#even in the women island arc he is so considerate kind and says thank you and shows appreciation where it's due

[sanjiaftersex]

Honestly, Water 7 was such an impactful arc for the strawhats because after that season you can feel their energy starts shifting, especially Luffy comes off as more grounded than before. Hes still chaotic, stupid and lovable but WOW Sabaody Luffy is a whole new Luffy He has really stepped into his main character energy like, yes THAT is a real shounen hero right there

[powerbottomblake]

How well do you think RWBY handles its race metaphors and well its characters of color? I seen a lot of people upset at the Faunus subplot and the lack of good characters of color. Like a series can have good (white) female and/or LGBT rep but fail POC. That’s white feminism in a nutshell. RWBY has its stumbles with some colorism here and there but with Maria I think CRWBY is improving. Thank you in advance.

I think CRWBY are extremely hit and miss when it comes to handling race.

Undercut because it got long.

So first: Faunus as an allusion to every kind of racial systemic oppression confounded is kind of iffy since it lumps all people of color together and assumes that all of them face the same kind of oppression, which is…utterly simplistic to say the least. Plus when you take actual race away…from a racial storyline and attribute it to a whole other species, you kind of dilute the message considerably. The point will fly over people’s heads 9 times out of 10. People will sooner empathize with catgirls than black or brown people and this has been proved time and again.

But seeing how the story is being helmed now by two white men who seem (and iirc have outright said) that they’re out of their depth when it comes to race, it’s probably preferable to have a blanket statement rather than go for actual racial storylines since the risk of a misstep gets higher. 

And the thing is, when CRWBY miss their mark they really Miss The Mark. The two very clear missteps I think of that denote a certain tone-deafness/ignorance on their part were:

At the end of V1, we never get an apology from Weiss. What’s worse is that Blake is somehow framed as the only one who has to come clean and justify herself which is so…wrong after Weiss’ vicious, racist insults. Yes the White Fang are Bad now and are extremists but Weiss literally started the whole thing about Sun, who had no known affiliation to the White Fang, calling him a degenerate just because he was a Faunus like?? She made it clear she distrusted any Faunus?? And somehow the whole arc was framed to get Blake to realize that White Fang had lost its soul, which yes! She should! And it’s part of her storyline! But we never get to actually see Weiss going back on what she said. We never see her apologize for the racial prejudice she hurled at both Blake and Sun? And at the end it’s just. brushed off. The whole thing is very clunky and awkward and overall, I’d say tactless.

In V5 when Blake states “Humans didn’t do this…We did this” as she points to her house on fire and it’s. ok so it makes sense in context bc this is about Blake reclaiming the White Fang movement from Adam which is fair. But the thing is, the phrasing is very. This is dangerously close to making the oppressed class shoulder the full responsibility for the clashes occuring…because of the systemic oppression they’re being put under. That was very close to a “black on black crime” rhetoric. That scene, that particular quote left an incredibly bad aftertaste bc somehow the Faunus are taking full responsibility for smth that was primarily born out of the humans’ oppression of them. Incidentally this is the exact bone I had to pick with Black Panther too. Both Erik and Adam are products of what the oppressing class has done, yet the full responsibility for taking them out falls on the oppressed somehow. Humans might not have lit that house on fire but we wouldn’t even be on that island, Adam wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for the SDC apparently using Faunus slaves for their mines. I know this is more a result of short-sightedness than actual malice but yeah…again it still ends up being tone-deaf.

Now beyond that I think that likewise when CRWBY hit they do Hit the Spot. The White Fang storyline especially asks some incredibly important questions when it comes to activism and fighting for your rights as an oppressed people: How far can political correctness carry you in the face of people who are out to rob of your most basic rights? When is retaliation righteous and what kind? What is justice and what is spite? How can you walk the fine line between meekness and violence? All of these questions are especially relevant today and make for a compelling storyline, especially since we get to see one of our main characters (Blake) navigate them. We’re shown that Ghira’s position, while foregoing violence, recoiled too much from conflict and ended with a deal mostly disadvantageous to his people. We’re shown that Sienna’s guerilla warfare ultimately devolves into Adam’s White Fang: bloodshed that only really perpetuates the cycle of violence and forgets its initial cause along the way. Now Blake has rejected both paths; the next logical step, and one that would neatly wrap up both a great leadership arc for her and a great political storyline all around would be for her to witness the full scale of horrors in Mantle and establish the threshold at which fighting back isn’t just necessary, it’s righteous and a duty. There’s a balance to be found and Blake is the one geared to find it. Question is: will CRWBY take the storyline there as it should (my guess is YES otherwise we wouldn’t have had need of Adam being literally branded by the SDC, adding up to Ilia’s backstory)? More importantly will they do it justice? Jury’s out on that one tbh. I think it’s fair to be wary considering the past offenses but the White Fang subplot has been surprisingly and really good mostly so. Wait and see I guess.

