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rushthatspeaks.livejournal.comI actually read this quite early in January, but it's taken some time to mull over this complicated little book.
A bit of background: in the mid-nineties Frédéric Boilet, a French comic book writer and artist of some critical renown, moved to Tokyo and became successful in manga. Boilet felt that many French comics were stifled by outmoded genre and publishing restrictions, and that many manga had a more naturalistic, less stereotypical aesthetic, but that the manga that were most interesting to him were fairly unlikely to be translated. After a while, a group of artists vaguely under Boilet's organization coalesced into what he calls la nouvelle manga movement. Nouvelle manga focuses on French-Japanese collaboration and on what in the U.S. we would call an alternative comics aesthetic; artists involved with it have included Kan Takahama, Moyoco Anno, Jiro Taniguchi, Joann Sfar, Nicolas de Crecy, Kiriko Nananan, and Emmanuel Guibert. Several nouvelle manga are available in English, including Boilet and Takahama's Mariko Parade, Kazuichi Hanawa's Doing Time, Vanyda's The Building Opposite, and my personal favorite comic of the last several years, the anthology Japan As Viewed By 17 Creators.
The latter anthology was a product of Boilet and the French Institute, who flew French artists to Japan, housed them in different parts of the country, and asked them to draw comics based on their experiences; Japanese artists from each region then contributed a piece based on their thoughts about the place. (There are eight French and eight Japanese pieces; one of the French ones is a collaboration between a writer and an artist.) Aurélia Aurita was one of the French artists, and contributed probably my favorite piece in the collection, so I was on the lookout for more of her work. I found a copy of Je ne verrai pas Okinawa, her latest, during a visit to Montreal.
I should note right now that none of Aurita's work is available in English except for the piece in the anthology. I read French. However, I'm sure there are other people who do who might be interested, and this book has aspects to it that I think people who may not be able to read the book would still find interesting in discussion.
( Cut for length. )
A bit of background: in the mid-nineties Frédéric Boilet, a French comic book writer and artist of some critical renown, moved to Tokyo and became successful in manga. Boilet felt that many French comics were stifled by outmoded genre and publishing restrictions, and that many manga had a more naturalistic, less stereotypical aesthetic, but that the manga that were most interesting to him were fairly unlikely to be translated. After a while, a group of artists vaguely under Boilet's organization coalesced into what he calls la nouvelle manga movement. Nouvelle manga focuses on French-Japanese collaboration and on what in the U.S. we would call an alternative comics aesthetic; artists involved with it have included Kan Takahama, Moyoco Anno, Jiro Taniguchi, Joann Sfar, Nicolas de Crecy, Kiriko Nananan, and Emmanuel Guibert. Several nouvelle manga are available in English, including Boilet and Takahama's Mariko Parade, Kazuichi Hanawa's Doing Time, Vanyda's The Building Opposite, and my personal favorite comic of the last several years, the anthology Japan As Viewed By 17 Creators.
The latter anthology was a product of Boilet and the French Institute, who flew French artists to Japan, housed them in different parts of the country, and asked them to draw comics based on their experiences; Japanese artists from each region then contributed a piece based on their thoughts about the place. (There are eight French and eight Japanese pieces; one of the French ones is a collaboration between a writer and an artist.) Aurélia Aurita was one of the French artists, and contributed probably my favorite piece in the collection, so I was on the lookout for more of her work. I found a copy of Je ne verrai pas Okinawa, her latest, during a visit to Montreal.
I should note right now that none of Aurita's work is available in English except for the piece in the anthology. I read French. However, I'm sure there are other people who do who might be interested, and this book has aspects to it that I think people who may not be able to read the book would still find interesting in discussion.
( Cut for length. )
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