Bare Feet and Broken Hearts

Second volume in a ten volume set.


Whoa.


Just, Whoa.


I struggled to get through this one. The story quick and engaging. It wasn't the narration or the pacing that threw me, but rather the subject material. I tend to approach these sorts of events from the broader perspective of a historian, more concerned with the wider picture. This one thought... It pulls you in to the struggles of a single damaged family as they attempt to pick up the pieces after and utterly earth shattering event.


The transition from husband and wife with three (nearly four) kids going about their daily business to a mother and son struggling with a newborn in a post apocalyptic landscape, this whole story brought to mind so many of the great zombie tropes. 

The art, especially the pages that featured survivors of the blast manages to skillfully portray the horror of the physical effects of the bomb without being overly graphic. By managing to convey the horror without the gore, Nakazawa keeps more squeamish readers (like me) from putting the book down and flipping on an episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

As the story progresses, the main character continues his odyssey and is faced by challenges and set backs along the way. Throughout, the weaving of Japanese traditional imagery is used to reinforce ideas without explicitly having to explain them, even to a wider audience.


In a broader sense, the creation of this series may have been another sort of odyssey as the author wrote to avenge the death of his mother in the 1960s. Even though she survived the initial attack, she was still a victim of the radiation and after her death and cremation, the effects of the radiation were apparent in the lack of bone left behind for Nakazawa to enshrine. In this article from 2007, he goes into greater detail about growing up in Hiroshima before and after the bombing.

Yes, I agree whoa.

I was not able to finish this one, not for a lack of trying though. I can honestly say this story gave me nightmares,(probably because I would read just before bed) the rich visual interaction was just too much for me to handle. I know that I am often overly sensitive. With that said, I must admit what I read ,a little over half, was very powerful. Every image causes you to stop, investigate and think about what you just saw. It gives you the perspective of what really happened to the innocent on that day. It is full of strong images, that is what made it so hard for me to get through, had the story been words alone it would have created a buffer to allow me to further separate myself from the story. But, the juxtaposition of words and pictures makes the story that much more intense. Even with the gutters and closure it was just to much for my naive mind.



If you think about it the subject of what happened to the people after the bomb dropped is mostly nonexistent. Why you ask, well its simple the Americans did something horrible and if we don't really discuss it then no one will know how bad it was and how horrible we were for doing it. However, there is quite a bit in Japan, but I think that makes scenes. We hear about how we helped this country or that how we did this or that. But they are all positive; how we saved the Jews, landed on the moon ect.

Granted this is only my opinion and I have no evidence to back it up, but that doesn't make it wrong, just not right.