Welcome to my blog :D

It’s time to go back to the future! …Although that may in fact have some pretty bad timing!

Also: the hazards of turn-based combat.

New part will be up next week!

–Dogs of Future Past–

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Happy Women’s History Month! All through March, we’ll be celebrating women who changed free expression in comics. Check back here every day for biographical snippets on female creators who have pushed the boundaries of the format and/or seen their work challenged or banned.

Beloved “Princess of Manga,” mangaka (creator) Rumiko Takahashi has built a career around transcending gender boundaries in manga. Despite stereotypes that women couldn’t become famous mangaka, Takahashi has created numerous award-winning series and inspired several popular animated shows since 1978. In many ways, she is one of the pioneering creators who opened the doors to manga for Western readers—specifically young adults.

Whether it be stories like sci-fi teen romance Urusei Yatsura, her popular gender-bending martial arts manga Ranma ½, or probably her most notable supernatural romantic comedy InuYasha, Takahashi’s breadth of work continues to push narrative and audience boundaries, garnering her international acclaim and recognition and earning her the apt title of “Japan’s J.K. Rowling.” (More accurately of course, Rowling is Britain’s Takahashi!)

Born in Nigata, Japan, Takahashi attended the college Gekiga Sonjuku, where she received guidance from another legendary mangaka Kazuo Koike, the writer of Lone Wolf and Cub and Crying Freeman. Although she was repeatedly told that manga wasn’t a women’s craft, the publication of her first professional story in the boy’s magazine Weekly Shonen Sunday earned her the 1978 New Comic Artist Award and launched her into a very successful and influential career that is still going today. “My parents said ‘Don’t do it, you won’t be able to eat – get a normal job!'” recalls Takahashi in an interview with Amazing Heroes:

And to be perfectly truthful, I myself wasn’t absolutely sure I could do it…there was a lot of uncertainty in my own mind as to whether or not I’d be successful. And in fact, I ended up living in a roku-jo room [about 150 sq. ft.] along with my assistants. It was so crowded that I had to sleep in the closet!

Although her work has primarily appeared in boy’s manga magazines and her inspirations include, amongst others, American superhero comics like Fantastic Four, The Hulk, and Spider-Man, Takahashi’s books appeal as much to girls as they do to boys. In fact, Takahashi points out that creating works for both boys and girls has always been a very conscious goal for her. “Yes, that was done on purpose,” said Takahashi when asked about what inspired Ranma ½. “And also, I wanted it to be popular among women and children. Ranma ½ is popular among girls now.”

Ranma ½ follows the adventures of Ranma Saotome, a boy who has been trained in martial arts but is cursed to turn into a girl when splashed with cold water. He resumes his male form when splashed with hot water, and the series focuses on his adventures and mishaps as he tries to get rid of the curse. But Ranma is no simple victim of the curse; he often changes form willingly to accomplish something he desires. The series features other characters who make similar transitions, often into animals. The manga and associated anime are among the first to find popularity in the United States. In terms of the gender-bending plot of the book, Takahashi notes:

It’s just that I came up with something that might be a simple, fun idea. I’m not the type who thinks in terms of societal agendas. But being a woman and recalling what kind of manga I wanted to read as a child, I just thought humans turning into animals might also be fun and märchenhaft…you know, like a fairy tale.

Takahashi’s approach to comics may have changed perceptions in Japan that women, too, could compete in the manga market and become serious creators, but the influence that Takahashi has had as a manga creator is even more pronounced on the international front. When the manga started making its way into mainstream America in the late 80s and early 90s, it wasn’t just serious works like Akira and Lone Wolf and Cub that were shaping a whole new groups of life-long readers and fans. As the associate publisher of Del Rey Manga, Dallas Middaugh, notes, it is the art and narratives of female creators like Takahashi’s that have “struck a strong chord with male and female manga readers” and really opened the doors into mainstream manga reading.

In 1980, Takahashi won the highly prestigious Shogakukan Manga Award for Urusei Yatsura and again in 2002 for InuYasha. She has become a beloved icon in her home country, but she’s found adoration in the United States as well. In 1994, Takahashi was also awarded the American Inkpot Award for the groundbreaking international contributions she has made as a mangaka.

–by Caitlin McCabe

Image sources:

Rumiko Takahashi photo

Urusei Yatsura

Ranma ½

Join me brethren! Sign the petition, spread the word and don’t let those bigots take what we’ve fought for all these years!

The electoral college does not vote until December 19th. We have 40 days.

What does this mean?

Right now, the presidential election results are only a PROJECTION of the election outcome. They are PRELIMINARY RESULTS. A candidate still needs to earn 270 electoral votes to win. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, which means that more than 50% of the voters wanted her for president. The electoral college shouldn’t guarantee an override of the public’s opinion– and it doesn’t have to.

There are 21 states that do NOT restrict which candidate the electors vote for. Out of these 21, Hillary lost the following:

As you can see, these states are worth 166 electoral votes. As it currently stands, Hillary Clinton is projected to receive 232 votes. Trump is projected to win 306. This means that 37 votes need to be taken away from Trump to bring him down to 269. Hillary Clinton needs 38 votes ADDED to win 270. These electoral voters can also abstain, which means that they can refuse to vote for either candidate. If 37 of the voters within these states abstain then no candidate will have reached the required 270. In this case, the vote would be taken to the House.

Trump won Pennsylvania, a state that typically votes blue, by less than 100,000 votes. While it is highly unlikely to get all 20 electoral voters to cross party lines and vote democrat, it also isn’t impossible to convince a few of them to be “faithless electors.” We only need to convince 38 out of the 166. That is 23%. There are SIXTEEN states we need to focus our attention on.

A move like this would be unprecedented. However, as we all saw on November 8th, odds don’t guarantee reality. Trump had a less than 20% winning, yet given the circumstances, enough people came together and made it happen. We can make this happen. 

Ask yourself this: What do we have left to lose? We can stay complacent and accept that this country will be run by a racist, sexist, islamophobic, homophobic, ablest bigot, or we can at least try. 

How?

SPREAD THE WORD. Trend #NotMyPresident to let people know that we do not accept being led by a man who does not care about our wellbeing. Email your professors, email the dean of your colleges. The last thing a university wants is negative press. Millenials can take a stand, but that doesn’t mean we have to be the only ones. Church-led events helped bring a lot of disillusioned voters to the polls. Spread the word in any way possible, whether it be on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or even in person. Stage a peaceful protest. Hand out flyers. Let the people around you know that you don’t accept this man as your leader when he won’t even accept you as a citizen with your designated rights.

These 166 people need to face the consequences of electing this man.