I’ve just scanned a bunch of old shonen manga covers for Jason Thompson (author of the upcoming book Manga - The Complete Guide and the manga dood for OTAKU USA) who will be delivering a lecture about the art and science of manga magazines tomorrow night at the monthly Matcha! mixer at the Asian Art Museum.
Here’s a sneak peek at some of the wilder ones.
Here's legendary Japanese rebel Tange Sazen defying the US Occupation forces on his trusty steed Diablo. From Boken gatsugeki bunko, 1949
The first Japanese boy to land on the moon made it with the aid of some props left over from Toho's Battle in Outer Space. Shonen Gaho, 1961.
From 1964, this is the cover Shonen Gaho WISHES they could have run back in '49...
Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me anime and manga have had a somewhat harder time with the land war in the Co-Prosperity Sphere. There's no Imperial Army equivalent of YAMATO or GUNBUSTER, is there? Pure-hearted youth bayonetting alien peasants, or lying dead, full of cosmo-maggots?
Posted by: Carl Horn | June 06, 2007 at 04:13 PM
The Japanese army had a reputation as a bunch of murgerous morons running amok in China under the spell of "For the Emperor!" groupthink. The biography of Hirota Koki by Saburo Shiroyama says as much. Besides, the Imperial Navy had all the cool technology, like the Zero and the Yamato, as Tomohiro Machiyama writes in that new japanimation magazine that just hit the shelves. What kid wants to pose out in a tin tank that probably has better armor than the real deal?
Posted by: Dan Hager | June 06, 2007 at 05:13 PM
Well, as a part time military Otaku...
Japan during WW II never really did much with armor, not even mechanized transport, armored cars or the like. Most of it seemed to be at best WW I quality. It may have been some issue with not planning for large scale transports, it might have been material shortages, I'm not sure. (but then you'd think they'd have been on the frontline of composite armor development) Part of it MAY have been a general thinking that most of the fighting was likely to be on islands and tanks and jungles don't work well together.
But I am surprised they didn't exploit troop transport options. It seems so logical.
It seems, from my very limited view, the Navy got all the prime money, with the Army Air Force behind them. The Army itself seemed to get the short end of the stick, even tho they had the hardest task. I mean, IIRC they didn't develop a semi-auto rifle for the troops AT ALL until the war was almost over!
I dunno, I look at the Japanese military equipment of WW II and I'm amazed they did as well(in terms of performing their function as the enforcement arm of wrong headed policy) as they did. No wonder there's that fetish for German WW II stuff.
Posted by: Steve Harrison | June 06, 2007 at 06:30 PM
From what history textbooks say (and this hold true only in the Borneo region), the Japanese Army were good at jungle warfare when it comes to land-based fighting, and they used bicycles to great effect for troop transportation, since most jungles are really impenetrable for vehicles.
I can understand the fetish for German WWII military equipment. I mean, who wants a freaking bicycle on a poster in their bedroom?
Posted by: huhwhat | June 06, 2007 at 08:49 PM
Don't let the BMX fans hear you say that, I hear they're EXXTRREEEMMEE!
Didn't know about the Japanese Jungle bike. Know the Germans used them quite a bit in the early days when the roads were still intact in Europe. Dragon or Tamiya or someone probably made a 1/35 scale kit of a German Bike Squad.
But you really can't portage lots of ammo and heavy weapons on bicycles.
Hey, maybe that needs to be a new anime series..."Kodai Takuma's Quick Reaction Bicycle Corps"...naaaa, they'd just make it all chicks in fetish army uniforms for the MOE.
Posted by: Steve Harrison | June 06, 2007 at 09:08 PM
I've heard rumors that there is a genre of Japanese Westerns: Movies with stock Japanese cowboys riding the range with six shooters and injuns and the like. Can somebody point me to where I can see these movies? It sounds so strange, a country imitating the iconic cultural entertainment of another country that is so different.
Wait, I've heard that somewhere before...
Posted by: danno | June 07, 2007 at 11:49 AM
Yeah, these would be the mid '60s Nikkatsu movies starring card shark Shishido Jo (AKA Ace no Jo) and guitar toting Akira Kobayashi. I don't seem to remember there being any Indians, but a few of them have stagecoaches. I can't read French, but there's a write up about a few of them that Mark Schilling presented a few years ago...
http://www.sancho-asia.com/article.php3?id_article=1243
Posted by: Patrick Macias | June 07, 2007 at 11:56 AM
I think what I was getting at there was maybe missed by just a few millimeters, but in such a wonderfully otakky way that perhaps it didn't really miss at all. As Roger Moore said, "Did I?"
Posted by: Carl Horn | June 07, 2007 at 12:23 PM
"Ball's eye, fish fingers."
Posted by: Patrick Macias | June 07, 2007 at 12:35 PM