Manga

This week I read Tezuka’s Dororo. I got hooked on the story right away. It’s very unique compared to western comics, and it follows a ruler who made a deal with demons and the result is his son being cursed to have no limbs or eyes until he was just a shell of a person when he was born. Then as he grows older, he’s haunted by ghouls who try to kill him. He soon meets his companion, Dororo, who he saves. One thing that caught my attention was the art style. From what I’ve seen from Manga today, Tezuka’s style is far from where manga has evolved. It is very recognizable as an older style for Japanese media. I’ve seen some of the Astro Boy cartoons and other older Japanese cartoons, so the style is recognizable. I looked into the newer Dororo anime and the style is redone to fit today’s anime style. There’s not really any new media with the old style, which I think is a shame. It’s more appealing in my opinion. The other thing I noticed while reading that threw me off was the text read from left to right. I used to read Naruto manga as a kid and it read from right to left, and usually manga panels read backwards from english. Maybe it was this particular translation that changed the format, but I thought that was interesting.

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