REVIEW: Tekkon Kinkreet film

Tekkon Kinkreet: Black and White (film)

By Taiyo Matsumoto,

Tekkon Kinkreet: Black and White (film)

Originally opened in 2006

·         Unlike the manga, White is noted to have an orange shirt in the film as opposed to white clothing. Black, while keeping to his black attire, does not have the kanji for black on his back.

·         The film opens up with the brothers fighting another set of brothers as opposed to random gangsters.

·         It could be the American-style print of the manga, but Black’s scar is on the other eye in the film.

·         The atmospheric scenes of the film expand upon the more compact aspects of Treasure Town that the manga was limited to due to the medium of manga.

·         The reactions of the crowds are in the film towards the Cats and Chocolate’s gang and the other yakuza in Treasure Town, which is notably limited or excluded in the manga.

·         White’s innocence and slight mental challenges are more noted in the film than in the manga, which seems to center more on Black and his troubles with the city.

·         The hint of Black being one with the Minotaur is hinted at earlier in the film than in the manga.

·         Kimura’s relationship with his wife is also touched more in the film than in the manga, where she only serves to be there for him in the end and does not play too much into his development.

·         The nonsense language of the aliens sounds more Japanese than the implied Chinese-style of the assassins in the manga.

·         The Japanese theme of the town is made lesser with the graffiti being in English and the town signs also being in English. This could be due to the director of this film being not-Japanese and this film being geared towards an international release.

·         They include a Japanese shadow puppet thing in the film that wasn’t in the manga.

·         Suzuki dies earlier in the film than in the manga, where all the adult yakuza die about the same time.

·         The Snake character is notably blonde and looks foreign compared to the manga where he looks still Japanese though with bleached hair.

·         It is the death of Suzuki and not the killing of the two alien assassins that spurs the humanity in Black again in the film.

·         The foreign amusement part of Treasure Town is made more prevalent with Part 3 of the film than with the manga where it felt like there was little change in Treasure Town saves for which gangs were in power.

·         They include a hugely surreal scene where Black sees where the darkness of hate leads mankind by the semi-supernatural powers of White.

·         Suzuki survives by the end of the film, where he died by the end of the manga after killing Snake.

·         Overall, the film I felt was just as good as the manga if not slightly superior as the pacing of the manga seemed erratic at times yet the film fitted them more fluidly. Also, the mundane dialogue of the beginning of the manga was left out for more development of side characters though this story is still about the two boys.

Bibliography:

Tekkon Kinkreet. Dir. Michael Arias. Perf. Kazunari Ninomiya, Yû Aoi, Yûsuke Iseya, Kankurô Kudô, Min Tanaka. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2007. DVD.

REVIEW: Tekkon Kinkreet

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.