The Fall 2020 Manga Guide

Blue Giant

What's It About? 

Dai Miyamoto is in the basketball club in middle school. One day, his friend takes him to a live jazz performance, which touches him on a deep level. From that point on, he begins to practice the tenor sax by himself, with no formal education, and no ability to read sheet music. He aims to become the world's best saxophone player.

Blue Giant is drawn and scripted by Shinichi Ishizuka. Seven Seas Entertainment is publishing Ishizuka's 10-volume Blue Giant manga series as five omnibus volumes. The company has released the first omnibus volume, which is currently retailing for $19.99

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

It's not hard to see how Blue Giant could win a prestigious manga award or two. Both the author's and the character's passion for the subject matter radiates off the page. We may not be able to hear the jazz that Dai is playing, but we can feel it, and in some ways that's almost better, because it gives us a clearer idea of how Dai lives in music, as the poem by Ntozake Shange says. Jazz is about more than just sound for him: it's about expressing the feelings that he can't let out any other way, about the way, as Shange says, “sound/falls round me like rain on other folks/saxophones wet my face”.

In some ways this is at least a little similar to Kids on the Slope in its love of jazz and the way that style of music can speak to people. Dai doesn't appear to have had any strong feelings for music before his friend took him to a jazz concert, and interestingly enough, it was hearing the music played live that made Dai a fervent jazz believer while his friend found that he didn't care for it so much after all. The power of this particular style of music to provoke emotions in the listener is a central theme of the story, whether that's the joy Dai experiences, anger at Dai's style of playing, or the tears more than one listener is brought to. The near-final scenes of the omnibus' second half also speak to this, when Dai simply starts playing on the street and people fall all over themselves trying to get to him based on the powerful reaction his music creates in them.

Despite all of this, Dai, we understand, has raw talent that's largely unshaped. He's good, but he's not as good as he could be with lessons, and it says something about Dai as a character that he's eager to take those lessons, even if he's at first less than impressed by his functioning alcoholic teacher. (“Berkeley-educated” really doesn't mean much to him.) Dai will do what he needs to in order to improve, and when that's recognized by others – his teacher, the man at the music store, even his older brother before Dai even picks up an instrument – it confirms his belief that he can become a great jazz saxophonist. We do get future-set chapters that imply that Dai makes it (although I'm a little concerned that these are posthumous interviews), so that helps us as readers to see that this isn't a pointless journey we're following. But even if it was, I think it might be worth following Dai, because the joy music brings him is palpable and makes the book fly by.

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Caitlin Moore

Rating:

Despite its popularity, music manga can be a tough sell. The combination of static images and text can express many things, but music, in all its sound and motion, isn't one of them, unless you're a gifted sight-reader. This is not to say music manga can't be good or engrossing, considering Given and Nodame Cantabile both grace my shelves, but that the artists have an uphill struggle to transfer the appeal of one art form to a different, diametrically opposed one.

At first, I wasn't sold that Blue Giant was up to that task, despite all the awards it has racked up. The first few chapters are snapshots of Dai's life as he goes about his daily business, then runs to play his saxophone on a hill by the river. I didn't find Dai an especially compelling protagonist, nor his relationships unique or interesting. Everything was just extremely normal, except that he would occasionally burst out hollering about how he was going to become the world's greatest jazz saxophonist.

It's not until almost halfway through this release, toward the end of the original first volume, do things start to pick up. Dai goes to sub in for a jazz band playing at a club, and discovers that, for all his independent practicing, he knows nothing about technique, theory, performance, or how to play with others. That small point of tension, the initiation of growth, goes a long way toward making Dai's story more interesting. Still, I'm not sure if it'll do enough to set itself apart from similar coming-of-age stories.

The art is unusual for what usually makes it to English translation, with more realistic proportions and less exaggerated expressions than is the norm. In lieu of screentones, it uses pen and ink techniques like hatching and ink wash. In fact, it reminded me more of manga-inspired Western comics like EK Weaver's The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal or Jennifer Doyle's Knights-Errant. It's a nice change of pace from the typical manga art, and stands to attract comics readers who typically turn their nose up at manga.

Blue Giant is worth a look if you want to step outside of the usual manga fare, but those who are less interested in male coming-of-age stories may want to look elsewhere.