octaveoctant

[octaveoctant]

[octaveoctant]

please save my mars

[octaveoctant]

If you need some propaganda for Addy, let me know. I'd be happy to hype her up.

Group F Round 1

[image ID: the first image is of Miyauchi Rena, a girl with light brown hair and brown eyes, wearing pearl ornaments in her hair. she wears a combination yellow-and-blue-plaid and black satin dress. it features a bones motif--on her chest, hands, and knee-high black socks--and glowing cutaways on her waist. the sleeves are puffy, as is the bustle. the second image is a manga panel of Adelade, a young woman with medium length, light colored hair and dark eyes. she's wearing a black sleeveless and shoulderless top, black pants with white bands on the thighs, and black forearm guards. she appears to be jumping out of an entryway. end ID]

Miyauchi Rena

shes a magical girl in plaid with a bone laurel and bone gloves and a hula hoop she beats you up with. shes a canon lesbian and heavily autistic coded. she became a magical girl to save the life of her first love. she failed and she doesnt know. she lost her memories while hidden from the apocalypse and didnt question the empty school on the island in a sea that stretched for forever. she wants her memories back but more than that she wants to know why she lost them. 

Adelade

[no propaganda provided, but the book is an anthology of short stories. here are a couple snippets from wikipedia: "The anthology deals with gender, with the androgyny and ambiguity typical of Hagio’s characters, as well as identity and memory. Gender and sexuality are explored most prominently in "X+Y", which features a young man who learns that he is intersex, gender fluidity and transition, and a gay relationship." "Set in a shared futuristic universe, the stories' common thread is a genetically-engineered "Unicorn" species created for space travel. Extremely intelligent, with a humanoid appearance, they have difficulty understanding other people and their own emotions." Adelade is one of these "Unicorns."]

[octaveoctant]

snapped it up for around £30, fucking score

impulse buying the Marginal radio drama for £120 and then journaling about it with a pen that's running dry

[octaveoctant]

(x)

[octaveoctant]

(x)

[octaveoctant]

impulse buying the Marginal radio drama for £120 and then journaling about it with a pen that's running dry

[octaveoctant]

There are two physical possessions I require before I can die peacefully:

1. A licensed and well-translated English edition of Hagio Moto's Marginal.

2. This damn t-shirt.

[octaveoctant]

A few thoughts:

The environmental aspect of Marginal is one that has always been very interesting to me, but I see very few people talking about it. Reading this interview and finding out that a lot of the inspiration came from her own experience with an ecological disaster was eye-opening. I'd love to see more people discussing that aspect of the manga.

I wish she had discussed Psy-Powers and the narrative role of Ezekiel Syndrome. I've seen one or two people describe the Psy-Powers in the story as a cop-out. I disagree wholeheartedly. Yes, it's not a practical solution with any relevance to the real world, but in my opinion, their inclusion makes much more sense if you see them as the manifestation of an individual's true desire more than as proxy for practical action. I'd even say that, in this story, any practical action whether positive or negative must be backed by dreams and/or desire to succeed. That's why Ivan Aleksandr succeeded in creating Kira even though his dream was abhorrent and his methods unethical at best. It's also why Meyard could never succeed and didn't show signs of being psychic despite his genetic predisposition, since his heart's desire was at odds with the reality of his medical condition and corporate role.

Hagio Moto did not understand that neuroscience book very well, did she?

I have seen a lot of critique of Marginal that treats it as a love-triangle romance. This interview, in my opinion, solidifies that it is not intended in that way. Personally, I've never seen it as a love story, and I think anyone who read it as a romance would find it deeply unsatisfying. There is very little romantic love in this manga, and none of it leads to anything positive. (With the possible exception of Karen and Edmos.)

I love that page with the diagonal stripes. "Premium panelling" Indeed!

I didn't know that Marginal was inspired by John Wyndham until I read this. I had seen it compared to The Left Hand of Darkness before, but never Wyndham. Now I know that, though, it makes sense. I love John Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes is one of my favourite novels. No wonder I love this manga.

Incidentally, I read TLHoD after Marginal and found it rather disappointing. Octavia Butler's works, especially the short stories in her Bloodchild collection, are closer in feeling to Hagio Moto's Sci-Fi. Hagio Moto's Slow Down would fit right into Bloodchild. A,A' and Quatre-Quarts too, I think.

Marginal - Inspired by John Wyndham's Consider Her Ways

In this interview excerpt from Chapter 2 of Hagio Moto Tsumugi Tsudukeru Manga no Sekai, Hagio Moto and Dr. Hiroko Uchiyama of Joshibi University discuss sources of inspiration, an environmental disaster in Hagio Moto's hometown, single-sex societies, and deconstruct the layout and design of two particular pages of Marginal.

