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Forum - View topicJason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga: Special Guest Edition - A,A'
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Dop.L
Posts: 725 Location: London |
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I'd love to see stuff like this get a reprint. How about it, Fantagraphics?
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sailorsarah
 Posts: 189 Location: Texas |
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What a beautifully written article for a wonderful manga! It's great to read how someone became passionate about manga. It should make anyone who hasn't read it, want to read A,A'.
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vanfanel
 Posts: 1260 |
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I only read the first story a long time ago (in Manga Vizion, maybe?), but it was a gem of a tale that stuck with me.
I wish there were more anime of her work. We got "They Were Eleven," but aside from that, all I'm aware of is "Time Stranger" (based on a Taku Mayumura young adult novel) for which she did the character designs. Something I find fascinating is how more than almost any other manga artist, Hagio is just as much a part of the Japanese SF scene as she is of the manga scene. A lot of her manga is genuine SF, which is probably why she was hired to do illustrations for a number of SF novels back in the day. She did a manga adaptation of the late Ryu Mitsuse's novel "Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights" and even did a collaborative project (a heavily illustrated novella) with Mitsuse. Her graphic novel "Barbara Ikai" won the Nihon SF Taisho a few years ago, becoming the first manga to get that award since Katsuhiro Otomo's "Domu" in the early '80s. She frequently appears in SF roundtable discussions published in SF magazines. I'd love to see a noitaminA adaptation "Barbara Ikai." It's just about the right length for them, and is one heck of a wild story. |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 10022 Location: Virginia |
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I first read A, A' in back issues of Manga Vizion. I'm not sure when I got the trade paperback. At the time I thought it was a great science fiction story. I had no idea it was intended for girls. The art work was a bit different, but back then I was new to manga and all the art work was new and different. There was a lot of emotion, but it was appropriate to the situation and not over the top. It is a great story, it doesn't matter who is reading it.
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Shaenon
Posts: 18 |
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When I interviewed Hagio at Comic-Con, she listed several American sci-fi writers among her favorite authors, as well as Shotaro Ishinimori for his early sci-fi comics. She was reportedly very excited to meet Ray Bradbury at the con. Moto Hagio meeting Ray Bradbury--how awesome is that?
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 10022 Location: Virginia |
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It is always great when someone gets to meet a person they admire. I hope he knew who she was, or that he was told. I would not have chosen Bradbury myself. I read a couple of volumes of his early work and it didn't click for me.
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matt-thorn
Posts: 8 Location: Kyoto, Japan |
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Okay, Shaenon. You got me with that last paragraph. I had to wipe away a tear or two. Yes, it is all so emotional, and that is precisely the point. That is what fundamentally differentiated The Heart of Thomas from other classic manga I had read before. I think that even a lot of self-described comics fans in North America still cannot conceive of comics as a medium that could reduce you to a blubbering, wet mess, which would explain why some reviewers of my Hagio translations talk about "melodrama." It's as if they lack the vocabulary to discuss emotion in comics as any other than contrived and false. So it's incredibly satisfying to me to learn that Hagio's work had the same effect on you that it had on me, and that in your case I was able to act as the conduit. Sure, lots of people "love" Hagio's work, but neither you nor I would be where we are now, doing what we're doing now, if I had never encountered The Heart of Thomas, and you had never encountered my translation of A, A'. You and I have talked about A, A' in the past, but I don't think I realized at the time that its effect on you had been so decisive. It gave me goosebumps to read that here. Thanks so much for this.
Last edited by matt-thorn on Fri May 17, 2013 8:01 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Makeinu
 Posts: 37 |
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What a beautiful read that was, Shaenon.
I do feel a bit silly answering to this topic right after Matt Thorn - gosh! - has done so, not to mention that I haven't even read this manga (yet). But I just needed to get that out. If I weren't already registered at this site, this article surely would have been the one that made take the plunge. |
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zawa113
 Posts: 7358 |
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Ah, well this explains why A, A' wasn't in the last classic shojo column Shaenon did when it seemed conspicuously absent. It's because it had a more profound impact on you, thus it deserved its own column, which makes sense to me.
I only read the first chapter before at the manga room at Otakon, which means I was too hyper from being at Otakon to really absorb anything (seriously, why do I bother going to the manga room there? No, wait, it did indicate that I would like From Far Away when I read the first 3/4th of that volume, so basic research I suppose), so I basically didn't read it at all. I would certainly want to though! |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14888 |
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Yep, still have the Manga Vizion.
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momonae
Posts: 5 |
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Perhaps he knew. She wrote manga adaptations of his short stories in 1977 or 1978, so I think at least he heard about her. As for A-A', if you ask me, I have more vivid memories of her "Silver Triangle" from the same time period. IIRC, it was serialized in a sci-fi magazine and not in a shoujo manga magazine and I believe it actually was more popular.... |
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scarletrhodelia
 Posts: 34 Location: Pittsburgh, PA |
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Thank you for such a eloquent review, you have beautifully said what I have struggled to convey about Hagio-sensei’s work. I first learned about the Year 24 Flower Group just last year while researching the history of BL. The idea of these women writing ground-breaking works for girls so struck me that I read everything I could find by and about them to develop a presentation. The quality of the work was astounding, but also had meaning for me personally. I was a teenage girl in the 1970‘s, about the same time these women were writing for girls. There were very few women writing science fiction in English at that time, and although I read and liked the science fiction written by men, it didn’t touch me - the emotional dimension was lacking. It was a lonely thing to be a science fiction fan and female back then. There is a sense in which I feel that Hagio-sensei and her colleagues also wrote for me, that teenage girl, across space and time. Thank you, Ms. Garrity and Mr. Thorn, for your work in bringing an awareness of Hagio-sensei and the Year 24 Flower Group to America. |
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marcos torres toledo
Posts: 269 |
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Due to this article I will look up this manga do you know if it was made into a anime.
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enurtsol
Posts: 14888 |
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Never AFAIK. |
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hyojodoji
Posts: 586 |
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Yes, Gin no Sankaku was carried in S-F Magazine from the December issue of 1980 to the June issue of 1982. It received a Seiun Award. |
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