Philip Brophy

Philip Brophy will be speaking at this year’s Perth International Film Festival Screen Conference. We were lucky enough to have some of his time for this short interview.

Thanks for your time, Philip. To start, could you provide brief definitions of what manga and anime are for a completely uninitiated audience?

Manga is everything that ‘comics’ are not. Manga can have a broad range of emotional, psychological, visual and dynamic elements, making it a formally complex art form and storytelling medium. It also has developed from centuries of ways in which Japanese art has blended the written word within the pictorial frame. To presume that manga is simply the Eastern equivalent of American or British-style comics is a blunt and inappropriate association.

Anime follows on from manga in this way. In fact, anime owes so much to manga: its framing, pacing, tonality, stylisation. The interplay between the two forms is best demonstrated by the unique ways in which manga – a still, printed medium – poetically distils sensations of movement, while anime – a moving image medium – often generates beautiful moments of stillness. I think that in comparison, Western comics can be over-designed and too illustrative, while western animation tends to be more and more obsessed with non-stop movement – especially CGI movies.

Could you expand a little more on the tradition behind manga and how it is informed by Japanese culture?

Manga comes from a long-standing tradition of combining image with text. This can be seen in byobu folding screen paintings from the 17th Century, through to the ‘pop poster’ ukiyo-e phenomenon of the 19th Century. These traditions run counter to European ones in which painting and literature developed respectively through words alone and image alone. This image-text fusion is epicentral to Japanese art. Plus, the text component and the sound effects in manga are elliptical and poetic, and bear connections to various forms of Japanese poetry like haiku where ‘less is more’.

What did Tezuka do that was experimental or groundbreaking to the extent that he is recognised as the ‘father of manga’?

Tezuka introduced a mix of international styles and sources to his stories, plus he fostered an accelerated means by which dynamic media like cinema could be incorporated into the formal language of the manga page. Much of these ideas are covered in the various essays in the catalogue I edited for the National Gallery of Victoria exhibition TEZUKA – The Marvel of Manga.

Are there any common themes throughout his works?

A testament to Tezuka’s status as an artist is the consistency of his themes despite the wild shifts and turns in both his chosen styles and genres and even within single stories. Tezuka’s work ultimately reflects the post-war consciousness of Japan. Having lived through the war and resolved to be a manga artist during the American Occupation and then dedicate his life to entertaining audiences through the medium of manga, his career reflects the resolve with which he expressed his world view.

Especially to the western reader, Tezuka’s work is refreshingly devoid of obvious story structure and development. His stories are sagas wherein characters can evolve and change in unpredictable ways. Morality is never employed to suffocate the life energy of the story flow, and people and events are allowed to act out the best and worst of what can happen. Sometimes harsh, often tragic, Tezuka’s most important theme is survival, which may indeed reflect his own feelings of having survived WWII.

You’ve talked about Japanese tradition and post-war culture as influential on Tezuka’s work. In what ways do you think manga and anime – Tezuka’s in particular – have worked to inform modern Japanese culture? Further, do you see contemporary anime as moving in new directions based on the Japan of today?

I’m not sure exactly how manga influences modern Japanese culture. I consider it to be the other way around, which is why manga and anime are so rich: they embody the effects and mechanisms of how Japanese culture has formed, especially in the postwar era. Much of how I discuss anime in my book 100 Anime explores ways in which Japanese culture is complexly embedded and threaded within anime. I also discuss how the graphic sensibilities of manga contribute to the unique dynamism of anime. As to how contemporary anime is reflecting Japan today, I consider many post-Evangelion anime to express the emotional psyche and psychological composure of young people in Japan today. Titles like Gantz, Paranoia Agent, Texhnolyze, Petite Cossette and Boogie Pop Phantom are incredible examples of this.

Philip Brophy’s own movie, the acclaimed Body Melt, will also be showing as part of the Revelation Perth International Film Festival. You can catch it, with an introduction from Philip, at Luna Leederville, 10:45pm, Friday July 13.