My name is Nicole Rousmaniere
and I'm the curator of the Citi exhibition manga.
This exhibition is the largest exhibition of manga coming out of Japan
that's probably been undertaken. We're looking at manga in the round,
from very many different angles.
Manga is visual serial storytelling through line.
It starts in about the 1880's when you get Western technologies
such as printing presses, newspapers, satire and comics coming into Yokohama
and it meets witha very very strong long Japanese tradition
of picture storytelling and manga is born.
What we're doing here is showing manga, its history, how to read it,
the different genres, manga and society and looking actually beyond manga to where
manga influences and its influencers.
What makes this exhibition incredibly special are genga drawings,
those are the original drawings for the manga
and they're really the copyright of the manga artists
so they take these drawings and then give them to the publishers to print
now, genga drawings, are mostly owned by the artists.
In fact they're not normally in museums
and so we're very very lucky to borrow them from the artists through the publishing houses
and display them, what you see when you look at them is something different than a print experience
you see the artists', kind of, we call it the wrist,
the artists style, you look very carefully and you can really almost feel the artists in them.
Inoue Takehiko is a master
and when we look at his vagabond, or we look at his slam-dunk or his real
it's incredible you just think how could he have done this with a nibbed pen
and it invites further examination the closer you look the more you see
and what's interesting is after you've seen it then you go to his printed material and it feels fresh,
there's this a different aspect to it so it's really worth it to see these
original drawings for many like for example Dragonball, Toriyama Akira's drawings,
it's a unique chance, the artists normally don't show them, you often see reproductions
or the printed material but here pretty much for all of the artists
we've got the original material, occasionally it's drawn originally in digital
but we've worked with the artist to give you as close a rendition as possible
to what they feel is the original, so you have a one-to-one authentic experience.
The one thing I'd like you to take away, in fact there many things I'd like you to take away,
besides a fluency in manga, is how manga really works and how good manga really works.
What you see is often times the action scene beforehand, the setting up before
and then what happens afterwards you don't actually see the actual action itself
that action takes place in your mind and so it you start to participate.
Let me give you an example, Hagio Moto did the fantastic Poe clan
and we have four examples,four wonderful drawings, genga drawings
the last two, which are consecutive, you see a hand and the hand is close up
and then you see the action of the hand moving and the hand you know is going to hit a gentleman's face
but you don't see it hitting the face, you see after it's hit the face,
he topples back and then he falls down a grand staircase
and there's this kaleidoscope of images in a swirl
so we have imagined that sound... of the slap in our head
and the falling and the picture has enforced the before and after
and so we've actually become part of the action,
part of the scene and it's something you just don't forget,
you're viscerally involved in that manga.
Do you know there are so many pieces in in this exhibition that I love,
there are also pieces that should be in this exhibition that aren't
and that makes me incredibly sad, it's not because we didn't value them or like them
but there was only a limited amount of space and that was hard but we have to make tough choices
and I'm hoping there's going to be manga 2 exhibition!
and so we can have the works that should be here and and celebrate them.
The pieces that I particularly like, there are a number of them
and each one of my little babies but in particular the one that always I come back to
as kind of... my basis and also gives me solace and to be honest inspiration
is Morohoshi Daijiro, Ankoku Shinwa (The Dark Myth).
It's incredible, it's not translated yet into English, it needs to be, I'd love to do it
but it's just a spectacular piece about history, curation, about Jomon figurines, about Japanese history
but also about contemporary times and the kind of seamless flow between the two
and dark forces and forces of light it's spectacular.
The one that I'm impressed with, that I'm looking into now, that I find, you know, just a new way forward
is one written by a person named Panpanya,
that's P A N P A N Y A and this person is incredible
there's something really magical about their manga,
they draw the backgrounds and then they sketch the figures,
I think the figures are done in pencil and the figures are put into the
background so there's a separation between the fore and the background
and you feel the figures are almost floating in there,
almost as if they're ephemeral
and in this built-in dystopian but also kind of you know very hyper realistic
but also, I don't know, fuzzy background and it's that separation between the two
that makes it so exciting and when you see it you think ah this is amazing,
this is perhaps something that we're going to see more of in the future.
Thanks for watching. Don't miss our next installment, Monday
Kutsuwada Chie, she's going to teach you how to draw manga, part 1.