Bullshit snarking about “Japanese trope bandages” aside, are there any other examples of non-fantasy manga series that attempt to incorporate both comedic violence and dead-serious horrifying domestic abuse?
If you want to take a work of illustrated fiction literally, have at it. But then you’ll also have to accept that there are literally people floating over other character’s heads during flashbacks. Or that time is being represented in real time and flashbacks must happen after the time they’re being remembered by characters. Or that word balloons actually exist in this world and everyone communicates by reading each other’s word balloons.
You can’t pick and choose which literary and artistic devices you want to take literally and those you don’t just to make some non-point about a very serious real-world issue.
Have you ever read Hunter X Hunter? Children are beaten up by adults for both comedic and “serious” violence. For example, Bisky slaps Killua around to “smack some sense into him” and leaves him with facial swelling that disappears moments later. In the NGL arc, a Chimera ant abducts two children and feeds them to the Chimera Queen alive. Gon gets the holy crap kicked out of him by adults repeatedly during fights. And he’s 11 years old at the beginning of the story. But using your logic, it’s essentially a story about child abuse. And instead of going on to grow into surpassing his father as an elite hunter, the story should have ended in chapter 2 with CPS arriving and placing Gon into foster care. Because hey, there was some slapstick violence and because there is also serious violence that means all violence must be interpreted literally. Or else the author is making light of child abuse. Or something.
last edited at May 6, 2020 10:10AM by