Week 10

I kinda like manga. Even though I feel like I watch more anime than read manga nowadays, it's still very enjoyable. This week, I read Battle Angel, and I really enjoyed it. I really liked the universe that the story was set in, it had a dry grittiness to it, despite being set in the future...kind of like the Borderlands games.
The story follows a cyborg who was refurbished from the Scrapyard by a doctor/scientist guy, and becomes a bounty hunter warrior. The idea of cyborgs and dystopian future is cool an all, but what really attracted me to this manga was the illustration. I'm really into high action and dynamic movements, and it's conveyed so nicely in Battle Angel. Since the scenes are high action and there's a lot of movement, the panels are illustrated in a sequential way, and rightly so, because if there were less drawings in an action scene, the intensity of what ever is happening would come across as stale and boring. Having enough drawings to make a shot look more animated is vital when it comes to action.

Here's an example that I liked:

Another thing that I especially liked about this manga was the style. I'm pretty picky when it comes to manga and anime, because I only become invested in the ones that are very stylized. I really dislike the shoujo style; it looks too generic and makes my eyes hurt. If the style looks like something that I've seen before in some other anime/manga, I tend to stray away from it. Like, my top three favorite anime are One Punch Man, Kill la Kill, and Mob Psycho 100. Heck, the One Punch Man manga (not the original drawn by ONE himself, the one following the anime) was absolutely gorgeous to me. Very dynamic, high action, and a great variation of drawing style. Battle Angel gave me those same vibes when I read it, since the visual appeal is related.

Week 9

This week, I read Moebius' Heavy Metal comic. I don't have much experience or knowledge in this comic influence, and what little I know about the culture of this comes from the "Major Boobage" episode of South Park. 
It had a very good first impression on me. I thought this comic had very nice visual appeal, but in a very trippy way. It was colorful and bright, and gave a very otherworldly sensation. It was made up of various short comics by a number of different artists, but each of them seemed to take place on another world or dimension, or something, which was awesome to me. I'm really into all of the sci-fi themes, and any sort of unrealistic setting.
Many of the stories that were in the comic were easy to understand without the dialogue, which goes to show that the visual storytelling was very well done, and the illustrations were very clear and easy to read.
This comic also seemed to have a level of sophistication for an adult comic, than a typical American Underground Comic would. The Heavy Metal comic did have some provocative tones in it, like gore and sexual themes, but it seemed to be implemented purely for aesthetic reasons, where as an American comic would have done it solely for the sake of provoking people.
It was a nice change, and over, the experience was really cool.

Week 8

When it comes to comics, I'm personally not one for nonfiction. Nonfiction is not necessarily a bad thing, I'd just rather read something else as a getaway from reality.
Despite me feeling this way, I actually really enjoyed the March graphic novel. The civil rights movement was a very important way of progress in American history, but I don't really care about it, since I wasn't alive during that time and it doesn't affect me. The story took this history event that doesn't interest me, and made it so much more enjoyable. I have never heard of John Lewis before, but I must say, his story is very interesting.
I think what held my interest the most in this comic was the art style. Each page was so well-illustrated, in an almost cinematic way. The intricate detail and the use of intense values put so much life into the pictures. An observation that I made was that every time something really intense or dramatic was happening in a scene, such as when John was describing his poor experiences with the chickens, the where they get the phone call about the bombing, and when they attend a nonviolence gathering and are tested to react under stress. Each of this parts, and others alike, take an emotional toll on the main character, and the values used in the illustrations reflect this. While the pages throughout the comic have panels on white backgrounds, this has its panels on black backgrounds. This simple use of tone alone makes everything, even the narrative, seem a whole lot darker.

Week 7

I had never read Maus before, so it was an interesting experience to look at it with fresh eyes.
The analogy of using animal stereotypes in place of humans allows the story to touch on things that would make readers feel uncomfortable if humans were used instead. Zootopia did had the same effect: the controversial story is obviously about us, but using animals instead of human characters makes it more comfortable for the viewers since the reality isn't as blatant.
I thought the perspective was interesting, since the story was being told by the father of a character who is writing his experiences. The story often jumped back and forth between Vladek's past, and what was happening in reality as he told the story.
The story had a gradual escalation of events, and this is where the book fell off for me. In the first volume before Vladek actually gets to Auschwitz, the story feels very flat and not-engaging. It has several deaths, which have the potential to be tragic and evoke sad feelings with the reader, but they are presented in a "telling versus showing" sort of way. If those events were shown and carried out, and even included more dynamics in the characters, it would be more interesting and allow the reader to sympathize with the characters.
Sympathizing with the characters is another point that I want to make, since I found it very difficult to do so. Of course, the Holocaust was one of the most horrible and tragic events in history, so anything involving it should give an audience an unsettling sensation. I felt that it was different in this case, because the reader is pulled out of the action. If the readers are supposed to really sympathize with what the characters are going through, they should be pulled into what's happening instead of being told by the characters. I guess this was done to make the horrific events more subtle, but considering this is about the Holocaust, I would have expected it to be pushed more.
Also, an interesting observation I made was that the drawing quality of this narrative changes dramatically over time. The very beginning of the first volume has clearer and more refined drawings, especially with the style that the mice are drawn in. The drawings become more simplified and graphic-looking over time.