Despite all of its flaws I think calling RWBY white feminism is deeply incorrect? White feminism is about propping up white female characters’ storylines at the expense of POC characters, while disregarding any type of specific oppression non white characters and non white women especially have to face, which is not what’s happening here. Beyond the Faunus allegory, Blake is literally not meant to read as white and has very apparent asian coding. Ilia, who’s both very clearly POC and LGBT, has a story that is given weight and proper development and gets the redemption arc from within the White Fang. Bumbleby is literally meant to be read as an interracial couple, and while yes I’ve had qualms about Blake’s skin tone being incredibly inconsistent between volumes and especially washed out in V6, I do believe it stems more from a lack of foresight/animation and lighting wonkiness than outright malice or disregard, which I hope gets resolved in the later volumes. 

[yunhokick]

[GOLDEN KAMUY] Interview with managing editor Ookuma Hakkou, May 2016

Golden Kamuy won the Manga Taisho Award 2016. Noda Satoru was the first male mangaka since 2008 who grabbed the award – 8 years after Ishizuka Shinichi did it with Gaku – Minna no Yama. HONZ had an interview with Golden Kamuy’s managing director, Ookuma Hakkou. The interviewer was Okada Atsunobu from Manga Shinbun.

(pic below: Ookuma Hakkou when receiving the Manga Taisho Award 2016 on behalf of Noda Satoru)

Member of HONZ vary from female university students to men in their late 40s, and their tastes often don’t agree, but Golden Kamuy receives support from all groups. Can you tell us the secret of the strong appeal that captures men and women of all ages?

Thank you. As for the appeal, one of my favourite authors, Fujiko F. Fujio, once said this:

“When it comes to popular manga, what the readers want and what the mangaka try to express, fortunately concur.” (Fujiko F. Fujio in Fujiko F. Fujio no manga gihou, published by Shogakukan. Fujiko F. Fujio is the mangaka who made Doraemon – ty.)

Holding to the quote above, I sought for “materials in Noda-sensei’s drawer that could be accepted by more people”. Those materials were “hunting”, “military”, and Noda-sensei’s place of origin, “Hokkaido”. I think those concur with what readers want to read.

I see. Was such appeal something that you aimed for? Or was it unexpected?

I aimed for it. Editing is the very first tasting of what the chef, the mangaka, prepares. I think an editor must together with the author aims for the taste that can be accepted by many. I’ve been working together with Noda-sensei since the beginning of his debut Supinamarada!, and after the serialization ended, he showed me name (manga scripts) of various themes, but the moment I read the script for Golden Kamuy, I thought “This is it!” Something fundamental was born between me and Noda-sensei.

Then, when the serialization started, did it become popular immediately?

The first responses were truly wonderful. Afterwards, ever since Sugimoto and Shiraishi fell off a snow cornice in chapter 7, poll results too have been stable.

I see.

Although it showed two plain gaffers warming themselves (laughs). After that, we held a discussion to talk about strategy. Actually, without caring about poll results, we’ve made 7 chapters to be compiled in the first volume (180 pages) before the serialization started. We tried putting Hijikata Toshizou in chapter seven at the end of the book… It was such an attention-grabber. It cleverly fit, and the poll results were stellar.

Awesome.

Furthermore, if we included depictions of food, it’d get even better…

I came to realise that pacing was very important. Action creates ‘tension’, so as a reader continues reading a book, they demand more tension. Inserting daily elements such as food prevents tension from soaring too high, creating a synergistic effect like pouring salt on watermelon just heightens its sweetness. However, even though we want to put in everything, putting in different things together takes considerable skill. If we made it clumsily, the elements might cancel each other so that the taste would disappear, but thanks to Noda-sensei’s capabilities, it turned out wonderful.

 Because He’s Earnest, He Doesn’t’ Leave Out Scenes of Preparing Game Meat

The culinary aspect of Golden Kamuy has considerable elements of hunting. There are a substantial number of scenes showing the process of cooking, from making trap to capture game to be cooked and preparing the food.

