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Reviewed by Matthew J. Brady Modern Christian culture in the United States has an interesting trend of copying whatever is currently popular in secular society. The 80s saw Christian heavy metal music, and the late 90s spawned Christian boy bands and Green Day-style Christian punk rock. Today, they have moved into areas like big-budget movies and video games. So when they saw that kids were enamored of Japanese comics, they probably figured they should jump right on that bandwagon. The result is Manga Messiah, a fairly authentic manga detailing the life of Jesus Christ. I say "fairly authentic" because the creators of the book are Japanese, and they definitely use a Japanese style in the art (as opposed to a Western style imitating a Japanese style). But the book is in color, giving it a very different feel than what manga readers are used to. Also, since there is so much information to convey, the pages are loaded with captions and dialogue, which is much more of a Western style of comics storytelling; Japanese manga more often uses quiet moments and pages of wordless or near-wordless action to tell stories. It makes for a strange result, and I'm not sure what manga fans will make of it. Really, the intended audience is kind of difficult to discern; Tyndale would surely like to use it as an evangelical tool, but it's probably not going to attract anyone who isn't already a regular reader of the Bible, unless it's out of curiosity. The color art and wordiness will probably turn off a lot of regular manga readers, and the (slight) liberties that are taken with the story will probably bother steadfast Christians. They also make the odd choice to refer to Jesus by his Hebrew name, Yeshuah. The same goes for his parents, Miryan and Yosef (Mary and Joseph), but every other character gets the name that is in modern Bible translations, from Peter, James, and John to Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, and Judas. It's almost like they were trying to fool non-Christian readers into thinking this wasn't a story about Jesus, but the word Messiah in the title kind of gives that away. As for the story itself, it's actually a very faithful adaptation of the four Gospels, with the corresponding passages of the Bible given at the bottom of each page. It also tries to give as much information as possible, with maps interspersed throughout the art at relevant points and informational captions given when certain cultural mores might confuse readers. The dialogue attempts to sound like modern English, which occasionally leads to odd phrasings of famous verses:
But really, the only failing of the writing is trying to cram too much into the book. Pretty much every event in the four Gospels gets included (causing some interesting timeline issues), when paring the story down to the essential events, sermons, and parables would have made for a better read. As for the art, it does its job pretty well, with decent character designs and fairly dynamic layouts. Shinozawa does everything he can to add some life to a story that mostly consists of people talking (or information being doled out via text), using lots of super-deformed characters:
Or speed/reaction lines:
He obviously relishes any chance to draw action, as in the scene when Yeshuah throws the money-changers out of the temple:
But unfortunately, he doesn't get to do it that much. Another odd element of the art is the use of color. It works pretty well for the most part (although some characters get strange hair colors), sometimes providing some nice backgrounds and effects, like the scenes in which Yeshuah encounters demon-possessed people:
But it adds a strange feel to techniques like speed lines, giving them more of a weighty, almost three-dimensional quality (see the above panels for examples). And there's also the use of computer coloring effects that fell out of favor in American comics sometime in the mid-90s:
That sort of thing will probably turn off the regular manga reader. So, while it's an interesting project, its audience will probably be limited to Christian teens who like seeing the Bible stories they hear in church illustrated in the style of popular manga (B+). Anyone else will probably not be too interested (C). Interested in writing for MangaLife? We're always looking for talented reviewers and columnists, so drop us a line! Charles Webb Editor-in-Chief, MangaLife.com |
14 November 2010 12 November 2010
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