So this month and next are going to be a bit of a lot, and I was looking for something to fall into for relaxation, I popped over to Bookwalker JP and thought I had bought the Super Cub light novel series. Trying to make sense of technical manual talk for a scooter I don’t own sounded about right for taking my over-stimulated brain offline. Well, it turns out I bought Volume 1 of the Super Cub manga and you know…that worked for me very well. I’ve seen the anime, and this can just remind me of that, until I get to the end and then pop over to the novels. Since I read it, the differences between the manga and the anime are much on my mind.
To begin with there are two major changes. One, the manga is full of creeper gaze service, which never adds anything good to a story. So be warned.
The second thing that is different is pacing. I’ve talked about this a lot over the years on Okazu. I read quickly and even my reading Japanese is going to take less time than an animated scene that takes its time. In the case of Super Cub anime, the first few episodes of the anime are handled with deliberation. We spend time watching Koguma’s daily schedule and really get to feel the emptiness of it. That emptiness becomes a burden for the viewer, each detail weighing us down more as a form of sympathetic depression. It’s rough going, but we *need* to feel that, so the change in her world that comes with her Super Cub will feel that much more uplifting. The manga takes pages to tell a story where the anime took episodes., so if you have not watched the anime, it will feel less like a miraculous change from the beginning of the volume to the end.
Nonetheless, Koguma’s life does change – quite radically – with the purchase of a used Honda Super Cub. While she’s still on limited funds – more so now – her day is less filled with the drudgery of riding her bicycle along mountain roads to school. She has free time and mobility. And, as the volume closes, she finds herself making an acquaintance. Again, in the anime, this was extraordinarily difficult for Koguma and she held herself back from friendship for a long time, unwilling to be hurt.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of women’s friendship in my love of anime. Mainstream media, focused on stories of romance and – oh, you know straight women doing straight women things with wine and man bashing and other things completely alien to me – rarely shows women just relying on each other, being there for each other. Which is why I so obsess over She Loves To Cook, She Loves To Eat. Super Cub does tell just exactly this story, from the perspective of a girl who has been so cruelly treated by life, she literally describes herself as having nothing in every way. By the end of this volume, she has one thing – Koguma has a Super Cub – and that one thing is going to lead her to many other things.
Ratings:
Art – barfing noises
Story – Not as hard one the emotions as the anime, but still rough
Characters – Can we give Koguma some props for existing at all? I’m not sure I would have.
Service – barfing noises and with Reiko, it ain’t gonna get better
Yuri – 0
Overall – 8