I think that’s the result of Noda-sensei’s earnestness. For instance, when preparing food, the Ainu people will fold the fur of the game they caught. Including on a snow field. There’s a meaning in each of their behaviour, even in their daily routine, somehow. Not only the culinary scenes, the livelihood of the Ainu people is also an important theme in Golden Kamuy, so I think he’s pouring his efforts over that feeling of wanting to tell everything about it without compromise. Because that’s how Noda-sensei works—grounding entertainment on a foundation of reality.

I see. By the way, in addition to that element of “fighting for a purpose” like in shounen magazines, Golden Kamuy also contains depictions that are quite gruesome, seinen magazine style.

We also aim for that. However, er… about gruesome depictions… although he said he’s not good at horrid stuff, I wonder if he’s probably lying… I think he kinda likes it. (laughs)

New Series Is the Transfer Student in a Class

Are there gruesome scenes that are too extreme so that sensei was asked to change them?

There are. For instance, actually the original script for chapter 3 of Golden Kamuy showed the havoc caused by a wandering bear that attacked a village.

(laughs) That makes me want to read it.

In my opinion, a newly serialized manga is like a transfer student in a class. When one transfers school, the first impression given is when one introduces one’s self, showing one’s face. That’s the information for readers—readers are the classmates. Information in manga is something like that. However, as days, that is, pages, go by, as we come to knowing why someone cries, be happy, be angry, what does he eat to stay alive, what kind of girl he likes, then we might think “this person is like me”, or “this person is a friend”, or “this person is someone cool that I want to look up to”, in short, is that person like Hibito from Uchuu Kyoudai (a manga by Koyama Chuuya – ty.) or like Toriko from Toriko (a manga by Shimabukuro Mitsutoshi). Or we can learn that he’s the sympathetic sort of a main character like Komatsu (a supporting character in Toriko).

I see.

How to shorten the sense of distance with readers is tremendously important. So, if you display gruesome scenes in the first impact, it will draw attention because it gives such a huge thrill. It’d start out with a bang.

That’s right.

However, once that point of attention has passed from sight, I think such over-the-top stuff would lose its appeal to the masses.

For sure.

That’s why if at the very first you already put something that attracts attention, to maintain the appeal of the point of attention, we must properly devise it in a calculated way, so as not to overdo it. That’s why I said “If three consecutive chapters are gruesome, people would perceive this as over-the-top, so I don’t think it would be appealing to the masses, and thus can you put more various, balanced interesting elements in?”

Thanks to that trial-and-error, the first chapter turned out to be awesome.

Combination of Reality and Entertainment

Golden Kamuy has a lot of unique characters; I think it’s the appeal of the manga. How were they created?  In his blog, Noda-sensei mentioned that the protagonist Sugimoto Saichi was named after his tondenhei great-grandfather, but only the name was borrowed, while the great-grandfather was not really the model.

He was modelled after a historical figure. Both Noda-sensei and I love history, so many of the characters are based on historical figures. The model for Sugimoto, Funasaka Hiroshi, was a person who survived hand grenade blast.

Eeeeh!

In chapter 1, Sugimoto was shot in the neck; the same thing also happened to Funasaka. Funasaka survived nevertheless, and was then called ‘immortal’.

The standard of romance manga is exaggerating the daily moment of meeting the love interest; however, when it comes to thinking of how to draw totally awesome moment in a survival manga, what can show that this guy is cool straight away? How about an immortal guy? Hence, Noda-sensei developed Sugimoto based on Funasaka.

Invincible Ushiyama is modelled after Ushijima Tatsukuma (a judoka) who once fought Rikidouzan (a famous wrestler – ty. ) and taught Kimura Masahiko (another famous judoka – ty.).

The name is so terrific, isn’t it. It’s made up of the kanji characters 牛 (cow), 島 (island) 辰 (dragon) and 熊 (bear). He’s the judoka who’s called ‘Invincible Ushijima’. I heard he’s unbeaten in 100 matches. The murder hotel arc was based on the murders by American murderer H.H. Holmes. A new character that recently appeared in the magazine was modelled after Ed Gein, who made a lampshade from human face skin. Hijikata Toshizou needs no explanation. There are many seemingly unreal people like them, and if we make characters based on them, readers can immediately connect the story with reality. That’s why we want to keep creating characters with such feeling of reality.

How about Asirpa?

Asirpa is slightly different, because she’s not modelled after anyone. But there’s a story about her name. We decided on the name ‘Asirpa’ because our Ainu language supervisor, Professor Nakagawa Hiroshi from Chiba University, when we’re trying to choose a name for her, told us “The name means ‘new year’, but it can also be interpreted as ‘future’.” When we chose the name, it solidified her character as ‘a small girl that opens up a new age after the turbulent Meiji period and opens up a new meaning of life’.

