Manga comics: Revisiting My First Peak Into Manga - Ranma ½

            I got to say it was really interesting to fall back into the world of manga. I haven’t really read any new ones since my junior year of high school.  While I have out grown the genre, I noticed on the list of suggested manga a comic that was my first official introduction to manga; Ranma ½ by Rumiko Takahashi. Seeing that title took me back to my early years of middle school of when I found out about that comic and binge watched the anime for a whole summer.

            Since I never actually read the first few volumes of the series I figured that this would be a perfect opportunity to actually read it from the very beginning. As I expected the anime portrayed the manga quite well, I honestly saw nothing different between the two. While reading I got a few chuckles here and there due to reactions of some of the characters towards Ranma and his father about how their alternate forms came to be.

Now did this make me want to return to the world of anime and manga? Not to a certain extent, my feelings remained the same as before; the love was still there but I chose to leave it as a positive past experience that I would like to leave in the past. Of course that’s not to say anime/manga is bad, I just don’t see myself wanting to revisit something where I have already left satisfied. An exception to this however is psychological/thriller anime like Lain Serial Experiments or Paranormal Agent. Both really great works of art that never ceased to amaze me.

Euro-Comics: Persepolis

Clearly by the title I had chosen to read Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Persepolis is about the Islamic Revolution through perspective of child. While going through the story it reminded me about how I used to be on one particular political side and growing up to see the negative consequences of certain movements. Now side tracking from my personal history of politics, I found this piece to be very insightful different perspective of modern history of some Islamic based countries. I grew up surrounded by many young children that had immigrated from areas such as Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria because of the crisis that has been going on for as long ago since from what I recall 7th grade.

While it opposed what my friends seen with their own eyes and the stories that they have told, it was still interesting to read, and while I myself didn't agree with the beginning part of the graphic novel I couldn't put it down. I loved how the art style itself was similar to traditional Islamic art of figures (yes they did paint figures, it just wasn't often to paint figures as a religious representation of Allah or other holy figures) and of geometric/ vegetative patterns. The ink work I found to be really nice in a simplistic and graphic way. Usually I’m more into crosshatching when it comes to inking, but this is one of few exceptions were I admire simple ink work. Personally, after reading this book, I would go out of my way to buy it for my own personal viewing and library.