Dark's Manga & Anime Corner #2 · 7:45pm Oct 26th, 2022

Hello and welcome once again to the corner of my mind where all the cool stuff sits rent-free. In keeping with the last post, today I'll be showcasing the Anime that have been particularly impactful to me. As usual, a lot of what I show here has been an almost direct inspiration for most if not all of my work, and you'll no doubt see the parallels in it. First up is...

Mob Psycho 100

You'll most likely have heard of this one especially considering it has a third season out right now, but I read this in its manga form almost immediately after One Punch Man became popular since I could stomach the mangaka's art style and I quite enjoyed this work even over OPM. Then the anime came out and Bones absolutely killed it yet again, elevating One's work to unforeseeable heights. It was the absolute pinnacle of story-telling I've always tried to write about. A story grounded in reality. A story grounded in goodwill. A story of emotion and growing up! A story for everyone. It's hard to place into words just how truly all-encompassing Mob Psycho 100 was. If you can spare the moment to watch anything, Mob Psycho should be at the very top of your list.

The show is about this all-powerful kid that learns pretty early on that his powers bring him nothing of real worth, and he learns to hold back his powers and only use them if absolutely necessary, eventually culminating in his learning to accept that part of himself as another part of his identity instead of always pushing it away. He learns to accept every emotion he feels instead of always repressing them, which leads to one of my absolute favorite fights in anime ever. The FIGHT ON!

If you haven't noticed from the first three gifs, this show is a visual spectacle of masterclass. It's animated by Bones after all, and boy did they just absolutely blow it out of the park with this one... They've made a ton of great stuff including the wonderful Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood series but really... The beauty in the visuals of something is only as good as its underlying message. For me, Mob takes the cake. It uses some absolutely amazing lineart and penciled-in frame-by-frame sketching that looks almost as if it was Japanese Calligraphy art given life.

Mob Psycho also taught me how to write impactful Super-men or Mary Sues. To be able to place a meaningful spin on their powers. To write them not as a full boon and fix-all for any literary situation, but to write them as a real crux to their character and their moral obligations. For Mob, his powers are a real threat to his everyday life, his loved ones, and even his goals of wanting to get the attention of his crush who never much cared for them. In OPM, Saitama's powers don't give him the thing he wants most. The satisfaction of toiling in a heroic fight to save everyone. There is no excitement in it for him. His powers had never even brought him fame.

There is no superman without his kryptonite. Whether that's in the shape of his humanity or a green glowing rock.

And finally, the show teaches us the most important thing I've always wanted to say with my own stories. That there is good in all of us, no matter how twisted.

Kekkai Sensen

This next one is bound to throw you for a loop if you watch it. It's lesser known, and likely because of its disjointed narrative. It takes repeated watches and careful analyzing of every little thing to be able to understand it even to just the point of making sense of the story. This is an extremely risky way to write any story, but it's something I myself often do. If you do manage to figure out, more than just the SHEER spectacle that the show is, you'll get a very deep and wonderful experience of how all the characters intertwine into this mess of a city and how circumstances have cascaded the series of events seen on it.

Blood Blockade Battlefront, or Kekkai Sensen, is a story about a boy with some rather special eyes that finds himself stuck in the metropolitan city of New York (with all the charm and appeal of the big apple with its dirty streets and moving parts unlike most cities seen in anime which are usually the suit-and-tie Tokyo). There he finds employment with Libra who are tasked to slay vampires and protect the "peace" within the city, at least on a cataclysmic scale anyways. Because things like the gif below are always happening on the ground, due to the multi-dimensional beings that inhabit the city!

Before the great works of Bones and all the hyper-amazing visuals of some other anime, Kekkai Sensen really did make a huge splash for the anime sector with some of its many great action sequences. This is from the very first episode but man it blew me away when I first saw it. Absolutely floored.

The anime itself is extremely character-focused, and it splits its focus on the story of each one of them as they go through their lives and their jobs. It's such a wonderfully fun experience even on a surface-level watch of the show, I truly recommend it.

Even I don't fully understand Kekkai Sensen despite the many many watches I've given it, but that's okay. Every time I watch it, it's like I'm digging up something new and slowly piecing that impossible puzzle together.

Barakamon

Now for a toned-down, smaller experience! Barakamon, is a strange parental story in its own way, about an adult man finding it hard to accept his pride being shattered, and being the recluse he is, he is made to go spend a vacation at an island where the locals poke their heads into his life at almost every opportunity. Especially one little girl who finds it extremely amusing to be around him all the time.

This story focuses a lot less on the parental part of it, as it's more centered around the man's journey of growing real bonds with others and accepting his lot in life. He is a calligraphy artist that gets his word-view destroyed by everything that he goes through, and it really spoke to me as an artist the first time I watched it since I was going through a similar thing. There will always be someone better than you beyond the horizon, and that's okay. We're on this good green Earth not to compete, but to express our love for the people around us and to show the rest of the world that part of ourselves.

Anyway, enjoy some nice gifs from the show:

Although it may seem like all fun and games on the surface, it does have moments where it all comes together in the end to show our protagonist's journey of self-discovery and growth. The moment that hit me like a truck was around the halfway point when he makes a truly stunning piece of art that puts him back into the good graces of the Calligraphy art community he got ousted from.