Honey for your thoughts?
Yotsuba&! is a heart-warming manga written and drawn by Kiyohiko Azuma, the creator of Azumanga Daioh. Perhaps if you read my blog you would know this already.
What makes Yotsuba&! great is not so much how it celebrates life, but that it does so with its own style, and it’s a great style. Channeling proverbial fundamentals of life and everything through the focus of a child is something that is frequently done in American comics–the ones you can find in the newspaper. The shtick is nothing novel. But rather, I think, what makes Yotsuba&! distinct is how cute it is. And this is not the sexualized, contextualized cute that Japanese pop culture is famous for.
To elaborate, reading Charles Schultz’s Peanuts (or something similar) can often result in the same mental and emotional response. It paints a slightly different picture of childhood and a different perspective of the world. That’s good–we want competing worldviews embodied in shared experiences as different works. It isn’t how charming or pathetic, but both positive and negative feelings, that we get from reading these works that defines them.
Seeing a grown-up problem with an adult’s perspective of a child versus the perspective of a child looking at a grown-up’s world is a scale that I propose where we can understand the appeal of these kinds of works. Sinfest is easily my favorite take about adults looking at adult problems, but pining for that childlike idealist feel. On the other hand the popular Calvin & Hobbes paints sophistry while giving deference to a child’s perspective over an adult’s. Yotsuba&!, I think, is akin to a child’s takeover of an adult’s world.
And it won’t take no for an answer.
I think the magic behind Azumanga Daioh was similar. Both had a rejuvenating effect. It takes you back to a past that you never had. You lived through the characters and their hijinks. It’s got a powerful kick to it.
It reminds me of Huck Finn. Only if Twain was equally funny; alas, it’s not his fault that there were no pop culture to speak of back then.
November 12th, 2006 at 5:00 am
I simply love Yotsubato!
It’s not so much the nostalgic sense it brings back but the quirkiness off Yotsuba, and well actually, all the characters that gives this series that magic feel.
Now all I need to do is wait for ADV to finish translating that 4th novel, they’re taking absolutely ages..
Oh and Calvin & Hobbes rocks, need to re-read that sometime.
November 12th, 2006 at 5:40 am
I think Twain *was* pop culture.
November 12th, 2006 at 5:29 pm
He was, but it was rather hard to bounce off himself.
November 12th, 2006 at 7:29 pm
Why did nobody tell me about Sinfest before! Ta!
November 14th, 2006 at 1:32 am
“To elaborate, reading Charles Schultz’s Peanuts (or something similar) can often result in the same mental and emotional response.”
I have never thought of it this way, but that’s just genius. Pure Genius. I remember stumbling upon Yotsubato a long while back and it was just something I could not stop reading until there was simply to more for me to read. I started to buy the manga, but ADV just likes to be jerkwads.