#not to mention men can write for shoujo and women can write for shounen too

[yioh]

the whole csm discourse on twitter is so dumbbbbb oh my god😭

[bthump]

I was recently watching a yt video about Guts and Griffith's relationship and the guy used "fragile masculinity" to refer to fans who didn't want to mention The Rose of Versailles and kaze to ki no uta as inspiration for Berserk and Griffith. Anyway, what surprised me was the number of comments from men offended by the term "fragile masculinity" so I'm curious if you think that this topic is touched on in Berserk or if there is any example of it.

love your blog <3

You can ignore the question if it is boring.

Thank you!

lol I sat on this for a while before writing a longish reply that ultimately boiled down to 'idk i need more cultural context to approach berserk through a construction of masculinity kinda lens because the story itself doesn't give you much to work with on its own' and queued it, and then shortly before it posted I went

wait a second... promrose hall speech.

So now that's my answer lol. I do think the concept of fragile masculinity, ie men being insecure in their masculinity and therefore going above and beyond to perform it, is touched on in Berserk somewhat directly at least once, and that's in Griffith's Promrose Hall speech.

The concept of dreams is contextualized as a thing for men specifically, in this speech. Charlotte asked why "men enjoy little more than shedding blood," and Griffith's speech is about how men feel. "For a man," he says, he must come upon another precious thing before he can attain love or a family - a dream.

So I mean it's not necessarily intentional on Miura's part, but it's certainly something concrete to point to to suggest that dreams are contextualized in Berserk as part of that fragile masculinity, something for men to cling to to assure themselves that they're Real Men. It's an irrational and usually harmful obsession that the story says men are more prone to than women, after all, and our main examples of dreams are both very masculine: Griffith and wanting a kingdom, Guts and wanting to be the best strongest swordsman.

This also kinda fits the seinen vs shoujo dichotomy in Berserk lol. Dreams are part of the more seinen-influenced aspects of the story, and sometimes pretty shounen-esque too (I want to be the best) in a way that kinda deconstructs those tropes. Relationships that they're set in opposition to and that those dreams generally ruin, are the more shoujo-influenced part of Berserk. So you can argue that masculine media tropes are also being deconstructed a bit here.

Anyway yeah thanks for the ask, this made me think a lot lol.

[algdissertation]

Manga Sixty years of Japanese Comics (Paul Gravett)

Laurence King Publishing Ltd, 2004, London

Western image of manga is very negative, seen as violent and overly sexualised, described as “distressing” by Paul Theroux in his book The Great Railway Bazaar (1975). 

Frederik Schodt study Manga! Manga! - explained meaning of the word manga as man meaning involuntary or irresponsible and ga meaning pictures, thus the term irresponsible pictures was coined to define manga. LOOK UP THIS STUDY.

Typical Western image of manga is grown men in business suits reading violent and sexy comics. IS THIS STILL THE CASE NOW THOUGH? THIS COULD BE A SUBJECT FOR PRIMARY RESEARCH.

Japan has taken the fundamentals of American comics and “Japanized” them by breaking the traditional confining formats of typical western comics (32 pages), they now embrace long free form narratives and cover an unimaginable range of subjects and themes for all ages, genders and social groups. WHAT IS THE TRADITIONAL WESTERN COMIC LIKE? HOW EXACTLY DO THEY COMPARE TO MANGA? 

1945 American comics came in to Japan via military forces, Japanese started to reproduce them but cheaply on low quality paper and in black and white.

Much of a Japanese person’s home, school and work life is governed by strict notions of respect and hierarchy. The solitary activity of reading manga allows him or her to leave behind daily formalities and experience, if only vicariously, for the more liberated realms of the mind and senses. In many societies where repression rules, extraordinary and provocative creativity results. IS THE EXTREMENESS OF MANGA DUE TO THE “REPRESSIVE’ CULTURE OF JAPAN? HOW DOES THIS DIFFER TO THE WEST? WESTERN COMICS ARE STILL VIOLENT AND GRAPHIC DESPITE FREE SPEECH AND PROMOTION OF INDIVIDUALITY.

Manga monthly's are sold cheaply, usually around 250 yen (about £1.70), however the final product of a manga serialisation is usually the typical style manga that we know of, printed of around 200-300 pages and much more compact than the telephone book sized monthly serialisations, these typically cost around £5-10 depending on the popularity and edition of the manga. WHERE ARE THESE SOLD IN JAPAN? WHERE ARE THEY SOLD IN THE UK - WATERSTONES, WHSMITHS - VERY SMALL SELECTIONS. SMALL SELECTION IN THE LIBRARY. COMPARE ACCESSIBILITY OF PURCHASING. 

Manga cafes that are open 24 hours a day with selections of manga typically ranging to 20,000 to 30,000, hourly fee is paid to stay and read. WOULD THIS WORK IN AMERICA OR THE UK?

Manga dont typically run for the same duration as American comics, with some exceptions such as One Piece, DBZ etc which are longer than usual manga. 

Format of creating manga is a studio of usually anything between a couple to 20 people with work divided up between each person, all overseen by the editor. THIS IS VERY SIMILAR TO UKIYO-E AND TOKUGAWA ERO ART BOOK CREATIONS. DISCUSS AND COMPARE.

Manga accounts for around 40% of all books and magazines sold in Japan. The extreme popularity of manga could be due to Japanese people’s longstanding appetite for pictorial art. RELATE BACK TO UKIYO-E ART BOOKS. IS MANGA THE MODERN DAY UKIYO-E? CHEAP TO MAKE AND BUY, CREATED IN SIMILAR WAY ETC. HOW DO THEY COMPARE VISUALLY? ESPECIALLY EARLY UKIYO-E IN BLACK AND WHITE LINE WORK.

