Forum - View topicREVIEW: Ichi-F: A Worker's Graphic Memoir of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant GN
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3587 Location: Finland |
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Nice
 . Just surprised author/Kodansha didn't get push-back over this getting out. Or did they?...
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Parsifal24
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I'm currently reading it and have not finished it yet I enjoy it but it's a little dry in places and to be honest it's like reading about my day job only with more radioactivity. It's same problem I had with the Tezuka manga bio it's an really interesting concept and story but it's so dense.
That it's kind of hard to take it all in and is more something I can "peck away" at than binge read. |
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Blackiris_
 Posts: 536 |
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Well, it is a documentary (or at least an informative work) first and foremost. Tatsuta deliberately decided to portray his experience in a realistic and non-dramatic manner. If you get the feeling that what he did is kinda like your day job, it is because... that's totally the case.
I personally enjoyed this work very much. Most of all the parts that covered Tatsuta's experiences with the people in the region, his growing affection for Fukushima and the parts that portrayed the change in the region. I also love how genuine the entire story feels. Tatsuta often talks about himself in a humble or slightly self-deprecating manner (e.g. he clearly states that money was an important reason for him wanting to work in the areas with high radiation) and the manga never once explicitly condemns or advocates nuclear energy. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15614 |
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Blanch: I have a feeling this was one time Kodansha Japan was willing to take a write-down on this manga in both countries.
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18507 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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He does speculate about this himself, but it's just as likely that him being a not-specifically-skilled worked limited his job possibilities, too. Frankly, I thought he was being a little paranoid about that aspect, as he was diligent about being discreet and much of what he portrayed was practically a PR piece for the clean-up effort. (In fact, according to the Introduction he was accused of doing exactly that.) |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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I could see people thinking that. (I have not read this, but...) If he's as critical of the media as you say, then I could see him being viewed as an "apologist" for not talking about the more "sensational" aspects or otherwise condemning people involved. Its a sad commentary on today's society (but specifically the media) really, that many people are so anxious to find people to blame. |
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ptj_tsubasa
 Posts: 129 |
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The sensational media topics mentioned in the manga are things that are clearly just made up, like a foreigner worker dying at the site and his body being burned in a barrel behind the reactor building. The mangaka also depicts being annoyed when every interviewer starts the interview by asking about his health or commenting the color of his cheeks, as if the health problems you could get by working at Ichi-F wouldn't be "heightened risk of cancer during the next few decades" but instead something like immediate radiation poisoning. He also mentions that the media has been circulating photos of men with tattooed backs working at the site. He follows that up by saying that he learned that a lot of fishermen around the area actually have whole-back tattoos so their bodies could be identified if they happened to drown. Then he concludes that even if there are yakuza involved with the clean-up project, why would they working at the site themselves instead of running shady businesses around the worker subcontracting? The way he depicts the daily life of workers at Ichi-F it's hard to imagine anything really dramatic going on there. It's all about constantly changing your overalls, not touching the floor with your bare sock when changing shoes, and being afraid of the paperwork you'd have to do if your dosimeter went off for the fifth and final time for the day. |
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TravellinMatt77
Posts: 85 Location: Durham, NC |
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I look forward to reading this. Dry or not, I'm sure that it will be a very interesting read, and a nice change of pace from reading fictional manga. Environmental science is a pretty big passion of mine, and this will be a unique way for me to learn about this particular topic from a new perspective and through a different format.
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Blackiris_
Posts: 536 |
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I wouldn't actually call it dry. It's quite lively at times. The drawings are not super-deformed or anything, but not entirely realistic either, and Tatsuta's way of writing is quite charming. It's just that there's no real drama, aside from the daily interactions of the workers and Katsuta's interactions with the locals. The actual part about the work is important, but it only covers about half of the pages. I enjoyed this part, but what I enjoyed even more were Katsuta's interactions with the people, his descriptions of the environment and the passages where he talks about how he started to draw the manga. There are a couple of really heartwarming moments. |
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