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Piper Renee 2 Black Ink and Dreams in Tokyo · Piper Renee

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, my lovely friends, and welcome back to Piper Renee.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: I am Piper Renee Dixon, and it is always a
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  Speaker 1: highlight of my week to sit down at the microphone
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  Speaker 1: and share these stories with you. Before we dive into
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  Speaker 1: today's episode, I want to pause and ask for a
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  Speaker 1: small piece of your moral support. If you enjoy our
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  Speaker 1: conversations about manga, anime, and comic book art, please take
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  Speaker 1: a quick second to hit that follow button on your player.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Leave us a kind five-star rating or review and share
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: this episode with a friend. Your encouragement is what keeps
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  Speaker 1: this independent studio going strong. And remember that our entire
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  Speaker 1: collection of earlier episodes is waiting for you right on
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  Speaker 1: the podcast feed whenever you want to listen back. Today,
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  Speaker 1: I want to take you across the ocean to a
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  Speaker 1: narrow three-story art supply shop in the historic book district
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  Speaker 1: of Jinbacho in Tokyo, Japan. And I want to talk
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  Speaker 1: about the sheer, breathtaking human magic of Japanese manga. How
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  Speaker 1: a single steel nib pen, a bottle of black ink,
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  Speaker 1: and a stack of white paper can make millions of
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  Speaker 1: readers around the world laugh, cry, and feel less alone.
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  Speaker 1: Four years ago in the spring, I saved up my
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  Speaker 1: illustration earnings for two years to take my dream trip
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  Speaker 1: to Tokyo. While most tourists were visiting the big neon
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  Speaker 1: shopping towers in Shibuya, I spent an entire Tuesday afternoon
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  Speaker 1: wandering through the quiet backstreets of Jinbacho, where hundreds of
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  Speaker 1: small shops sell vintage books, woodblock prints, and traditional drawing supplies.
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  Speaker 1: I walked into a tiny art shop that smelled like
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  Speaker 1: cedar pencils, gum erasers, and bottled sumi ink, on the
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  Speaker 1: second floor. There was a whole wall dedicated purely to
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  Speaker 1: the tools of the manga artist, what the Japanese call
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  Speaker 1: a mangaka. I stood there holding a tiny piece of
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  Speaker 1: curved metal no bigger than my fingernail, a zebra G-pen nib.
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  Speaker 1: It costs less than $ 2. You slide that tiny metal
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  Speaker 1: nib into a wooden holder, dip the tip into a
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  Speaker 1: small bottle of black ink, and touch it to smooth
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  Speaker 1: Bristol board paper, if you press down lightly. It draws
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  Speaker 1: a line as thin as a spiderweb, so delicate you
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  Speaker 1: can draw the reflection of a star inside a character's eye.
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  Speaker 1: If you press down firmly, the metal tines split apart slightly,
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  Speaker 1: drawing a bold, heavy black line that looks like a
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  Speaker 1: sword stroke or the shadow of a mountain. Standing in
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  Speaker 1: that shop holding that $ 2 metal nib, I felt a
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  Speaker 1: wave of awe wash over me. Because unlike American comic books,
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  Speaker 1: which are usually created by an assembly line of a writer,
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  Speaker 1: a pencil artist, an incur, a colorist, and a letterer,
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  Speaker 1: Most Japanese manga series are written and drawn week after
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  Speaker 1: week by one single creator and a few assistants sitting
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  Speaker 1: in a small studio room. There is no color to
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  Speaker 1: hide behind in a weekly manga chapter. There is no
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  Speaker 1: symphony orchestra playing background music. There are no voice actors.
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  Speaker 1: There is only black ink on white paper. And yet, somehow,
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  Speaker 1: those black and white drawings carry more emotional power than
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  Speaker 1: almost any live-action movie on Earth. Think about Ayakairo Oda,
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  Speaker 1: the creator of One Piece, since 1997 for nearly 30 years.
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  Speaker 1: That man has sat at his desk drawing with a G-pen,
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  Speaker 1: building a world of pirates, friendship, and freedom that has
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  Speaker 1: united readers across every country on the planet. Do you
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  Speaker 1: remember the chapter in One Piece where the crew has
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  Speaker 1: to say goodbye to their first little wooden ship, the
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  Speaker 1: Going Merry? Let us pause and think about how wild
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  Speaker 1: that is on paper. It is a drawing of a
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  Speaker 1: wooden sailboat with a carved sheep's head on the front.
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  Speaker 1: In real life, nobody cries over a piece of timber. Yet,
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  Speaker 1: because Oda spent hundreds of chapters showing us every scratch
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  Speaker 1: on that ship's mast, every patch of wood that the
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  Speaker 1: crew hammered back together after a storm, and every meal
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  Speaker 1: they shared on its deck. When the ship finally breaks
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  Speaker 1: apart in the snow and whispers thank you to the
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  Speaker 1: crew for loving it so well. Grown men and women
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  Speaker 1: all over the world sat on their beds, sobbing over
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  Speaker 1: black ink on paper. That is the miracle of manga.
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  Speaker 1: Why does manga connect with the human heart in such
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  Speaker 1: an intense, personal way? I think there are two big reasons. First,
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  Speaker 1: when you read a manga volume, your own brain is
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  Speaker 1: doing half the work. In a movie, the camera forces
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  Speaker 1: you to move at 24 frames per second whether you
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  Speaker 1: are ready or not. In a manga, you control time.