[[NOTE - This was translated using MTL and is probably highly inaccurate. Do not trust that anything you read here is correct! I have included the Japanese text in a link at the end.]]

Uchiyama

The next work we will discuss is Marginal, also a science fiction novel. Is it correct to assume that this work was intended to explore themes of gender from the beginning?

Hagio

The science-fiction writer John Wyndham wrote a story called Learning from Ants [English title - Consider Her Ways] (included in the Hayakawa collection The Impossible Legend) about a super-future where there are no more men. It was a world of women only, with a woman assigned to birthing like the queen of a bee-hive while other women take care of her. There are also women who raise her children. It's a story about a modern woman who slips forward in time, or rather in space, and is shocked at what she finds there.

If there is a fictional society full of women, I thought I'd make a story about a society full of men. I also wanted to draw handsome men (laughs). I wondered what would happen in an all-male society. But it's not like ants and bees, you'd need to have a pharmaceutical company or a corporation to make the people's children. They would have to use donated sperm and say, "This is your child."

"Marginal" is set on the earth about 1000 years from now, where the oceans and land are polluted and people live in small, concentrated areas. It is difficult for all parts of the ecosystem to give birth or reproduce, but it is the worst for humans, who have to live in a constructed social system where they apply to have children.

In some villages, it is difficult to get children at all. There is a figure called Mother, a woman who is supposed to give children, but she is too old to give birth. That is how the story begins.

Uchiyama

There are problems such as plastic waste on the Earth today, but what made you think that the Earth of the future would be like this, with only a small part of it being habitable for humans?

Hagio

I grew up in the city of Omuta in Fukuoka Prefecture, and we had problems with factory waste and smoke from burning oil. The kind of industrial pollution that is now happening in China was also present in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s. It has improved a lot since then, though.

In the mountains upstream of the Omuta River, which flows through Omuta City, a chemical factory was built. Since there were no regulations in place, the factories would pour chemicals into the river. The river changed color depending on the chemicals that were poured into it, so it was called the Seven Colors River. There were no fish or anything in it.

Uchiyama

It was a river of death.

Hagio

There was a small fishing port at the end of the river, but there were no fish at all there either. The reason why everyone threw things into the river was because they thought if they did that, the ocean would take care of it. But what will happen if the ocean's cleansing effect is lost due to this sort of thing? My experience was limited to one particular place, but I wonder what would happen if this happened on a global scale.

Uchiyama

So you actually had such an experience yourself, and that's how you came up with this setting of a future Earth?

Hagio

This is an experimental work to explore how children would be born on an Earth where no children can be born.

Women are less inclined to fight for their own lives, whereas men want more things [become more selfish?] because they can't get pregnant.

Uchiyama

There is a big fuss about replacing the Mother figure, and then a lot of things happen around the idea of how to bring children back into society. Does this story of connecting life and society come from a blend of your reading and study of various books?

Hagio

When I was working on this story, I read a book about female and male hormones. Women have a uterus, and near the uterus, there is an adrenal cortical hormone, a hormone that men do not have. This hormone is referred to as the "second brain" in the book, and it works very aggressively on the uterus.

People often make fun of women by saying, "Women are emotional because they think with their wombs." But following this logic, the womb still thinks, while a man's penis doesn't think.

The adrenal cortical hormones work directly on the uterus to keep it in balance. There are a lot of complicated processes involved in having a child, such as cyclical changes in body condition, and it's a really hard and serious thing for some living beings.

In my opinion, the balance of the uterus is one of the reasons why women are so good at what we do. Of course we have a fighting spirit and a desire for honor, but I think that because of the womb, we don't have the same drive and fighting spirit for war as men do. Because women can't scratch our heads without nurturing life.

Men, on the other hand, do not get pregnant. In order to compensate for this, I think a society of men needs many more elements to function.

As I was thinking about this, I was reading books on religion and philosophy, and I realized that both Buddhism and Judaism were initially created for men. Monotheism is a religion for men, and animism before that is a religion for women. Buddhism, too, started out as a religion for women.

On the other hand, Monotheistic religions seem to respond to something like men's frustrations. There are episodes of dragon-slaying and snake-slaying in many religions, which symbolises killing your mother. Why were religions created for men? This is a theme in the study of religion, but it is not easy to work out why. I think it's because they don't have a womb, and the fragility of their existence made them yearn for God, the Great Father.

With this in mind, I wondered how I could incorporate the sense of discomfort that I feel in society on a daily basis into my work, and how to question what everyone assumes and believes. How can I incorporate these things into my work? I think about how my reading might help solve the problems I have imagined, and then the work is created with that framework.

Uchiyama

"Marginal" contains a lot of your thoughts. The Holy Mother is a monotheistic religion. Everyone goes to her and asks her to do something for them, to help them. This is also depicted in a deeply symbolic way. No matter how many times I reread the story, one scene like this particularly stands out to me.

