: Shino Can't Say Her Name
Nov. 12th, 2021 06:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerEver since reading “The Flowers of Evil,” I’ve kept an eye out for the intriguing and sometimes unsettling (intriguing for sometimes being unsettling, perhaps) manga of Shuzo Oshimi. After going through his “Inside Mari” on Crunchyroll’s manga service, when the chance arose to get that series in print through the new publisher Denpa I started buying it. Denpa’s upcoming titles have been pushed back and back over the past year or more, though, and as understandable as that is right now it has raised a few worries in me the company might not get around to publishing the series in full (there are just two volumes left to go now) or to “The Men Who Created Gundam” (although not by Oshimi, it got my attention for other reasons). I bought one Denpa volume of a series by a different artist with vague hopes that would “help support the company.” A previous impression or two it had some Oshimi-like qualities, though, bumped into the thought it was finally just a bit too much for me. I wound up instead buying an artbook from Denpa of Oshimi’s illustrations, and then, perhaps nudged by noticing one more title of his listed on its back cover, bought a “complete in one volume” story from them, “Shino Can’t Say Her Name.”
Before I’d quite got to Shino Oshima’s troubles in saying her name, though, I’d noticed something about the art. Shino’s eyes were larger, and like all the other features of her face simpler, than in the Shuzo Oshimi artwork I’d come to expect. Instead of looking like “an Oshimi drawing of a Japanese person,” she looked like “a ‘typical’ sort of manga-anime character.”
Having started off with blithe acceptance of the Western names English dubs gave characters in animation from Japan once upon a time and not having got to the point of even adding “live action from Japan, or anywhere near it” to what I watch (except in the occasional exceptional case) has left me pondering just how I see “anime and manga characters” and aware that to delve to far into it might mean choosing thoughts and words with greater care than I can manage. I’m certain the sense of realism in Oshimi’s artwork (which has improved in general in my eyes since the first volumes of “The Flowers of Evil”) isn’t some sole counterexample in manga, but it’s one I have taken interest in. It took a little while to remind myself “personal reactions are one thing; ‘you aren’t allowed to make any changes to your art’ is another.”
In any case, I did manage to push into the ferocious stutter that hit Shino when she tried introducing herself at school; as with other moments in other works by Oshimi, there’s an unsettling weight to it. She manages to get out it hits particularly bad with words that start with vowels; the translation doesn’t have her stumbling on English words that begin with them, but it was easy enough to suppose “these correspond to Japanese words that begin with vowels” and remind myself I’m never that enthused with insistences that “all translation should acknowledge my understanding of Japanese language and culture” (which might not be that impressive after all). While there are times I’ll react to manga with “well, I’m not that bad,” I was conscious of my own stammer over the years even as I remembered a work in progress by Oshimi, “Blood on the Tracks,” and the speech issues that grab hold of a character in it.
In any case, after a teacher seeming less than helpful (which had me thinking a bit of “A Silent Voice”) Shino does manage to make a friend (with the eventual revelation that friend has her own particular problem that might provide a bit of empathy). The story was more a matter of “how it was told,” perhaps, than offering anything absolutely new, and it had a decent “things did get better” resolution. Then, in Oshimi’s afterword I noticed him talk about his own stutter. All of a sudden, I was wondering if Shino’s character design was less “a one-off experiment” (much less “an attempt to be more commercial”) than one particular example of “all ‘cartoony’ designs, regardless of where they’re from, are ways for people to identify with them.” It didn’t take long until I’d thought at last there was a resemblance between “Shuzo Oshimi” and “Shino Oshima”... I am right back to hoping I’ll have the chance to read all of “Inside Mari” in print, but this complete in one volume story was a nice stop along the way.
Before I’d quite got to Shino Oshima’s troubles in saying her name, though, I’d noticed something about the art. Shino’s eyes were larger, and like all the other features of her face simpler, than in the Shuzo Oshimi artwork I’d come to expect. Instead of looking like “an Oshimi drawing of a Japanese person,” she looked like “a ‘typical’ sort of manga-anime character.”
Having started off with blithe acceptance of the Western names English dubs gave characters in animation from Japan once upon a time and not having got to the point of even adding “live action from Japan, or anywhere near it” to what I watch (except in the occasional exceptional case) has left me pondering just how I see “anime and manga characters” and aware that to delve to far into it might mean choosing thoughts and words with greater care than I can manage. I’m certain the sense of realism in Oshimi’s artwork (which has improved in general in my eyes since the first volumes of “The Flowers of Evil”) isn’t some sole counterexample in manga, but it’s one I have taken interest in. It took a little while to remind myself “personal reactions are one thing; ‘you aren’t allowed to make any changes to your art’ is another.”
In any case, I did manage to push into the ferocious stutter that hit Shino when she tried introducing herself at school; as with other moments in other works by Oshimi, there’s an unsettling weight to it. She manages to get out it hits particularly bad with words that start with vowels; the translation doesn’t have her stumbling on English words that begin with them, but it was easy enough to suppose “these correspond to Japanese words that begin with vowels” and remind myself I’m never that enthused with insistences that “all translation should acknowledge my understanding of Japanese language and culture” (which might not be that impressive after all). While there are times I’ll react to manga with “well, I’m not that bad,” I was conscious of my own stammer over the years even as I remembered a work in progress by Oshimi, “Blood on the Tracks,” and the speech issues that grab hold of a character in it.
In any case, after a teacher seeming less than helpful (which had me thinking a bit of “A Silent Voice”) Shino does manage to make a friend (with the eventual revelation that friend has her own particular problem that might provide a bit of empathy). The story was more a matter of “how it was told,” perhaps, than offering anything absolutely new, and it had a decent “things did get better” resolution. Then, in Oshimi’s afterword I noticed him talk about his own stutter. All of a sudden, I was wondering if Shino’s character design was less “a one-off experiment” (much less “an attempt to be more commercial”) than one particular example of “all ‘cartoony’ designs, regardless of where they’re from, are ways for people to identify with them.” It didn’t take long until I’d thought at last there was a resemblance between “Shuzo Oshimi” and “Shino Oshima”... I am right back to hoping I’ll have the chance to read all of “Inside Mari” in print, but this complete in one volume story was a nice stop along the way.