BECAUSE THEY ARE IDIOTS

One of my favourite lines from a well-known Japanese manga is the phrase "Mommy, why are you dragging Daddy across the floor like that?" To which the mother's irate response is "because he's an idiot, that's why". Which is a succinct exchange, that even without illustration paints a picture. The story is about a family of vampires. Things go wrong. There are 'issues'.
And there is angst and gothness.

This is all easy to explain in an essay, but when speaking to other people, the necessary background -- especially when it is clear that they lack the framework or references needed to digest that one simple cite -- requires a preamble very much like a history lecture, and it is likely that from their perspective, as they are digesting all of this, I am just pointlessly rambling. Old man talk, and the first signs of goofiness or senility. Grandpa in Southpark, or Statler and Waldorf in the Muppets.
An elderly fart, peeing.

It's worse with younger people.
And the cell-phone crowd.


Manga = An illustrated novel or story, that follows some set patterns, and often uses graphic conventions known and understood by readers. The settings of the tale will be familiar too. For instance, if the characters are teenagers, much of it will take place in a highschool, because those are convenient. Familiar situations, events, and backgrounds, that allow for a larger number of characters to be utilized in a plausible fashion to tell an extraordinary tale. The locker room. The lunch room. The swimming pool. The gym grounds. The school cultural festival, the photography club, the mathematics society, the literary society, the school trip.

The school nurse's office for fainting spells.


My high school did not have a swimming pool. No cultural festival either, the equivalent was the end of year theatrical jamboree.
An Atheneum in Holland.


American high schools have an entirely different "vibe" from what I've heard, and tend to be violent places with over-much drug use and guns.

Holding tanks for suburban pupae. Emphasis on sports, clique formation, random brutality, and the necessary medication to keep dysfunctional juvenile delinquents and young entitled people quiescent.

American post-highschoolers seldom read.


The concept of manga is quite baffling to too many people. Likewise novels, and in the post-newspaper age, comics pages, as something to be enjoyed for the wit or the familiar characters.


There are no vampires in the lives of most Americans. Instead, there are villains who become fifty foot tall men of steel, with rippling muscles and spikes on their backs, who battle super heroes in leotards and skin-tight shiny body suits. Vampires are for girlies.


An acquaintance had never even heard of the movie my neighbor Totoro.
Which I thought was a well-known classic at this point.
I didn't mention other Miyazaki films.
Why bother?

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