12-year-old Perfect Master of Manga

[Taro Toporific]

Travels in the floating world
Inspired by his 12-year-old son's passion for Japanese pop culture Peter Carey booked a family trip to Tokyo. Could the generation gap be bridged?
Saturday November 27, 2004 / The Guardian, extract from 'Wrong about Japan' by Peter Carey (http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1359795,00.html?=rss)
I was at the video shop with my 12-year-old son when he rented Kikujiro , a tough-guy/little-boy Japanese film whose charming, twitching hoodlum is played by an actor named Beat Takeshi. How could I have known where this would lead?
Over the next few weeks Charley rented Kikujiro a number of times, and although I was with him when he did so, I had no idea how powerfully he'd been affected, not until he said, quietly, en passant, "When I grow up I'm going to live in Tokyo....
<snip>
...The kid who would never talk in class was now brimming with new ideas he wasn't shy to discuss. I was excited by him and for him; and for myself too, because I'd already visited Japan twice and now realised I had a perfect pedagogic rationale for indulging my interests further.
"Would you like to go to Japan?" I asked.
"If you like," he said, so dry I couldn't believe it.
"I thought you'd be excited."
His lips flickered and he lowered his eyes. "Not if I have to see the Real Japan."
:bowdown:
http://www.angelfire.com/trek/taro/funtokyo/SouthShinjuku.jpg

[plaid_knight]

I am not a big fan of the cityscapes either. Thankfully there are some remote areas that have been relatively untouched by civilization and the concreting proponents of it.

[Kanchou]

Is that a screenshot from Flight Simulator? :D

[Guile]

In America, cartoons are thought to be for kids. In Japan, anime is as much respected as live-action films, and not at all limited to a specific age group.

Is this true? Would it be socially acceptable for Japanese adults to be watching Love Hina or to rent Akira as a "regular" form of entertainment?

Just wondering.

[Charles]

I worry about this guy's parenting skills. I don't think Kikujiro is really suitable for 12 year olds, didn't he notice the scene where Kikujiro gets molested?

Anyway, I liked the Guardian story, despite its numerous flaws. It isn't a true FG story unless it contains a whiny ozzie complaining how much he hates Japan AND America.

[puargs]

Hahahaha, damn Charles, you REALLY hate those Australians.

This column was a good read though, even if written by a guy we KNOW was wearing a goofy hat and a fanny pack the whole time he was there.

[Captain Japan]

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Books/Pix/covers/2004/11/26/japaghn.jpg
It was full of Eastern promise... (http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/travel/0,6121,1381912,00.html)
... but Wrong about Japan, Peter Carey's account of a trip to Tokyo with his teenage son, sheds no light on the generation gap or the East-West divide, says Peter Conrad
Guardian
Wrong about Japan: A Father's Journey with his Son
Peter Carey
Faber £12.99, pp176
This is an odd, unnecessary little book - an unmemorable memento of a brief trip Peter Carey made to Tokyo two years ago with his pubescent son. The jaunt was meant to be an exercise in male bonding, though father and son had divergent motives. Charley, a shy slacker, wanted to meet the makers of the Manga comics and Anime epics he adored; Carey wanted an advance that would pay for the airfares. Yawning his way through a video he saw before leaving, Charley is asked why he's watching it again in Tokyo. 'It's for my dad's book,' he sighs.

At a pinch, there's enough material here for a magazine article. Carey takes a brazen pride in being 'a terrible reporter'. He forgets the names of the people he is interviewing, and doesn't especially mind when they politely wave aside his inept or incoherent questions. Unable to speak the language, he relies on tracts of savourless, stilted dialogue made for him by the translators he employed. No comedy of cultural misunderstanding emerges from this. One frame of Bill Murray's silent, stupefied face as he stares at the neon galaxies of Shinjuku or the freaky inanities of Japanese television in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation is more eloquent than Carey's 170 pages. Clumsy efforts are made to float cumbrous geopolitical balloons: the rampages of Godzilla are explained, unsurprisingly, as a reaction to the fire bombing of Tokyo in 1945. A survivor of the city's incineration reminds Charley that, although nearly 3,000 people died at the World Trade Centre, probably a million were killed or injured or orphaned in Tokyo.

[Mulboyne]

Captain, looks like you might be a little foggy after the New Year celebrations...
FG Thread: 12-year-old Perfect Master of Manga (http://www.fuckedgaijin.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9553&highlight=carey)
FG Thread: Buy a floating love boat, crap game, chapel... (http://www.fuckedgaijin.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9173&highlight=carey)

[Captain Japan]

Captain, looks like you might be a little foggy after the New Year celebrations...

I remember having no more than 14 beers.

[plaid_knight]

It really is like the way stuff is "mainstream" (read: retarded and socially acceptable) and not "mainstream" (read: retarded and not so socially acceptable). :wink:

Think of it like your tabletop rpg sessions or the comic books you have stacked on your bookshelf. Yeah,you enjoy them. They're a little outside the area of interest for "most" people, yet they have a consistent and loyal audience anyway.

[jingai]

Guile,
Walk into a manga kissa or Book-Off and you'll see adults way outnumbering kids reading manga. Same goes for your local gamecenter/video game store. Comics like Sanctuary with the rape scenes, violence, and plot about political corruption ain't aimed at your average 8 year old.

Kikujiro was Beat Takehi's character. Masao (the kid) was victim of an attempted molestation before Beat showed up.

I like the Japanese cityscapes myself and spent many days taking pictures of them. They're wonderfully inhuman, like the alien city at the end of Solaris (which was 1970's Tokyo, FYI).

[Andocrates]

First up in Kikujiro no natsu the boy didn't get molested. 2nd Anime isn't just for kids even in America:

Flintstones, Jetsons, King of the Hill, Beavis and Butt head, South Park, Simpson's, etc etc.

Some anime is obviously geared to kids. i.e. "The one with magic cards." Some is more adult oriented One Piece.

But I don't want to get into the whole cultural elitism issue. If it makes you happy more power to you.

[Charles]

First up in Kikujiro no natsu the boy didn't get molested.
You should watch Kikujiro again. Watch for the scene where the boy gets molested by a stranger in a public toilet, so Kikujiro beats the crap out of the molester and steals his wallet.