This is the scene where the new Mother makes the leap.

Hagio

The previous Mother is killed and the citizens are up in arms about whether they will receive children again, so a new Mother is created within the Medical Center of Marginal to calm them down. The new Mother is brainwashed to say, "I am Mother," and she is unveiled in front of the citizens on a grand scale. However, the brainwashing doesn't go well, and this Mother jumps off a high balcony to her death. Even though they had taken such trouble to create her.

Uchiyama

The scene where everyone reacts to this is on the left. This composition is also bold for a manga. The point of view moves back and forth.

Hagio

In the horizontal panels, the eye moves towards the sides, so it goes to the right and then to the left. If you split the panels diagonally instead of parallel, your eyes tumble down the page. That's the effect I was aiming for when I made panels diagonal. When I read other people's comics with such a premium panel layout, my heart rate goes up, so I wanted to cause that effect too. I thought it would give a sense of urgency.

Uchiyama

Going down further diagonally, it also coincides with the movement of Mother falling. This is really a wonderful depiction.

And the final scene of Marginal depicts rebirth.

Hagio

I think it's like a plant, some early organism growing on a primitive Earth. I heard that something like that grows on rocks, like seaweed or moss. It was discovered in Australia. Stromatolites? (Note: Stromatolites are layers of cyanobacteria, a primitive bacterium, and sediments such as mud, which are photosynthetic. Its fossils have been found all over the world.) I saw on TV that the water where they were discovered is so clear that you can see all the way to the bottom. It is very beautiful. So I drew this scene while imagining returning to the primitive earth.

Uchiyama

When you draw a scene, you often refer to pictures of other places on the planet, don't you?

Hagio

I didn't look at those pictures intending for them to be referenced in Marginal, but they were so beautiful that the image stayed in my mind for a long time. In the end, I wanted to have a beautiful ocean scene, and I remembered that I had seen what I wanted somewhere in the past.

Uchiyama

For more information, please buy and read the books!

Hagio

There are a lot of handsome guys in this book (laughs).

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

Japanese text available here. (But please buy the book!)

[octaveoctant]

[[Interview]]

Marginal - Inspired by John Wyndham's Consider Her Ways

In this interview excerpt from Chapter 2 of Hagio Moto Tsumugi Tsudukeru Manga no Sekai, Hagio Moto and Dr. Hiroko Uchiyama of Joshibi University discuss sources of inspiration, an environmental disaster in Hagio Moto's hometown, single-sex societies, and deconstruct the layout and design of two particular pages of Marginal.

[[NOTE - This was translated using MTL and is probably highly inaccurate. Do not trust that anything you read here is correct! I have included the Japanese text in a link at the end.]]

Uchiyama

The next work we will discuss is Marginal, also a science fiction novel. Is it correct to assume that this work was intended to explore themes of gender from the beginning?

Hagio

The science-fiction writer John Wyndham wrote a story called Learning from Ants [English title - Consider Her Ways] (included in the Hayakawa collection The Impossible Legend) about a super-future where there are no more men. It was a world of women only, with a woman assigned to birthing like the queen of a bee-hive while other women take care of her. There are also women who raise her children. It's a story about a modern woman who slips forward in time, or rather in space, and is shocked at what she finds there.

If there is a fictional society full of women, I thought I'd make a story about a society full of men. I also wanted to draw handsome men (laughs). I wondered what would happen in an all-male society. But it's not like ants and bees, you'd need to have a pharmaceutical company or a corporation to make the people's children. They would have to use donated sperm and say, "This is your child."

"Marginal" is set on the earth about 1000 years from now, where the oceans and land are polluted and people live in small, concentrated areas. It is difficult for all parts of the ecosystem to give birth or reproduce, but it is the worst for humans, who have to live in a constructed social system where they apply to have children.

In some villages, it is difficult to get children at all. There is a figure called Mother, a woman who is supposed to give children, but she is too old to give birth. That is how the story begins.

Uchiyama

There are problems such as plastic waste on the Earth today, but what made you think that the Earth of the future would be like this, with only a small part of it being habitable for humans?

Hagio

I grew up in the city of Omuta in Fukuoka Prefecture, and we had problems with factory waste and smoke from burning oil. The kind of industrial pollution that is now happening in China was also present in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s. It has improved a lot since then, though.

In the mountains upstream of the Omuta River, which flows through Omuta City, a chemical factory was built. Since there were no regulations in place, the factories would pour chemicals into the river. The river changed color depending on the chemicals that were poured into it, so it was called the Seven Colors River. There were no fish or anything in it.

Uchiyama

It was a river of death.

