Tekkon Kinkreet: Black and White
By Taiyo Matsumoto
Tekkon Kinkreet: Black and White
Originally published in 1994
·
The first few pages of the manga is printed in
color while the rest of the manga is printed in black and white, no pun
intended
·
The main characters have been literally
translated as Black and White for the manga
·
The dialogue of the manga is mostly nonsense
save for the last parts as the actual substance of the conversation is too
slice of life to explain the nature of the city Black and White live in and the
background of the two characters. Examples of this would be like in Page 35
where they talk about putting “shiny money” in a piggy bank.
·
Fittingly Black has the kanji or Chinese word
for Black on his shirt while White mostly has white clothes on
·
Despite the protagonists being children it is
clear that they run the underground of the city like in Pages 168-169 where
they beat up a professional yakuza to prove a point that they run the down in a
most violent manner.
·
There are notably few women in the manga, noting
the coming of age boyhood nature of Black and White’s journey in life and the
masculine nature of the manga. This is unusual for any manga as it is uncommon
for manga to depict anything center completely around hetero normalcy with a
cast mostly dominated by men.
·
Despite the assassins being “alien” in nature as
introduced in Pages 295, the assassins are noted to speak in a dialogue that is
similar in grammatical syntax to Chinese and wear notably Chinese clothing. It
could be that the author intended the assassins to be caricatures of “evil”
Chinese men.
·
Cats are usually used to symbolize Black and
White and their relationship to the environment. An example would be like Page
189 where stray cats, appropriately being black and white cats, interact with
the environment that clearly is out to get them.
·
Unlike most manga, there is rarely a single page
in Black and White that does not have a form of background to it. While it is
common manga conventions to establish backgrounds and continue the narrative
without them as so to have the image of the background be in the subconscious
of the reader’s mind, in this manga there is always a background of one form or
the other to the characters. This could be seen to remind us of how each portion
and individual in the setting of the city is so distinct and unique onto
itself.
·
As previously stated before, the substance of
the characters dialogue does not seem to carry much weight as much as the
actions, which could signify the unconscious development male children, develop
in doing rather than in saying.
·
Overall, I liked this manga a lot though I
cannot consciously pinpoint what it is about it that appeals to me.
Bibliography:
Matsumoto, Taiyō. Tekkon Kinkreet = Black & White.
San Francisco, CA: Viz Media, 2007. Print.
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