Conversations with the Translator: Trauma in Manga

Kate: Speaking of outlier behavior, another “taboo” topic is mental illness, as we have discussed elsewhere. In Otomen, Asuka has a tendency to find or be found by other Otomen, supposedly tough guys who secretly like make-up and flowers and the equivalent of Michael Bolton music. One of these guys calls himself the Flower Evangelist because he loves flowers so much. He meets a girl who was stung by a bee from a bouquet when she was young and hates flowers, so he decides to cure her. One of his approaches is subliminal treatment (flowers keep popping up and disappearing from her environment). Finally, the manga artist, Junta, points out that this approach could take YEARS; why not try something quicker?

How prevalent are plots/jokes about “trauma?” It does supply plot conflict! I encounter many troubled heroes and heroines in several series (though they rarely end up in therapy). And “trauma” occasionally supplies humor that is not that different from the many jokes made by Niles on Frasier about his group therapy patients.

Eugene: Trauma has been supplying plot lines and defining character arcs going back to the beginning with Shigeru Mizuki and Tezuka Osamu, so much so it could stand as a genre or literary category all on its own.

Ever since the Magical Girl genre went dark with Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and reached near perfection with Puella Magi Madoka Magica (Netflix Crunchyroll), practically every new anime season supplies at least one traumatized magical girl. But Hideki Anno deserves a lot of credit for pushing trauma to the narrative limits with Neon Genesis Evangelion(Netflix).

Anno himself described the directorial process as a way for him to work through his bouts of depression. It debuted in 1995 and Anno has been spinning off sequels and reboots in what has become a billion-dollar franchise. Frankly, I gave up on the series halfway through the first season. Mecha series start with two strikes against them in my book and the whole thing got to be too much of a downer.

Netflix recently acquired the streaming rights so I should give it another go.

I previously mentioned A Silent Voice. There’s trauma by the truckload. But as you mention, the first recourse is not to ship everybody off to a therapist. If I were to come up with a general theory, it would be that trauma shapes a character. It is not supposed to define them. The challenge for the protagonists in A Silent Voice and a series like March Comes in like a Lion is to move beyond their pasts.

As with Tohru in Fruits Basket (Crunchyroll Funimation), Rei in March Comes in like a Lion is a strong contender for having the world’s worst childhood. Well, no, Chise in The Ancient Magus’ Bride wins that award. Anyway, Tohru has already moved on when the series starts. March Comes in like a Lion is about how Rei finally does.

The Souma clan in Fruits Basket may be the most screwed up extended family in existence, not only shaped by a tragic past, but magically bound to it as well. That is why Tohru is the one person who can save the Soumas from themselves. She’s been there and done that, so she can identify, but she got over it.

Kate: In Mars, the semi-delinquet Rei turns out to have had a twin brother, who died (or committed suicide) after his girlfriend tried to leave him for Rei. If I remember correctly, the twin brother was not entirely sane.

Rei’s traumatic childhood gives him a kind of princely cache (the family is wealthy) as well as, I suppose, an explanation of why Rei is not a team player. One of the volumes arcs deals with him walking away from the hold his dead brother has on him. His hero status is underscored by his ability to move on.

Eugene: As best I can tell, the premise of Durarara!! is that having a tortured past gives you superpowers. Now, the characters in Durarara!! are basically comic book superheroes and supervillains in a comic book world of Russian gangs, yakuza, mad scientists, and a bike-riding Dullahan (though it takes place in Ikebukuro and everybody looks mostly normal). But, again, what shapes these characters is distinct from what defines them.

So you were a serial killer (as Harry says in True Lies, “Yeah, but they were all bad”)? Okay, but what are you now?

Durarara!! revels in its non-linear narratives and never takes itself too seriously, much like the puckish Bond films from a generation ago. Fruits Basket starts out as a by-the-numbers rom-com with a pollyannish female lead and a touch of magical realism, before plunging into the dark recesses of the human (and not quite so human) psyche. 

 

More conversations to follow!