Ukiyo-zoshi - novels featuring pictures with additional text not found in the main dialogue. LOOK THESE UP.

As discussed by Sarah E. Thompson, Japan did not adopt movable type early on due to the complexity of the writing system and continued to use woodblock printing. Therefore, the printing of text and images in tandem has been quite the norm for Japan. By contrast in the UK, images and text printing developed separately with there being a somewhat divide between the verbal and visual. In most early Britis comics, there were no speech bubbles but text was printed typically underneath the image frames. LOOK UP EARLY BRITISH COMIC.

1856 - Japan Punch launched by British army officer Charles Wirgman. Based on British Punch magazine. Previously this type of caricatured imagery with critical comments about people or contemporary events had been banned by the Shogunate, however under the Meiji restoration, they grew in popularity. Marumaru Chinbun magazine from 1877 featured these Western style comic strips that used Japanese references and puns, created by Honda Kinkichiro. NOT THAT LONG AFTER HOKUSAIS MANGA HOWEVER COMPARE THE STYLE DIFFERENCE FOLLOWING THE DIRECT INFLUENCE AND IMMITATION OF WESTERN STYLE. HOW DID THIS DIFFER FROM HOKUSAIS USE OF IMMITATION?

Suhiho Tagawa, creator of Norakuro (1889 - 1989) and other cartoonists of that time took an almost theatrical approach to the comics they drew, typically drawing characters in full view from head to toe and rarely using closeups or unconventional view points. THIS IS OPPOSITE OF MANGA TODAY. COMPARE AND DISCUSS. Slowly but surely cinema techniques began to find their way in to manga compositions. The use of close up images to emphasise dramatic moments etc. One of the pioneers of this was Osamu Tezuka, creator of Astro Boy. AGAIN INFLUENCE OF CINEMA CAN BE SEEN.

Gekiga manga - much darker than the childlike manga published in ‘red book’ format, aimed at an older audience, teenage and young adult rather than young children. Gekiga often looked at social and historical issues of the country. “In conservative Japan, it is comics that provide a vehicle for independent and daring perspectives on truth”. Gekiga manga flourished during the 1950′s when there was a lot of social upheaval due to the renewal of the Japanese and American alliance, culminating int he riots of 1960. AGAIN MENTION OF THE RIOTS - LOOK THIS UP, RESEARCH THEM. NOWADAYS THERE ARE SO MANY GENRES OF MANGA, WAS GEKIGA ONE OF THE FIRST GENRES BESIDES THE ORIGINAL VERY CARTOON LIKE MANGAS LIKE ASTRO BOY? GEKIGA PROBABLY CLASSED AS SEINEN. WHEN DID SHOUJO DEVELOP THEN?

Tetsuya Chiba’s manga, Ashita no Jo, a funeral service was held and attended by 700 people in March 1970 when one of the main characters died in the manga. WHAT IS IT THAT CREATES SUCH A FEELING OF ATTACHMENT TO THESE CHARACTERS?

During WWII, a ban was placed on featuring samurai or any competive sports such as judo, sumo etc in any manga and also in real life. The ban was lifted in 1950 and as such a huge number of sports manga were created.

1959 first shounen manga weeklies were published - Shounen Magzine and Shounen Sunday. Previously these types of publications had been issued monthly however with manga such as Astro Boy being adapated for TV, and episodes shown weekly, publishers realised that a month was too long of a wait between the publications of the mangas.

Shoujo manga pre 1960 was no where near as big of a market as shounen and all shoujo was written by men. It typically reinforced the “ideaological policies” of that period, that women should “only aspire to romance, marriage and motherhood”,

Machiko Satonaka entered a competition in Ribon magazine and won, her manga Portrait of Pia was serialised (1964). This was one of the first true shoujo mangas to be written by a female. CONSIDER DIFFERENCES IN ARTIST STYLES BETWEEN SHOUJO AND SHOUNEN, ALSO LOOK AT DIFFERENCES IN HOW CHARACTERS WERE REPRESENTED IN SHOUJO WRITTEN BY MEN AND BY WOMEN.

Osamu Tezuka wrote a shoujo, Princess Sapphire that was more relatable to females than previously, “she was a prototype for the magical girls” that would soon become very popular. Tezuka’s shoujo characters had the typical large eyes and fluffy eyelashes with glistening tears, he took influences from Western comics however he was also heavily influenced by theater and the use of their makeup to portray emotion through the eyes.

By 1970′s it was primarily females writing shoujo manga. They brought a new and fresh approach to the genre, giving life and personality to the characters and showing more emotion and feeling than the men had. They strayed away from the typical panel shapes and sizes and just did what they best felt suited the emotion of the page, bleeding panels across each other and dissolving or even fully removing borders. “Characters could be shown outside of panels and in full length to show off their fashions”. The use of things such as flowers to decorate panels was unique to the female mangakas. LOOK AT SHOUNEN AND SHOUJO PANEL AND STORYTELLING STYLES AND COMPARE.

[Emanata - the use of things such as sweat drops or swirly eyes, anger marks, to show and enhance emotions in comics. - how are these used differently between American comics and Japanese? It came from Western comics and was adopted into Japanese manga. American cartoonist Mort Walker cataloged different emanata - LOOK THIS UP].

In 1978, girls magazine June launched, this magazine the new genre of girls manga - shounen ai (BL). Today BL is a huge genre mainly written and read by girls. WHY DO SO MANY JAPANESE GIRLS LIKE BL? DO WESTERN GIRLS LIKE BL? SAME REASONS? WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES ON VIEWS OF HOMOSEXUALITY IN EAST AND WEST? DO THESE IMPACT ON PORTRAYAL OF BL CHARACTERS? IS HOMOSEXUALITY ACCEPTABLE IN BL BUT NOT IRL?