You are welcome to look at the talkback but please consider that this article is over 6 years old before posting.
Forum - View topicREVIEW: Grimms Manga Tales GN
|
Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
|
belvadeer
|
|
||
Does Little Red fall in love with the Big Bad Wolf in this retelling? |
|||
|
Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 2648 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
|
||
|
Why, yes, yes, she does.
|
|||
|
|||
|
belvadeer
|
|
||
Just checking. I just wanted to be sure so I can mark another iteration/retelling down on my list of Red x Wolf versions of the story. XD |
|||
|
Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 2648 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
|
||
|
That's an awesome project! I sometimes teach a class on variants of LRRH (and my poor students always get two days of Red when I do just plain old fairy tales), so I'm impressed.
Any particular reason why you're interested in this tale? |
|||
|
|||
|
belvadeer
|
|
||
I wouldn't really call it a project, but thank you, Irene. The reason I asked is because I find a lot more art and fan fictions of Red and Big Bad sexualized these days, and I wanted to see if this trend carried on with manga as well. I also recall seeing a live theater adaptation of the story and Big Bad was portrayed by a guy in a very, let's say, kinky wolf costume. XD |
|||
Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
|
||
|
Clicking on the encyclopedia entry to find out the publisher (Tokyopop, it turns out) I saw that this is an original German manga. Is the manga-ka German, or is there a separate writer & artist?
Also, if these are more sexual takes of fairy tales, is it PG-13 or R? I was under the impression that Tokyopop was focusing on titles for younger kids these days (due to their Disney partnership, a lot of their current titles are for the middle school and elementary school set). |
|||
|
|||
|
SheRrIs
|
|
||
The mangaka is Japanese, but lived in Germany. It's definitely child-friendly. |
|||
|
Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 2648 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
|
||
|
Yes, this is a very child-friendly manga, and this version of LRRH is adorable. The reason some readers may find it uncomfortable is because it's so romantic and cute - contemporary criticism of the tale type looks at it as a rape allegory, with Red's hat/hood being the reason for the wolf's attack on her. Folklorist Jack Zipes maintains that the tale is used to continue the culture of victim blaming, and he's not far off, especially if you look at Charles Perrault's 17th century version, "Le petit chaperon rouge." (Notice that the word "chaperon," a type of modesty cap, is now our word "chaperone.")
Basically poor Red has gone from the heroine of her own tale (she performs a strip tease for a werewolf and escapes) to a victim ("And then he ate her all up.") to a victim who can be saved by a father figure (the woodcutter/huntsman), and then finally to a villain herself - in 1939 James Thurber's Red shoots the wolf with a pistol, and then by the 1980s Roald Dahl's Red kills the Three Little Pigs. She seems to be going through a vamp phase now, which is I think what Belvadeer is noticing - the sexual aspects of the early tales are being reworked as romance novel fodder. Sorry, that was way too much info. I get overexcited by the topic.  
|
|||
|
|||
|
Agent355
Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
|
||
|
No, don't apologize; please continue! I'm fascinated by this stuff.
I never realized that Red was presented as calling to attention to herself by the color of her hood, but it makes sense given that wearing the color red is considered immodest in many cultures. When I heard the story as a kid, the moral always seemed to be "don't talk to strangers" and her hood was just how she was identified in lieu of a name, since she never seems to have one, like Goldilocks (of "and the Three Bears" fame). I certainly never heard the version about her giving a werewolf a striptease! |
|||
|
|||
|
Kosaka
Posts: 239 |
|
||
|
I'm curious how these 2 books (combined into 1 for the English print version) came to be. I wonder if Tokyopop Germany was trying to publish OGL manga at the time, just as Tokyopop was publishing OEL manga, or if Kei Ishiyama did the equivalent of a "cold call" to Tokyopop Germany, or something else. The German books were published a while ago, glad Tokyopop has published an English version.
Grimms Manga 01 Taschenbuch – 1. Dezember 2006: https://www.amazon.de/Grimms-Manga-01-Kei-Ishiyama/dp/3865803954/ Grimms Manga 02 Taschenbuch – 15. April 2009: https://www.amazon.de/Grimms-Manga-02-Kei-Ishiyama/dp/3867194815/ There's also an English Kindle version of an additional volume by other authors. Grimms Manga Tales: Anthology Kindle Edition: https://www.amazon.com/Grimms-Manga-Tales-Anike-Hage-ebook/dp/B077PL1J9S/ |
|||
|
|||
|
Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 2648 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
|
||
|
The striptease version is actually considered by a fair amount of scholars to be the oldest European variant of the tale - the language it was eventually recorded in (not until the 1880s, making it one of the last to make the change from oral to written) suggests Medieval origins. It's called "Tale of the Grandmother" or sometimes just "The Grandmother," and most written versions have it so that Red's a little older and suggest that it was meant to be humorous. More importantly, there's no red anything - that was added later by Charles Perrault, who also adds a verse moral letting us know that the "wolf" is really a man and that Red brought it on herself.
Basically the chronological order of the three earliest European variants is thought to be: 1) Tale of the Grandmother (no red, girl saves herself) 2) Le petit chaperon rouge (introduction of red cap, wolf "eats her all up") 3) Little Red Cap (saved by a father figure after the wolf "eats" her) The "riding hood" came from a popular style of cape when the French and German stories were eventually translated into English; she actually wears a hat, not a hood, in both Perrault and Grimm. If you're interested, the best book (I think!) on Red is The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood by Jack Zipes. It's a chronological collection of LRRH retellings from Perrault on up, and it has some really fascinating versions, like Alphonse Daudet's mid-19th century play where she's a Satan figure. The 1996 Reese Witherspoon film "Freeway" is also a really interesting retelling. @Kosaka I'm not sure how much OGL manga Tokyopop has tried, but the third volume of this series (currently digital-only in English) is entirely by German comic creators. I haven't read it yet, but it looks interesting. |
|||
|
|||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group