With all respect to Mr. Oliveros, or Mr. Groth, or whoever has tried to get Tsuge more "play" overseas...
I should say, I've taken a survey of women, children, and foolish cartoonists, and they all "just plain dont" understand why Tatsumi has a new hardcover every two weeks, and my man Yoshiharu, with a voluptuous and sultry body of work under his cleft hip, remains sad and simian in an un-translated prison, vaulted high and heavenly.
I've heard that he "doesn't want work translated"
that he reckons, personally, perhaps with a cold shoulder and a stubbed-out smoke, that his work is "too japanese"
and thusly, will not allow kindly caucasians, on occasion, to take a proper interest, or spread his words in their own, admittedly brutal anglo-barf tongue.
i doubt it's an aesthetic decision. his stuff is so surreal, i don't see how it could be philosophical, entirely. i am tempted, though sorry, to blame cowardice, with the possibility of clinical depression. but maybe he just wants to sell cameras and stones, under a tarp, and leave us to our ink and volumes, a market apart from his concerns.
sigh.
PS: i'm sure there's good reasons, but i'm still pissed. i shouldn't have to learn kanji to read some weirdo comic for kicks. or maybe i should? yee-haw.
clearly, no known publishers are stepping to the fore, in response to my blog comment, to rigorously translate a pile of surreal auto-bio comics, with a dash of samurai material.
that's all well and good. but still frustrating. what world is this! i have a few tsuge books. i don't think these "animations" do him justice. i would like to see english-language readers react to his images.
he gives me a "vibe" beyond his "genre trappings" of a "kind of creepy dude".
things i love about tsuge:
he draws blunt, simple looking panels, right next to highly detailed panels. they work together. i am skeptical of people who insist a sketchier drawing is 'faster' or 'slower' to 'read'. i think it's more of a full perceptual effect, more often than not determined by the whole page or the spread, and by interesting drawing, panel-by-panel. tsuge's stuff always 'reads' well, despite alternating from sloppy faces to articulate grass huts and hypnotic tableaus.
his stuff contains a solid 'mood' which engages my own feelings about depression and overall fear. really.
he also seems to give a lot, in the realm of trusting in his images and letting things grow and smelt on the page. when he says he is "too japanese" i feel like he is referring to this. he works for no one but himself, and refuses to remove imagery with heavy cultural baggage, as is built into his own brain.
this noted, i think he should still chill out, bow down, and let more westerners read his work in a native tongue, because from images alone (and what little i can read in translation) it is completely amazing. JTM can back me up, probably. we bleed through him, despite a lack of printed matter.
Jesse, please learn Japanese and translate all of Tsuge. Followed by the complete works of Sugiura. You should also learn Kendo. You live in a bad neighborhood.
Thank you for your suggestion. I talk a lot of talk, it's clear, when what I really need to do is be hitting the books. Perhaps in the manner of a gum-chewing baxter with a test to take. If life is the ultimate test, is God a scantron machine? Is Vishnu a three-color pen? Or a mechanical pencil?
These are the kinds of insights that are born through casual devotion to Tsuge. Does anyone have any Garo back-issues I can slobber on?
i'd rather see more taiyo matsumoto reprints. it is mind blowing how much untranslated matsumoto stuff there is..."his sword must be bamboo" for starters.
there is so much good manga out these days...that new "children of the sea" thing is pretty great:
Totally, theres so much cool stuff, but i feel like we westerners can't properly gain perspective on Tsuge's huge influence on even the piles and piles of contemporary un-translated manga (most of Matsumoto, for instance). That doesn't denigrate the newer work, but i think it would be fun to see these branches of influence in a more accurate historical context.
It would also be cool to see which individual stories and/or which extended serials, had most impact on mangaka, especially in a more experiment organ like Garo.
