Manga Thoughts: The Shadow Over Innsmouth
Mar. 2nd, 2024 11:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerAfter having read the earlier manga adaptations by Gou Tanabe of H.P. Lovecraft stories translated and released by Dark Horse, I went ahead and ordered the adaptation of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, complete in one thick volume. The story’s another known quantity to me; I was interested in seeing how the adaptation turned out.
I am aware of the tension between “Lovecraft’s stories deal with the terror of a materialist universe seeping into general awareness in the really bad post-Great War hangover of the 1920s” and “Lovecraft’s stories do look to encode personal revulsion at just about anyone not a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.” His own dire straits might yet keep him in better reputation than John W. Campbell, but the beginning of The Shadow Over Innsmouth making casual mention of the inhabitants of that run-down Massachusetts coastal town being taken away to “concentration camps” could run up warning flags; so too might a later comment about horrors from the deep being countered with stones with something like swastikas on them. I did get to wondering if anyone’s ever tried what now seems rather obvious reinterpretations, but did then notice a comment or two about “human sacrifices” being asked for, which could get in the way of attempts to insist “they’re just misunderstood.”
Tanabe’s art makes an interesting presentation of the reeling decay of Innsmouth. “The Innsmouth look” here, though, did get me wondering whether a different adaptation might have come across as “holding the real horrifying realization of the truth off until later.” I’ll admit I did get to wondering whether certain individuals might try to insist something like certain anime character designs from the first decade of this century could be presented with just the right touch as “terrifying outliers from human form.” A while later, though, I managed to amuse myself in a different way by considering there’s also a tension between the scratching awareness of how anime characters were once renamed as if to reassign their ancestries and the thought that just maybe there were dismissive comments, if from “outside,” about character designs back then too. I was conscious from the beginning that “body horror” would get accentuated later in the work, and aware that was pretty much the reason why I stopped reading the Made in Abyss manga. In the end I did seem able to handle it here.
I am aware of the tension between “Lovecraft’s stories deal with the terror of a materialist universe seeping into general awareness in the really bad post-Great War hangover of the 1920s” and “Lovecraft’s stories do look to encode personal revulsion at just about anyone not a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.” His own dire straits might yet keep him in better reputation than John W. Campbell, but the beginning of The Shadow Over Innsmouth making casual mention of the inhabitants of that run-down Massachusetts coastal town being taken away to “concentration camps” could run up warning flags; so too might a later comment about horrors from the deep being countered with stones with something like swastikas on them. I did get to wondering if anyone’s ever tried what now seems rather obvious reinterpretations, but did then notice a comment or two about “human sacrifices” being asked for, which could get in the way of attempts to insist “they’re just misunderstood.”
Tanabe’s art makes an interesting presentation of the reeling decay of Innsmouth. “The Innsmouth look” here, though, did get me wondering whether a different adaptation might have come across as “holding the real horrifying realization of the truth off until later.” I’ll admit I did get to wondering whether certain individuals might try to insist something like certain anime character designs from the first decade of this century could be presented with just the right touch as “terrifying outliers from human form.” A while later, though, I managed to amuse myself in a different way by considering there’s also a tension between the scratching awareness of how anime characters were once renamed as if to reassign their ancestries and the thought that just maybe there were dismissive comments, if from “outside,” about character designs back then too. I was conscious from the beginning that “body horror” would get accentuated later in the work, and aware that was pretty much the reason why I stopped reading the Made in Abyss manga. In the end I did seem able to handle it here.