Iwa ni Hana

The artist of the “dangerous and beautiful” and the demonic force

A while ago when news reached me that the manga artist Nakamura Asumiko has stopped working due to reasons of health, I was going to write a post on what I call the “demonic force” among artists. You just know that “demonic force” when you see it. Audrey Beardsley had it. Kusumoto Maki had it. Fujiwara Kaoru had it. I am certain that Nakamura Asumiko also has it.

For one reason or other, all of these artists had a creative existence as brief as the morning dew – they created little gems that hint at greater masterpieces to come, and then disappeared from the scene as suddenly as they had entered it, never to return. The “demonic force” I speak of is not the source of humour or creativity in general that you see in other manga artists of wider appeal – it is a source of that rare combination of the dangerous and beautiful, and it is like Signal No.10 typhoon that blows through a wooden hut on the beach that is the human artist.

And then there are artists who give you the impression that they will live to see a creative old age – and Kon Satoshi was one of them. I honestly expected him to be still producing new anime that I can take my grandchildren to see in the far, far future. When news of his death reached my iPhone’s RSS reader this Thursday – it was just too much for my mental bandwidth to deal with.

I remember Kon Satoshi

The first work of Kon Satoshi I came across was Millennium Actress. I remember clearly that it was an idle summer day when I was still a university student. Millennium Actress, as you know, was about the life of an actress (Fujiwara Chiyoko) who unwittingly began her career in films by crossing an ocean to chase after the Man with the Key (鍵の君), whom she had only met once. That summer, I too had just returned from nightmarish phase of my life where I crossed an ocean to chase after a man, but that is where the similarity ends. (He had zero impact on my career choice for one thing – I think he would be horrified to learn that I turned out to be a banker out of all things.)

Anyway, so I was at a video store in my neighbourhood browsing around the DVD section, actively avoiding anything tear-jerking as I had cried more than my fair share in my young life by then. Millennium Actress was packaged like a smart sci-fi story, so I picked it up.

And how wrong was I. I cried like the Niagara Falls.

That was the beginning of my acquaintance with the works of Kon Satoshi.

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This has to be the funniest series I came across since Usavich – only the comedy is obviously a camouflage for a deeper message about life at large and a prelude to a bittersweet ending.

I think I made a new year wish some years ago that Director Shinbo Akiyuki (新房昭之) would make a come-back artistically and quit wasting his tremendous talent on mindless projects. I am pleased to see that Arakawa Under the Bridge is the challenge he undertook and passed with flying colours. I liked the story so much that after watching all 13 episodes of the first season, I also checked out up to Vol. 10 of the manga by Nakamura Hikaru (中村光), and below are some desultory comments with spoilers.

Arakawa Under the Bridge (荒川アンダー ザ ブリッジ)

1) At the very beginning, the story struck me as being a clever mix of:

• Little Mermaid - Nino rescued Kou’s from drowning in the river and asked him to make her fall in love.
• Kaguya-hime / tennyo tales – Nino has bad memory and may forget Kou if they are parted only for a day. This may foreshadow that Nino will likewise forget Kou when she departs from earth – as tennyo are traditionally said to forget about their earthly life the moment they regain their robe of feathers.
• Tannhäuser - A knight spent a year in a subterranean realm called Venusberg, where he worshiped the goddess Venus. He left it behind to return to God, before eventually returning to Venusberg again. (By the way, Neil Gaiman also created a TV series called Neverwhere inspired by the Tannhäuser legend, and the story is similarly about an underworld of weird individuals.)

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