With shelves of volumes in any manga section, we don't often think about manga as a place for powerful comics in the short form, and i don't doubt it's Tezuka's prolific hand which breeds this assumption. Many small, potent pieces still surely lurk in the shadows. Then again, there's still the whole aspect of each volume reading much faster than most pamphlet-sized American comics. But do the shorter form works that ran in Garo have this same velocity? Tsuge feels very calm to me.
this article was part of what initially put the thorn in my side:
From what I understand, Milo George channeled the miraculous by getting permission to translate and print "Screw Style" in TCJ #250.
Don't forget Tsuge hasn't printed original work since 1986.
Also, don't forget that a lot of cool, weird, good manga hasn't been translated because North American publishing standards appear (and probably are) inconsequential when compared to Japanese publishing standards.
When you see the good, rare, weird translated Manga it's most likely the result of a lot of courting and hand holding.
Jesse - I read that article recently, too, and that's what got me thinking about Tsuge again. I have to bust out that issue of TCJ (which is such a good one with the best cover ever) and read Screw-style a thousand times now.
I wonder how well the more esoteric American comics do in Japan. I've seen the Woodring toys, the Burns toys, heard legends of a spot in Tokyo named after Papa Gary, but is that just small potatoes in a comics-centric society like Japan?
i've heard about lines around the block for woodring, and what seems to be a brief cafe with video screens for panter. i'm no japanese, but small potatoes these seem, hum, yes.
other people know more, and could comment, but this discourse is separated by thick intervals. doesn't tsuge read this blog? gee whiz.
For those of you whom a French-English transition is easier, I mean possible (like me), Ego Comme X in France recently published a French translation of Tsuge's "Man Without Talent".
21 comments:
saw this on click opera
how is that youtube box pink? is there a way to do that?
Totally lifted from Momus. There's a spot when you're selecting the embed options for color...
"I LOVE THIS." -Jesse McManus
it's true.
tsuge is my king, my queen.
arigato gozaimasu, sam-chan
All the surfaces look like sickly fish skin. like that
With all respect to Mr. Oliveros, or Mr. Groth, or whoever has tried to get Tsuge more "play" overseas...
I should say, I've taken a survey of women, children, and foolish cartoonists, and they all "just plain dont" understand why Tatsumi has a new hardcover every two weeks, and my man Yoshiharu, with a voluptuous and sultry body of work under his cleft hip, remains sad and simian in an un-translated prison, vaulted high and heavenly.
I've heard that he "doesn't want work translated"
that he reckons, personally, perhaps with a cold shoulder and a stubbed-out smoke, that his work is "too japanese"
and thusly, will not allow kindly caucasians, on occasion, to take a proper interest, or spread his words in their own, admittedly brutal anglo-barf tongue.
i doubt it's an aesthetic decision. his stuff is so surreal, i don't see how it could be philosophical, entirely. i am tempted, though sorry, to blame cowardice, with the possibility of clinical depression. but maybe he just wants to sell cameras and stones, under a tarp, and leave us to our ink and volumes, a market apart from his concerns.
sigh.
PS: i'm sure there's good reasons, but i'm still pissed. i shouldn't have to learn kanji to read some weirdo comic for kicks. or maybe i should? yee-haw.
clearly, no known publishers are stepping to the fore, in response to my blog comment, to rigorously translate a pile of surreal auto-bio comics, with a dash of samurai material.
that's all well and good. but still frustrating.
what world is this!
i have a few tsuge books. i don't think these "animations" do him justice. i would like to see english-language readers react to his images.
he gives me a "vibe" beyond his "genre trappings" of a "kind of creepy dude".
things i love about tsuge:
he draws blunt, simple looking panels, right next to highly detailed panels. they work together. i am skeptical of people who insist a sketchier drawing is 'faster' or 'slower' to 'read'. i think it's more of a full perceptual effect, more often than not determined by the whole page or the spread, and by interesting drawing, panel-by-panel. tsuge's stuff always 'reads' well, despite alternating from sloppy faces to articulate grass huts and hypnotic tableaus.
his stuff contains a solid 'mood' which engages my own feelings about depression and overall fear. really.
he also seems to give a lot, in the realm of trusting in his images and letting things grow and smelt on the page. when he says he is "too japanese" i feel like he is referring to this. he works for no one but himself, and refuses to remove imagery with heavy cultural baggage, as is built into his own brain.
this noted, i think he should still chill out, bow down, and let more westerners read his work in a native tongue, because from images alone (and what little i can read in translation) it is completely amazing. JTM can back me up, probably. we bleed through him, despite a lack of printed matter.
