Manga review: Celebratory show explores sexuality, ethnic identity and environmental catastrophe

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Ben Luke22 May 2019

The Japanese characters forming the term manga translate as “pictures run riot”. So many works fill this exhibition that you’ll leave with images rampaging through your mind; a tumult of the stylised people and animals, landscapes and cityscapes, elemental conditions and unique expressive marks that fill the panels of manga’s myriad incarnations.

The curators have assumed that visitors aren’t already enthusiasts. If you are a fan the main pleasure will be the wealth of genga — original drawings by leading manga artists from across the decades, from the “god of manga” Tezuka Osamu to contemporary lights such as Inoue Takehiko — which bring you up close to their artistry.

The show’s introduction includes the artisanal tools still used by artists today and various explainers about manpu, the symbols and effects that form manga’s grammar. This being the British Museum, there’s also plenty of historical context. The museum has collected forms of manga since the 19th century and wonderful prints and even a vast theatre curtain from 1880 reflect manga’s origins in various Japanese visual arts traditions.

And horror is just one sub-genre of manga and its animated relation anime. We see their use in sport, in romance, in sci-fi and in erotica, in exploring gender and sexuality, ethnic identity and environmental catastrophe. We follow their journey to ubiquity, becoming a lingua franca of Japanese culture, even in official government literature.

The show is perhaps overly celebratory, largely ignoring more disturbing elements of manga culture. There’s little explanation of the fundamental childlike characteristics underpinning so many depictions of people that the artist Takashi Murakami has explored provocatively in his analysis of infantilisation within otaku culture. The show would benefit from a similarly critical perspective.

But there is still much to feast on. As well as a head teeming with images, you might, like me, end up wanting to explore manga more deeply.

May 23 until Aug 26 (020 7323 8181, britishmuseum.org)

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