Join me each Sunday, as we explore and discuss a different gekiga artist and their work.General manga discussion is welcome as well.>what the hell is gekiga?Gekiga is a style of alternative manga that started in the early 1960s. It focused on mature or dark themes, in contrast to the humoristic manga for children (pioneered by Tezuka) that were the norm at the time.These works and their authors had great influence over manga as a medium, but would later mostly be absorbed into (or help the emergence of) Josei and Seinen publications.>tl;dr: adult oriented manga from the 1960s to 80s.
This week we take a look at Susumu Katsumata, another author who made his debut in Garo.Born in 1943, he never knew his father, and his mother died of illness when he was six years old. Afterwards, he would be raised by his older sister.
(also I fucked up and didn't check the filesizes ahead of time, so if I stop posting it's because I'm frantically resizing images)
>>285375790Feeling blue today.
>>285376451https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agqs77gME8Y
>>285376668Nice find!
Stay tuned for more.Previous thread: https://desuarchive.org/a/thread/285042640
>>285376831That was a good one, it's not easy being a tanuki.
>>285376831Nice to see you, OP. I was looking forward to this all week.
(this one and all stories that aren't blue will be Left -> Right. Because some editors are philistines apparently).Initially, he only submitted stories to Garo and other magazines to support himself as an University student in Tokyo, where he studied Nuclear physics to a graduate level.But instead of continuing into research and scholarship, he quit university amidst the student protest in 1971 and pursued his work as manga artist.
>>285377692:)
The End
>>285376060When you impersonate someone, you should try to be better than the original to get away with it.
>>285376176Sure just to 'see how he was'. Poor Tanuki didn't deserve that.
>>285376274This is just most people during mass.
>>285376451>tanuki singing about being a molester kappa Colorful.
>>285376614Sick>>285376681>white riceDamn monks were living it up.
>>285376831The tanuki did a good deed for poor Ryozen. He surely got the Buddha's approval.
>>285376100>arr rook same
>>285376668look at him go
Many of his stories are set in snowy countrysides, inspired from the Tohoku region where he grew up. As a child he'd help out in the household by working outside, for examples by herding and driving cattle.
>It focused on mature or dark themes, in contrast to the humoristic manga for childrenIsn't the point of Gekiga that it's realistic compared to the comical manga?
>>285376790>>285376831Pretty fun. I like the inexplicable dream logic to events and how things don't really have straight conclusions. Really gets that folk tale vibe to it.
>>285378096Imagine if there were only 31 immaculate summer flowers.
Not having any close relatives while growing up in post-war Japan, he must have felt lonely and alienated.>"When I was a child, I thought the world was extremely unfair. [...] I always felt that my very existence was embarassing, that I shouldn't have been born."There are a few stories, like this one, where he explicitly explores his feelings of abandonment.Thankfully, he has since come to term with those feelings, especially since creating his own family and becoming a father.>>285380890>Isn't the point of Gekiga that it's realistic compared to the comical manga?Realistic in the way characters behave as humans, live their lives, yes. But you can still have 'unrealistic' fantasy elements, like we see in this thread.
>>285378125mischievous kot
>>285378150Tasteful cow piss.
>>285378251>>285378277horny old broad
I really, really wish I had this page without the center crease.
>>285382020I'm more talking about the character designs and art. If you look at modern Gekiga magazines the difference is quite obvious.Why do you think the content in this thread is gekiga? Garo wasn't a gekiga magazine.
The man himself.>>285382894>I'm more talking about the character designs and artDo you have an example, I don't know if we have the same thing in mind. Something like Koike's style in Lone Wolf and Cub?Anyway I doubt that's a requirement, look at Seiichi Hayashi for example, I wouldn't call that realistic. Or even Tezuka's gekiga works.>Why do you think the content in this thread is gekiga?Because Katsumata draws and writes in a style very similar to Tsuge and Tatsumi, and got acknowledged, even praised by those same authors. I don't know if he ever called himself a gekiga artist, but for the purpose of a storytime thread that's enough to include him.>Garo wasn't a gekiga magazine.Never said it was. But many of the big gekiga authors were frequent collaborators.
We've had a story about a Tanuki, now here is one about a Kappa.