Allow mine to be the first vote that Jesse be added as a writer on this blog.
Too late! He already is!
Jesse,
please learn Japanese and translate all of Tsuge. Followed by the complete works of Sugiura.
You should also learn Kendo. You live in a bad neighborhood.
agreed!
Dear Mr. Fox
Thank you for your suggestion. I talk a lot of talk, it's clear, when what I really need to do is be hitting the books. Perhaps in the manner of a gum-chewing baxter with a test to take. If life is the ultimate test, is God a scantron machine? Is Vishnu a three-color pen? Or a mechanical pencil?
These are the kinds of insights that are born through casual devotion to Tsuge. Does anyone have any Garo back-issues I can slobber on?
A big fat Garo collection would be amazing. Don't have any issues, but I do have a copy of Wet Magazine with a cover by King Terry.
i'd rather see more taiyo matsumoto reprints. it is mind blowing how much untranslated matsumoto stuff there is..."his sword must be bamboo" for starters.
there is so much good manga out these days...that new "children of the sea" thing is pretty great:
http://media.viz.com/flash/omv/index.php?x=cots/cots_01
Totally, theres so much cool stuff, but i feel like we westerners can't properly gain perspective on Tsuge's huge influence on even the piles and piles of contemporary un-translated manga (most of Matsumoto, for instance). That doesn't denigrate the newer work, but i think it would be fun to see these branches of influence in a more accurate historical context.
It would also be cool to see which individual stories and/or which extended serials, had most impact on mangaka, especially in a more experiment organ like Garo.
With shelves of volumes in any manga section, we don't often think about manga as a place for powerful comics in the short form, and i don't doubt it's Tezuka's prolific hand which breeds this assumption. Many small, potent pieces still surely lurk in the shadows. Then again, there's still the whole aspect of each volume reading much faster than most pamphlet-sized American comics. But do the shorter form works that ran in Garo have this same velocity? Tsuge feels very calm to me.
this article was part of what initially put the thorn in my side:
http://archives.tcj.com/sp2005/tsuge.html
From what I understand, Milo George channeled the miraculous by getting permission to translate and print "Screw Style" in TCJ #250.
Don't forget Tsuge hasn't printed original work since 1986.
Also, don't forget that a lot of cool, weird, good manga hasn't been translated because North American publishing standards appear (and probably are) inconsequential when compared to Japanese publishing standards.
When you see the good, rare, weird translated Manga it's most likely the result of a lot of courting and hand holding.
Screw style.
thank you for weighing in jason
let it be known, i have little to no practical know-how of the juices that run these publishing landscapes
just another screw style geek! hah!
Jesse - I read that article recently, too, and that's what got me thinking about Tsuge again. I have to bust out that issue of TCJ (which is such a good one with the best cover ever) and read Screw-style a thousand times now.
I wonder how well the more esoteric American comics do in Japan. I've seen the Woodring toys, the Burns toys, heard legends of a spot in Tokyo named after Papa Gary, but is that just small potatoes in a comics-centric society like Japan?
i've heard about lines around the block for woodring, and what seems to be a brief cafe with video screens for panter. i'm no japanese, but small potatoes these seem, hum, yes.
other people know more, and could comment, but this discourse is separated by thick intervals. doesn't tsuge read this blog? gee whiz.
彼とここで会うのが夢だ
For those of you whom a French-English transition is easier, I mean possible (like me), Ego Comme X in France recently published a French translation of Tsuge's "Man Without Talent".
http://ego-comme-x.com/spip.php?auteur31
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