Hagio

There was a small fishing port at the end of the river, but there were no fish at all there either. The reason why everyone threw things into the river was because they thought if they did that, the ocean would take care of it. But what will happen if the ocean's cleansing effect is lost due to this sort of thing? My experience was limited to one particular place, but I wonder what would happen if this happened on a global scale.

Uchiyama

So you actually had such an experience yourself, and that's how you came up with this setting of a future Earth?

Hagio

This is an experimental work to explore how children would be born on an Earth where no children can be born.

Women are less inclined to fight for their own lives, whereas men want more things [become more selfish?] because they can't get pregnant.

Uchiyama

There is a big fuss about replacing the Mother figure, and then a lot of things happen around the idea of how to bring children back into society. Does this story of connecting life and society come from a blend of your reading and study of various books?

Hagio

When I was working on this story, I read a book about female and male hormones. Women have a uterus, and near the uterus, there is an adrenal cortical hormone, a hormone that men do not have. This hormone is referred to as the "second brain" in the book, and it works very aggressively on the uterus.

People often make fun of women by saying, "Women are emotional because they think with their wombs." But following this logic, the womb still thinks, while a man's penis doesn't think.

The adrenal cortical hormones work directly on the uterus to keep it in balance. There are a lot of complicated processes involved in having a child, such as cyclical changes in body condition, and it's a really hard and serious thing for some living beings.

In my opinion, the balance of the uterus is one of the reasons why women are so good at what we do. Of course we have a fighting spirit and a desire for honor, but I think that because of the womb, we don't have the same drive and fighting spirit for war as men do. Because women can't scratch our heads without nurturing life.

Men, on the other hand, do not get pregnant. In order to compensate for this, I think a society of men needs many more elements to function.

As I was thinking about this, I was reading books on religion and philosophy, and I realized that both Buddhism and Judaism were initially created for men. Monotheism is a religion for men, and animism before that is a religion for women. Buddhism, too, started out as a religion for women.

On the other hand, Monotheistic religions seem to respond to something like men's frustrations. There are episodes of dragon-slaying and snake-slaying in many religions, which symbolises killing your mother. Why were religions created for men? This is a theme in the study of religion, but it is not easy to work out why. I think it's because they don't have a womb, and the fragility of their existence made them yearn for God, the Great Father.

With this in mind, I wondered how I could incorporate the sense of discomfort that I feel in society on a daily basis into my work, and how to question what everyone assumes and believes. How can I incorporate these things into my work? I think about how my reading might help solve the problems I have imagined, and then the work is created with that framework.

Uchiyama

"Marginal" contains a lot of your thoughts. The Holy Mother is a monotheistic religion. Everyone goes to her and asks her to do something for them, to help them. This is also depicted in a deeply symbolic way. No matter how many times I reread the story, one scene like this particularly stands out to me.

This is the scene where the new Mother makes the leap.

Hagio

The previous Mother is killed and the citizens are up in arms about whether they will receive children again, so a new Mother is created within the Medical Center of Marginal to calm them down. The new Mother is brainwashed to say, "I am Mother," and she is unveiled in front of the citizens on a grand scale. However, the brainwashing doesn't go well, and this Mother jumps off a high balcony to her death. Even though they had taken such trouble to create her.

Uchiyama

The scene where everyone reacts to this is on the left. This composition is also bold for a manga. The point of view moves back and forth.

Hagio

In the horizontal panels, the eye moves towards the sides, so it goes to the right and then to the left. If you split the panels diagonally instead of parallel, your eyes tumble down the page. That's the effect I was aiming for when I made panels diagonal. When I read other people's comics with such a premium panel layout, my heart rate goes up, so I wanted to cause that effect too. I thought it would give a sense of urgency.

Uchiyama

Going down further diagonally, it also coincides with the movement of Mother falling. This is really a wonderful depiction.

And the final scene of Marginal depicts rebirth.

Hagio

I think it's like a plant, some early organism growing on a primitive Earth. I heard that something like that grows on rocks, like seaweed or moss. It was discovered in Australia. Stromatolites? (Note: Stromatolites are layers of cyanobacteria, a primitive bacterium, and sediments such as mud, which are photosynthetic. Its fossils have been found all over the world.) I saw on TV that the water where they were discovered is so clear that you can see all the way to the bottom. It is very beautiful. So I drew this scene while imagining returning to the primitive earth.

Uchiyama

When you draw a scene, you often refer to pictures of other places on the planet, don't you?

Hagio

I didn't look at those pictures intending for them to be referenced in Marginal, but they were so beautiful that the image stayed in my mind for a long time. In the end, I wanted to have a beautiful ocean scene, and I remembered that I had seen what I wanted somewhere in the past.

Uchiyama

For more information, please buy and read the books!

Hagio

There are a lot of handsome guys in this book (laughs).

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

Japanese text available here. (But please buy the book!)

[octaveoctant]

X+Y, Hagio Moto (1984)