Week 3: Gekiga

For this weeks reading I read Cigarette Girl. I enjoyed this reading as it was quite a heavy topic portrayed in a lighter hearted comic style. I thought that a lot of the problems and situations happening were not on a large scale per say but it was more silent but still affected everyone. I feel like this manga is quite detail oriented in where it takes a while to understand the little things that are happening. I like how it really reflects on real life and causes you to think about your own.

I like how everything in it is so simple, their lives are really everyday and you meet people like that all the time. I really appreciate something like that because in a day and age where everything is idealized all the time, more colourful or more high definition, we very quickly forget that there are things and situations right under our noses. Just as there is life and joy in the simplistic things.

Three questions on I Saw It.
1. Keiji was pretty strong throughout the comic and we never see him break down, I wonder how he processed what had happened to him.
2. What does he want people to feel or know after reading his work?
3. I wonder what his mother's phycological process was.

I really enjoyed reading this as I seldom read stuff with such a real heavy context. I think it was a huge reminder to me about how different each person's life is. I loved that he wrote it in his perspective as a child. It really made the situation all the more bleak and made me as a reader all the more aware. I could not escape the reality of what had happened and it made it feel real. I was glad to know he went on to make a series later explaining these things more in detail as after reading I Saw It i was left hungry for more. I wanted to know more in this style about the experience and what had happened. Overall it was a good read for me.