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  Speaker 1: When you turn the page and hit a massive two-page spread,
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  Speaker 1: like Take Hicco in now drawing the final, silent two
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  Speaker 1: minutes of a high school basketball game in slam dunk.
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  Speaker 1: Where there isn't a single word bubble for 20 pages,
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  Speaker 1: just the sweat on the players' faces, the squeak of
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  Speaker 1: sneakers on the gym floor, and the ball rising toward
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  Speaker 1: the hoop, your eyes slow down. You hear the crowd
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  Speaker 1: holding its breath inside your own head. You supply the voices,
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  Speaker 1: you supply the speed, and your own heartbeat becomes the
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  Speaker 1: soundtrack of the page. And the second reason manga is
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  Speaker 1: so powerful is its obsession with never giving up on
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  Speaker 1: your dream and never abandoning your friends. In Japanese manga culture,
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  Speaker 1: especially in the stories we grow up reading in Weekly
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  Speaker 1: Shonen Jump, there are three core pillars that guide almost
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  Speaker 1: every great story, effort, friendship, and victory. Notice the order
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  Speaker 1: of those three words. Victory is last, effort and friendship
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  Speaker 1: come first. In Western stories, the hero is often born
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  Speaker 1: special or chosen by prophecy. In manga, the hero is
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  Speaker 1: almost always the kid at the bottom of the class
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  Speaker 1: who starts out clumsy. Underestimated and bruised, who succeeds only
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  Speaker 1: because he refuses to quit working and refuses to let
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  Speaker 1: his friends stand alone in the dark. Think about a
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  Speaker 1: masterpiece like Full Metal Alchemist by Hiramu Arakawa. or Heikyuu
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  Speaker 1: by Haruichi Furudate, or Neaki Urasawa's Monster. In Heikyuu, a
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  Speaker 1: story about high school volleyball. Some of the most moving
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  Speaker 1: chapters in the entire series are not about the teams
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  Speaker 1: that win the national championship. They are about the teams
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  Speaker 1: that lose in the second round. The camera stays with
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  Speaker 1: the kids who worked hard all year, practiced until their
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  Speaker 1: hands were calloused, gave everything they had on the court,
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  Speaker 1: and still lost the match. it shows them crying in
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  Speaker 1: the locker room, packing up their gym bags, and then
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  Speaker 1: sitting down together at a diner to eat a hot meal,
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  Speaker 1: realizing that the effort they poured into the game and
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  Speaker 1: the friends they stood beside made every single drop of
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  Speaker 1: sweat worth it. When I was in Tokyo that spring,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: after buying my box of G-Pen nibs and a bottle
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  Speaker 1: of black ink in Jinbacho, I walked over to a
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  Speaker 1: small neighborhood park and sat on a bench under the
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  Speaker 1: cherry blossom trees to sketch. Next to me on the
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  Speaker 1: bench were two Japanese middle school boys in dark blue
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  Speaker 1: school uniforms, sharing a single copy of Weekly Shonen Jump
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  Speaker 1: between them. One boy was holding the left side of
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  Speaker 1: the thick magazine, and his friend was holding the right side,
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  Speaker 1: and they were leaning their heads together so they could
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  Speaker 1: read the same page at the exact same speed. Every
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  Speaker 1: time they finished a page... The boy on the left
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  Speaker 1: would look at the boy on the right to make
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  Speaker 1: sure he was done reading before turning the leaf. They
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  Speaker 1: were laughing, pointing at the drawings, and totally lost in
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  Speaker 1: the story together. Watching those two kids share that magazine
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  Speaker 1: under the trees, I thought about my own childhood in America.
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  Speaker 1: Sitting on the floor of my local bookstore reading manga
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  Speaker 1: volumes for hours because they made me feel like I
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  Speaker 1: had a whole crew of brave, loyal friends waiting for
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  Speaker 1: me inside my backpack. Whether a comic is drawn from
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  Speaker 1: left to right in New York or from right to
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  Speaker 1: left in Tokyo, the magic is identical. Someone sat alone
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  Speaker 1: at a desk late at night with a bottle of
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  Speaker 1: ink and a lamp, pouring their heart onto a blank
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  Speaker 1: sheet of paper so that someone else, thousands of miles away,
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  Speaker 1: could open that book and feel brave enough to face tomorrow. So,
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  Speaker 1: my friend, if you have a creative dream sitting on
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  Speaker 1: your desk today, or if you just love getting lost
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  Speaker 1: in a great manga series after a long day, celebrate
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  Speaker 1: the power of black ink and paper. Keep showing up
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  Speaker 1: for your crew. Never be ashamed of how hard you try,
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  Speaker 1: and remember that the best adventures are the ones we
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  Speaker 1: read and live together. Thank you so much for traveling
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  Speaker 1: to Tokyo with me today on Piper Renee. If you
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed this episode, please give us your moral support by
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: tapping that follow button and leaving a kind five-star rating
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: or review, and checking out the rest of our episodes
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  Speaker 1: waiting for you right on the podcast feed. I am
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  Speaker 1: Piper Renee Dixon. Keep your ink flowing, hold onto your dreams,
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  Speaker 1: and I will talk to you on the next episode.