#ojamakura

[brickme]

Ebook editions of Tachiiri Haruko's Ojamakura came out a few months ago but I only noticed it yesterday!!! I'd been dying to read it so obviously I picked up all three volumes and read them last night and this morning. It was hilarious and, as always, had some adorable art. I had to cap this title page because Makura (the pillow protagonist of the series) is wearing pins of Pank Punk and Miiko from the series' contemporary in Pyonpyon, Miiko de~su! (later serialized as Kotchi muite! Miiko in Ciao) by Ono Eriko. Volume 2 also included a short comic about Tachiiri and Ono going to see sumo with some Pyonpyon editors. ♥ All in all, a super good buy. I wish Tachiiri still wrote manga like Ono does...

One of the great things about the classic children’s manga artist like Tachiiri and also Fujiko F Fujio is, they stick to a very basic panel layout based on four rows of panels on each page, like this:

(This layout will also be very prominent in any volume of Doraemon you pick up.) They do occasionally vary this for effect, of course, and the inventive panel layouts that later manga artists (primarily shojo artists) invented revolutionized manga in many ways, but in order to make this classic panel layout work, an artist has to be able to fit entire characters into one very small panel, and this takes skill. Tachiiri is a fantastic artist and when I learned she trained under Nagata Takemaru (who trained under Tagawa Suihou of Norakuro fame) that made a lot of sense.

And thinking about this I also began to think about how the revolution in manga panel layouts worked in tandem with the character proportions becoming “longer” and more “realistic” and “adult” because that type of character could now fit into the bigger panels and even sprawl across panels, and both of these factors made it possible for manga to tell a much wider variation of stories etc. etc. But I still really appreciate the skill of these classic manga artists!

#tachiiri haruko #ojamakura #thoughts on manga

[brickme]

Tachiiri Haruko's Pikora Pikora has been released as ebooks!!! The print tankobon go for exorbitant prices on Japanese auction sites, so I've been hoping and hoping that an ebook release would follow the Pank Punk and Ojamakura releases from a few years back. Apparently this was out in November last year but I didn't notice... (At one point I should make a list of Pyonpyon manga and other manga by Pyonpyon artists which are now available as ebooks, because a lot of them are out from obscure publishers and aren't advertized as Pyonpyon series.)

#tachiiri haruko #pikora pikora #no one but me cares but i'm v v excited about this

[brickme]

Pyonpyon furoku Ojamakura "letter file" -- Tachiiri Haruko (September 1990)

#pyonpyon #furoku #my collection #tachiiri haruko #ojamakura #furoku: binder #can we get an ebook release of ojamakura and all her other works too??? #i was super happy about the pank punk ebooks but i need more