Shingeki no Kyojin/Attack on Titan (Manga Discussion)

Wait, which documentary is that?

And Isayama's art can be incredible in big splash panels. In normal panels though it's… hit and miss.

There's a documentary that just aired. It ends with a shot of the final panel of the SNK manga. I linked to it on the previous page.

So, I've recently got back into Ao T. I originally kept up monthly, but took an hiatus during the beginning of the Uprising Arc (a slow-burning mystery plot on a monthly schedule was definitely hard to stomach). I've since then binge-read the series from the beginning and caught up a few months ago, so I've been processing all of those reveals and plot developments only relatively recently.

Which is why I want to ask: when Eren is standing in front of the mirror going "You can't win if you don't fight. Fight. Fight."... that's him tapping into his own past self, isn't it? When he killed the kidnappers and motivated Mikasa to act, I mean. Back then, Eren says those exact words to Mikasa, except the last guy starts choking him as he tries to repeat the word "Fight".

I wasn't here for when that chapter was being discussed, which is why I'm asking if that was an obvious thing that everybody noticed right away. I'm only now noticing it

Edited by JonnasN on Nov 30th 2018 at 12:14:00 PM

Could be him talking to himself in the present for what he thinks he needs to do, which influences himself in the past.

So in the recent TV biography about Isayama, it reveals that the man is fucking EXHAUSTED both physically and mentally.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2018-11-30/hajime-isayama-reveals-his-struggles-to-draw-the-end-of-attack-on-titan/.140115

The constant pressure of living up to fan expectations and going against them has kinda sorta broken him.

To qoute a line from him:

"It's like this every day," he said. "My worries about not being able to make a good name(which are rough outlines) makes me unable to sleep. Then I get hungry, so I can't draw. But then when I eat I get sleepy and I still can't draw."

His process for coming up with the names is staring at nothing for half an hour & then yawning.

Apparently according to the documenter the only time he saw Isayama smile is when he took a rare break from the manga to play some Splatoon.

Sadly, that sort of thing seems to be incredibly common in the industry. They work such brutal schedules most of the time, and exhaustion is a major issue for creators. I mean, there's so many series that go on hiatus because the creators ends up having "health issues", whether it's simply them being mentally/emotionally exhausted or physically ill from all the work.

So I'm not surprised to learn that Isayama is having a hard time, since it's rampant throughout the manga industry. Our series really do come at a high cost, sometimes. :/

Tokyo Ghouls mangaka suffered similarily and dreaded doing the last year of Tokyo Ghoul re for an example known from this year alone.

I can imagine Ishida growing slowly apathetic towards his creation (and sadly it shows).

At least the ending was decent, even if its execution wasn't.

No wonder so many manga are on hiatus.

Like I got into Vagabond recently & I wanna collect the omnibus volumes but boy was I saddend when I found out the it hasn’t been updated since 2015 despite the manga not actually being officially ended.

I remember people addressing this in Bakuman。. Some people, like the protagonists (and, naturally, the authors), found ways around that, but turning manga into such an industry comes with such prices...

The fundamental issue is...the grueling schedule, occasionally brutal editorial, and constant pressure. Yoshihiro Togashi won an insanely lenient contract for how YYH was a crazy success, but was very open with chronic pain he's suffered from. Oda is the guy behind the most popular manga in the world and Jump basically forces him to take time off to prevent more health problems...largely because they don't want to ruin the golden eggs. a lot of mangaka don't get that.

It's a rough, rough job.

And yet, with all these horror stories, Akira Toriyama was notorious for being lazy and waiting until the last minute and still got a full weeks work done.

How the hell did he do it?

Oda smokes a ton which doesnt help his health.

If I recall correctly Masashi Kishimoto and his wife didn’t even get to go on their own damned honeymoon for over decade until Naruto ended.

Japanese work culture in general is absolutely fucked

And then they wonder why people don't have kids.

Pretty much this. Take the worst parts of our work culture and multiply it by 10.

Its partly that and partly because Japan is very xenophobic and has a big NEET problem.

Edited by Wispy on Dec 1st 2018 at 8:58:08 AM

Wait a bit. I get how the NEET problem plays a huge part in the population problem, but you mean xenophobia as in how it undermines the government's efforts to bring more foreigners?

Yes.

Edited by Wispy on Dec 2nd 2018 at 3:59:05 AM

Yeah, it even extends to shitty treatment of Japanese-born ethnic minorities like Romi Park (Korean ancestry). (Kill Em All Tomino famously rages on anyone that speaks ill of her, which unfortunately happens even though she's incredibly successful and beloved as an actress.) The laws in Japan concerning citizenship if you're not from the major Japanese ethnicity are pretty tough and discriminatory.

Edited by harostar on Dec 2nd 2018 at 1:48:04 PM

Truman really wanted to be the one to defeat Japan in WWII (after all, the Russians took Berlin, and would have taken Japan faster than the Americans), so the bomb got dropped, and for that sin, all Japanese sins were forgiven.

Just like the Iberian peninsula remained fascist until the 70's, once Hitler was dead, the Cold War was on.

Mac Arthur told Christians in America to send missionaries, figuring that they had about one year to spread Christianity before secular concerns would consume Japan. Hirohito even offered to make Christianity the official religion of Japan, but Mac Arthur refused, in part because he understood that you can't force Christianity on people, and in part out of fear of sectarian strife afflicting both America and Japan. The result was that the missionaries had limited success, gaining some converts but leaving Christians a small minority in Japan (not helped by the fact that Christians took heavy casualties in the Nagasaki bombing). Modern Japan is what you get when you superimpose a Western economy on an Oriental worldview, or in other words, what you get if you take America and strip away its Christian worldview. Unsurprisingly, the result is widespread despair and nihilism.

Because Christianity somehow would have saved Japan from nihilism and despair.

Yes, it would. This is because Christianity teaches that people are individuals, valuable as unique children of God, rather than as cogs in a machine. The existential despair of Japanese society is that people are highly competitive for the rat race, only to find that the rat race doesn't leave them time to enjoy their lives.

Maybe you should drop this topic. I'm not even sure how we got on this track.

Well it’s just about that time of the month, so if anyone here reads the chapters via Perfectly Legitimate MethodsTM linked to on Reddit, be aware that they have decided to cease providing such assistance.

Edited by TheAirman on Dec 2nd 2018 at 10:04:05 AM