Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita 3

Today I would like to take a brief moment to discuss the history of manga. This will only take a few words or so.

The manga I’ll discuss is the modern manga that we all know and love, which originated just at the end of World War II. Following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the general mood of the Japanese public was melancholy and depressed. Because of that, quite a few creative people of Japan found solace by creating works with kawaii (cute) images. The word kawaii that we use for such humorous tongue-in-cheek purposes actually has a deeper meaning than its face value!

Artistic freedom was fostered by the 1947 Japanese Constitution, which prohibited all forms of censorship. This led to a large growth in artistic creativity during that time period. It was during this period that the ever-influential Astro Boy and Sazae-san were published.

From that point on, manga flourished as a budding art form read by Japanese, later spreading its influence to outside Japan’s borders. A feature unique to manga is its innovative panel management. Sometimes one will be able to picture cinematic sequences from its panels, for instance. It’s important to note that manga, as of the twenty-first century, was tailored to all audiences, boys and girls (shounen, shoujo manga) as well as men and women (seinen, seijin, josei manga).

At some point after the twenty-first century, though, humanity started to decline, and so did manga. At some point the entire art form lay dormant, with no artists publishing any manga series. So it remained for many years.

Some time after mankind had its first contact with fairies, and just a short time after mankind had its first contact with skinned chickens, manga would be reborn again.

Enter a mysterious woman that will only be known as Y.

This woman, who was sent to work on a particular project for a monument about human history, stumbled upon an old CD-ROM, filled with images of manga. Inspired by these images of the past, she wished to publish them. This started a new trend, the first trend in perhaps centuries.

The trend of yaoi.

That’s right. The manga on that disc she discovered contained yaoi, and since she published all the manga left in the world, the only manga on earth was yaoi. She quickly gained a captive audience among young girls, many of them turning into absolute fanatics.

Y’s manga publisher was so successful that others caught on and started producing their own ‘man-zines’, also filled with yaoi.

Eventually manga became so successful that Y became very rich. However, the trucks that delivered the manga from the headquarters of Y’s publishing company had no room for basic supplies, so they had to cut their service for Y. Because of that, Y organized a manga convention in which the customer actually came to the publisher to buy their goods. It was the perfect plan in devious marketing, and the con was extremely successful.

With this new situation, many felt that it would continue on just the way it was, an endless cycle of yaoi publishers and fujoshi customers. Little did they know that manga was going to become a hell of a lot more immersive.

That’s right. Manga suddenly became so immersive that it literally absorbed its readers into the panels. There is little explanation for this, and we will just have to see what happens, next episode of Humanity has Declined.