I see.

The Ainu people put great importance in names. For instance, if we use a name that belonged to a person who’s died in unfortunate circumstances, that would be considered a blasphemy, so we cannot use the same name, making it quite difficult for us. A name carries a strong meaning. If you only see the way my name is written (Ookuma Hakkou, 大熊八甲, the kanji for ookuma means big bear), wouldn’t you get an image of a judoka? (laughs) But then I turn out looking more like a bear cub (小熊, literally small bear) instead.

No, it’s not like that. (laughs)

Maybe I look more like a raccoon. (laughs)

No no no! (laughs) Are there any other models for the characters?

Ah, I was told that Sugimoto’s weird faces when eating food are inspired by MAN vs. WILD’s Bear Grylls.

Eeeh!

To stay alive, Grylls ate stuff like worms, snake, and maggots during his survival trips. He’d put up a very disgusted face. But he’d say “They’re good nutrition sources.” He gives the impression “Although I don’t want to eat it, but I have to eat it to stay alive.” I watched it because Noda-sensei told me it’s interesting, and I thought it’s such an interesting entertainment, I want us to make something inspired by this.

You got idea from truly various places.

 Abundant reference and running around Hokkaido for field observation

Earlier, you mentioned that Noda-sensei was earnest, but what kind of a person he actually is?

His image is that of the writer, sophisticated and no-nonsense. He’s silent, very earnest about manga, determined, and, in a good meaning, greedy.

Greedy?

Like, “I want to write something interesting”, “Isn’t my manga interesting?”… It’s as if he declares war against all other manga. But he’s actually a very gentle person. (laughs) He’s the professional writer with the strong points that I admire.

Wonderful. I also got the impression that he’s a very studious person, from the very long list of reference at the end of every Golden Kamuy volume… However, I was surprised because I heard the reference only includes books about the Ainu, and he actually reads far more books that he can’t write them all down in the list.

That’s right! Noda-sensei is a guy who doesn’t want to draw lies. His stance is “Always put your effort earnestly, and apologize if you make a mistake”. I think his earnestness can be felt by all the relevant parties, and they can accept his work favourably. Even if there are mistakes now, they will point them out in a positive way, and will help with the correction.

Is research difficult too?

It is. If anyone asks whether it’s difficult, it is, very (laughs).

However, I think probably it’s the nature of an author to do their best when it’s about the things they like, even though they look difficult. For instance, someone who loves soccer would find no problem playing soccer every day, but for someone who hates soccer, it would really be a bother. For Noda-sensei, survival and military stuff are things that he really likes. He also loves Hokkaido. His love seeps into the manga. He reads a lot of books and does field observation himself. I certainly go observing with him, and I do the editing, but at the root, the heart itself, is Noda-sensei’s field observation. It’s truly admirable.

The other day, I was surprised because Noda-sensei wrote in his blog that “Golden Kamuy wouldn’t be published in the next issue because I’m going hunting”. I thought, was the series having a break over hunting Sanzoku Diary or Golden Kamuy…

We’re also going to Abashiri Prison, Oshamambe Airport, Shiretoko. Also to Sankebetsu where the brown bear incident happened. By the way, when we went to Noboribetsu Bear Park, when this bear was fed, our photographer stood by the side and kept taking pictures when the bear took the food. That became the picture at the back cover of volume 1.

Eeeh!

Actually, there’s an apple in front of the bear’s mouth in the photograph. (laughs). That’s just some of the things we do.

So there was such secret.

Since his previous work, Supinamarada!, field observation has been very important. When the ice hockey team of Komadai Tomakamai High, the model for Yuufutsu High, the setting for Supinamarada!, won a match, he went down into the rink (laughs). To draw an interesting manga, he gets involved in many things. Seriously. If he gets angry, he’ll let it out honestly (laughs). He’s got such a great will to fight inside him.

 --end of interview—

Note: Again I got help from friends (@yayoimusume and @noirciel on Twitter) in some parts of this translation. Their main language pair is Japanese-Indonesian, so any mistake in translating their suggestion into English is mine! Corrections and suggestions are still, like always, welcome.

 Read more of my posts and translations about Golden Kamuy:

About the real Sugimoto Saichi and Funasaka Hiroshi

Interview with Noda Satoru and Ookuma Hakkou (January 2016)

Interview with Noda Satoru (January 2016)

Interview: Noda Satoru x Machiyama Tomohiro