A break away from the superheroes
I got this (bad?) habit where if I find some entertainment I like, I immediately want to find its sources, as if I hope to find what I like in its purest form or something.
What I'm trying to say here is that I've been reading the original Lupin III manga from the sixties (after not reading manga for years and years. Apparently reading left-to-right is like riding a bike, but with less bruising).
The creator-writer-artist, Monkey Punch, was obviously writing for a more, shall we say, adult audience, so right off the bat there's more sex and nudity than you'd come to expect from the Lupin franchise (which makes the blurb on the cover, "As seen on Cartoon Network!" so much more worrying. No no no, it aired on Adult Swim which is affiliated with CN, but still in an entirely different ballpark. Boy you don't want your child to be reading this manga). Not that I ever get the feeling it's fap material, more of a James Bond/male fantasy thing, but a bit more vulgar. But hey, sometimes that's fun too.
Both the storytelling and the art are frequently experimental, especially in the earlier stories. In fact they keep reminding me - and comic book fans must excuse me forever for this - of Will Eisner's The Spirit, in that continuity and personality traits are unimportant compared to being able to tell a good story, whether that story is a romantic drama, slapstick, scifi, whodunnit, fantasy, or whatever.
(Apparently the art is a polarizing issue among fans; people seem to complain it's "primitive" and not "manga-esque". I suppose they're talking about the scrawlier black ink look he settled for. Personally I've had a ball recognizing his influences in the more stylized stories, everything from Sergio Aragonés to Saul Bass. And however minimalistic his style got at times, I love his dedication to always lovingly draw in the herringbone pattern in Zenigata's tweed jacket).
But it's not just the storytelling and art that is new to me - it's quite fun to see how far removed the original characters are from the family-friendly anime counterparts, by which I mean they were all major assholes. Instead of a gang of lovable loyal comrades in crime you've got a crew of majorly egotistical, vain and violent psychopaths willing to betray each other at every turn. Lupin's obviously the worst, caring more about his Italian loafers than any human being, and he might just as soon save a girl's family honour as he might try to rape her. Whatever the story calls for, I suppose.
The stories of this gang of criminal bastards are quite entertaining to read for now (there's a massive amount of fourth-wall breaking, and you know what a sucker I am for those) but do I think they would have been able to support a franchise on their own for forty-odd years? Not a chance. I see why they had to make the changes they did when they transported the plot into an anime. Still find myself wanting to read more, should I ever have the chance.
What I'm trying to say here is that I've been reading the original Lupin III manga from the sixties (after not reading manga for years and years. Apparently reading left-to-right is like riding a bike, but with less bruising).
The creator-writer-artist, Monkey Punch, was obviously writing for a more, shall we say, adult audience, so right off the bat there's more sex and nudity than you'd come to expect from the Lupin franchise (which makes the blurb on the cover, "As seen on Cartoon Network!" so much more worrying. No no no, it aired on Adult Swim which is affiliated with CN, but still in an entirely different ballpark. Boy you don't want your child to be reading this manga). Not that I ever get the feeling it's fap material, more of a James Bond/male fantasy thing, but a bit more vulgar. But hey, sometimes that's fun too.
Both the storytelling and the art are frequently experimental, especially in the earlier stories. In fact they keep reminding me - and comic book fans must excuse me forever for this - of Will Eisner's The Spirit, in that continuity and personality traits are unimportant compared to being able to tell a good story, whether that story is a romantic drama, slapstick, scifi, whodunnit, fantasy, or whatever.
(Apparently the art is a polarizing issue among fans; people seem to complain it's "primitive" and not "manga-esque". I suppose they're talking about the scrawlier black ink look he settled for. Personally I've had a ball recognizing his influences in the more stylized stories, everything from Sergio Aragonés to Saul Bass. And however minimalistic his style got at times, I love his dedication to always lovingly draw in the herringbone pattern in Zenigata's tweed jacket).
But it's not just the storytelling and art that is new to me - it's quite fun to see how far removed the original characters are from the family-friendly anime counterparts, by which I mean they were all major assholes. Instead of a gang of lovable loyal comrades in crime you've got a crew of majorly egotistical, vain and violent psychopaths willing to betray each other at every turn. Lupin's obviously the worst, caring more about his Italian loafers than any human being, and he might just as soon save a girl's family honour as he might try to rape her. Whatever the story calls for, I suppose.
The stories of this gang of criminal bastards are quite entertaining to read for now (there's a massive amount of fourth-wall breaking, and you know what a sucker I am for those) but do I think they would have been able to support a franchise on their own for forty-odd years? Not a chance. I see why they had to make the changes they did when they transported the plot into an anime. Still find myself wanting to read more, should I ever have the chance.