Mccloud and Sousanis Hiroshima

It has been clear in our readings so far throughout this class that no two theorists are alike, and all have a unique style of getting their point across. This is why I was pleasantly surprised to see two comic pieces among the three we had to read for today written by Mccloud and Sousanis. It occurred to me while reading both that I have had assigned to me a countless amount of pieces that i am required to read that have been written in plain old, boring essay format, and not enough times have I been able to read a comic style educational piece in one of my classes. Both comics were very complex, but not too complex where it was difficult to follow along. I found Mccloud to be much easier to read than Sousanis, mainly because Sousanis used much more intricate drawings than Mccloud did, and Mcclouds ideas were much easier to grasp in general.

“Imagination pervades our entire existence” was the line that caught my attention the most out of all three pieces, as the power of imagination is a phenomenon that is nearly impossible to fully understand . The dialogue that both had about our imaginations and how infinite they truly are spoke to the amount of layers their concepts have. Sousanis also did a great job at depicting the concept of imagination with his character that he made up when he was 13 “LockerMan," as his explanations about wondering what was behind the staircase or in a box perfectly caught the imagination of us all at one point of our lives.

Mccloud centered a lot of his comic around signification, and began it with a very compelling concept that we as humans use inanimate objects and in a way become one with them, whether that is a fork, crutches, or your own car, the way we become one with an object is something that most of us probably don’t think about on a daily basis, as Mccloud separates our experiences in life into two categories: the realm of the concept, and the realm of the senses.

Another interest portion of Mccloud was trying to find the happy medium between a bland stick figure and an extremely detailed, photo like picture of someone. The concept of making the character “comic like” but yet still having to include so many details; it makes for one daunting task.

CLIP 1: The first clip starts with a view of the plane flying over Japan, and dialogue from the pilot saying to release the bomb and the bomb dropping onto the country after the pilot presses a button. The overhead view makes for an interesting perspective, as we cannot tell when the bombs hits until it does. The first person we see on the ground is a young boy holding a rock, who drops the rock moments before the bomb begins to take its toll. Look at the perfect amount of detail in the characters face, and even his clothing, as you notice a crease or two in his undershirt, but yet not so much detail that it makes it closer to a photo than a cartoon. The most powerful clip in this video to me was the mother realizing what was happening, and in her last moments, grabbing her now dead baby on the ground, in a moment that truly captures the human instinct. Something I noticed in both clips was “separation,” a concept Sousanis went over in his piece. Despite being a large community, when the bomb dropped in both videos, no matter how close people were to each other, there was a sense of separation, of isolation that hit me deeply watching the skin melt off the poor victims.

Clip 2: It goes without saying that the second adaptation of Hiroshima is much more powerful due to the extensive intro which shows people living their normal everyday live: with not a single clue that their lives would never be the same. Those are moments that never get captured in tragedies: the moment right before something happens, the last moments of being worry-free.  I also was compelled by when the planes appeared, it did not seem like all the citizens were afraid, in fact the children were smiling and looking up, yet the elders seemed to know that something tragic was about to happen.

The main differences in these two adaptations is the second clip feels much more connected, in other words; I felt much more attached to the characters and events in the second clip because I was given just enough backstory to help set up my foundation for the clip. The second adaptation also did a great job at creating suspense, as the bomb detonated for about a minute, making our imaginations work as to how will the author depict these characters that were just in the same area as an A-bomb explosion. Finally, the landscapes in both adaptations were stunning, and as Mccloud said, nobody wants to be looking at a brick wall, and the visuals in both clips were breathtaking, especially for anime.