>>285378308Its just the will of the Buddha.
>>285384487>Something like Koike's style in Lone Wolf and Cub?Meant Kojima, Koike was the writer. I always mix them up.
And that's it for today.There are other stories I liked, I'll post some more if the thread survives tomorrow. Next week: Takao Saito if I can find some good oneshots. If not, probably more Yoshiharu Tsuge.
>>285378382>>285378404>>285378432LMAOFucking hentai doujin type shit.
>>285378473Nice Monty Python joke.
>>285378703Voracious man eaters, these women were.
>>285380154Just wanted to chill out for a bit.
>>285380319Its the little things that stick with you.
>>285380435Geezers are gonna start playing match maker now.
>>285380583>>285380606Extremely lewd.
>>285380702>>285380743I like these types of stories about old monks or priests bending the rules for the good of everyone, while being authority figures people respect and trust.
>>285382079>>285382101Manletbros....It never even started....
>>285382210Nice inkwork
>>285382441Thats really fun
>>285382894Gekiga can mean more than one thing. The guy that invented the term and published the earliest works drew derpy potato looking dudes - Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Other big early hitters like Shirato Sanpei or Yoshiharu Tsuge had very stylized art. As did Shigeru Mizuki's gekiga works.To them it meant drawing stories that were darker and more adult than what was allowed in the mainstream bookstores. Gekiga later came to mean a certain paneling style or art style more influenced by those like Takao Saito and Goseki Kojima. They ultimately were the most popular of that group, way more than Yoshihiro Tatsumi ever was. There also became this standardization that gekiga were associated with period dramas or certain types of procedural stories rather than long form narratives. This ultimately resulted in the perception that Gekiga means a realistic art style (like Kojima) and often means period dramas or other types of procedural stories with a cinematic paneling style. Not coincidentally, the biggest gekiga publishing company today (Leed Publishing and its Comic Ran magazine) is run by a company partly founded by Takao Saito. You can see this express itself quite substantially in works by authors like Jiro Taniguchi.
>>285382487This one was nice. It had a good dreamy atmosphere, but you felt that consistent sense of despair about everything.
>>285384610If there's a hole, there's a hole. Gotta make do.
>>285384626Granny tales are the best.
>>285391987Ero gekiga was also a big thing.>Gekiga later came to mean a certain paneling style or art style more influenced by those like Takao Saito and Goseki Kojima. I think most Japanese these days will see it that way.
>>285394315>erogekiga Seiichi Hayashi and some of Suehiro Maruo's less pornographic stuff comes to mind for that for me.I agree that in Japan the latter is probably the more popular definition of the term.In the US and maybe the rest of the Anglosphere the former is more popular because the name for the 'genre' was brought over with the oldest works to use it when you got compilations from enthusiastic scanlators and companies like Drawn and Quarterly, while more popular stuff like Lone Wolf and Cub was just published over here as 'samurai stories', jidaigeki, or chambara. And Golgo and the like without even a specific label.Just and interesting artifact. Like how Japs use mansion to refer to condos and the like.
>>285394631The latest Young Comic had an essay by Inoue Junichi about how his uncle's work as an erogekigaka influenced his career.
>>285384652I like how they move. Very creepy-crawly.
>>285384786Stoner talk with a frog rapist dude.
>>285385033>>285385053>bro turns into a girl and you don't even get to fuck himTrue suffering.
>>285385214That was nice of him/her. Thanks for posting. I liked this guy.He's great at atmosphere for sure.
I can't tell whether rape showing up in multiple of the guy's posted stories is a fetish thing, a trauma thing or an editorial thing. Or perhaps a dark comedy thing.
Look at that, the thread made it through the night.Another interesting thing about Katsumata: he was strongly opposed to nuclear power, and was a writer or illustrator for several publications on the subject.Here's one of two stories where he specifically draws attention to the working conditions of "irradiated laborers", the workers who perform manual labor inside the containment areas of nuclear powerplants (often through several layers of subcontracting).Due to his academic background and several reaseach trips where he was allowed to visit inside of powerplants, this is said to be a very faithful depiction.>>285397705I think it's a Japanese folk tale thing.
