Manga Salad #1

For the last two years or so I've been fascinated with ancient history. It started with Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe, a great series which manages to make books like the Iliad and the Mahabharata seem exciting and colorful instead of dusty and old. History is an endless source of stories, since real events are so much more fascinating and unpredictable than made-up stories, nine times out of ten. There are countless manga set in historical Japan, but I confess that, with the exception of a few exceptional titles like Lone Wolf and Cub and the sadly canceled Samurai Gishiden, I'm often more interested in manga about European, American and other non-Japanese history. Shameless chauvinism? Maybe, but the fact is, Japanese history manga often leave things unexplained because the intended audience is assumed to know them. (I'd call Path of the Assassin an offender.) Most Americans aren't familiar with Japanese history; to Japanese readers, on the other hand, it can just be a backdrop that doesn't require much explanation, like the Wild West is to Americans. But I like detailed history, as well as the implicit fantasy element of imagining a distant place and time with a different culture.

Yoshikazu Yasuhiko is perhaps the purest historical mangaka available in translation, with his biographies of Jesus and Joan of Arc. But a more obscure historical figure gives the writer more room to play around, and focuses more attention on the world around them, rather than the charisma of the Big Names. On that note, my favorite history manga today is Hitoshi Iwaaki's Historie, currently being scanlated by Kotonoha (http://www.kotonoha.monkey-pirate.com/ongoing-series/historie/). Set in ancient Greece and the Middle East in the mid-300s BC, Historie is the story of Eumenes of Cardia, a young boy who comes from the lowest of backgrounds and, in adulthood, becomes one of the generals of Alexander the Great. Alexander is a Big Name, and carries a slightly stodgy pay-close-attention-class feeling, but it's a fascinating time period, a time when Egypt, India, Persia, Babylon, and Greece existed in their most archetypal form, and one group of soldiers trudged across all of them. Megalomaniacal ambition, enlightened cultural fusion, or just a bunch of lucky victories? The early history of Eumenes is unknown, so Iwaaki gives him a background: from slavery to a comfortable upbringing in a wealthy family, to slavery and tragedy again. It's his story, and he's a smart and sympathetic hero, a worthy guide to the ancient world.

This is a well-told story. Reportedly Iwaaki, the creator of Parasyte, has wanted to do this manga for a long time, and now in the pages of Afternoon magazine (also currently running Makoto Yukimura's Viking manga Vinland Saga) he gets his wish. The pace is slow, and admittedly it isn't until midway through volume 2 that everything suddenly clicks and comes to life. There is blood and gore here, as in Parasyte, but the more unpleasant aspects of the ancient Mediterranean aren't lingered on; there's little sex or gratuitous nudity, and even the matter of some castrated slaves is delicately danced around. Iwaaki inserts elements of history and ancient culture into the plot in a subdued fashion—we hear about Herodotus, and the Iliad, and the all-important discovery that the world is round, but it never feels like a history lesson is being crammed down our throats. Herodotus' barbaric Scythians are here depicted as the sort of bad-ass swordspeople one sees so often in manga and anime. (To expand on an offhand comment by J.E. Lendon in his history book Soldiers and Ghosts, can you imagine how different our pop culture might be if the ancient Greeks and Romans had a stronger tradition of one-on-one swordfighting similar to that in Asian cultures? Sure, Frank Miller gave props to King Leonidas of Sparta, but no one's making video games about Seleucus or Pyrrhus the way they do about the Chinese generals in Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Japanese kenshi like Miyamoto Musashi. Being an army general just isn't as exciting.) There are other manga-ish touches, such as the respect which Eumenes earns from everyone, with even his enemies conceding "He really isn't an ordinary child…" And will Alexander the Great translate in manga terms into the "cold-hearted privileged blonde rival"? But this is a real historical drama, not some tenuously historical superhero story like Rurouni Kenshin or Pilgrim Jäger (not that those aren't good titles). It's scrupulously accurate, and it's a long, sprawling epic—like one of Gore Vidal's historical novels in manga form.

But does Historie stand on its own if you aren't into ancient Greek dudes? Probably. Hitoshi Iwaaki's gifts are his writing, his timing and his slow-paced, novelistic stories, but not necessarily his art. One good thing about Oliver Stone's Alexander was that, despite the pompous tone and confusing plotting, it made its setting look interesting; jungles, idols, fabulous costumes, eunuchs, snakes, palaces, glittering armor everywhere. Iwaaki's sparse artwork, on the other hand, makes you acutely aware that you are looking at a time and place when almost everyone wore a plain tunic and lived in plain stone houses. His art is a bit stiff, and is mostly outlines; like a bande dessinée, it would look better in color. Where he excels, though, is in the pacing and choice of exactly what to draw at the right moment. This is an old-school manga where the panels are like frames of a film, where it takes hundreds of pages for the plot to get moving and you love it. Or I do, anyway. At four volumes, the story has just barely reached Eumenes' adulthood, and historically speaking, there are 20+ years of Eumenes' life to go. (Don't read his Wikipedia unless you want the ultimate spoiler of knowing how he dies.) The thought of Egypt, Persia, India, and massive wars waiting in the wings is tantalizing. The thought of Eumenes' character, who he is and what he will become, is even more so. In terms of scale, ambition and plotting, Historie is Hitoshi Iwaaki's masterpiece.

Next: #2: Cell phone manga