Arms and the Manga

June 1, 2009 by J!-ENT 

In a recent column for the Daily Yomiuri, Tom Baker writes about why many manga stories focus on a person’s arm turning into a monster or machine. The following is an excerpt from that column:

When you hold a manga in your hands to read it, your thumbs hover at the edges of your vision while your eyes are focused on the page. But there are so many manga stories about people whose arms turn into monsters or machines that you might want to stop and check what your fingers are up to.

In the popular manga Parasyte, teenage protagonist Shinichi must come to grips with the fact that a shape-shifting space alien has taken over his right arm. A major character in The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service believes his arm to be inhabited by a space alien who speaks through an ever-present hand puppet. The title character of Vampire Hunter D has a mysterious entity living in his hand, with its face appearing in his palm. Relations between a person and a possessed limb are often antagonistic, and there is an episode in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure in which a demonically possessed arm actually tries to kill the man it is attached to.

But manga characters are just as likely to find their arms replaced by machinery, especially weapons. The main characters in the space opera Cobra and the medieval fantasy Berserk have metallic weapons where their left forearms should be. Young wizard Edward Elric has a mechanical arm (and leg) in Fullmetal Alchemist. The main characters in both Dororo and Madara have bodies made almost entirely of prosthetics, including weaponized arms. Further afield, the Final Fantasy VII video game and last year’s live-action movie Machine Girl prominently feature characters whose missing arms have been replaced by giant guns.

Japanese pop culture has no shortage of bizarre arm stories. The Daily Yomiuri recently asked some experts why.

“I think on the simplest character design level, it’s a way to give the main character a weapon or feature which is part of themselves–part of their own body,” Jason Thompson, author of Manga: The Complete Guide replied in an e-mail. “A martial artist’s strength, or (to use an American superhero example) Wolverine’s claws, are something which can never be taken away from them, unlike, say, a sword or a gun or a suit of armor. A ‘trademark weapon’ is an important part of the character, so why not make it part of the character?”

Andrew Cunningham, the English-language translator of Parasyte, wrote: “From a writer’s point of view, I think artificial arms represent both an attention-grabbing hook and a concept that helps drive the plot. You can use the arms to make heroes extraordinary, but also handicap them for dramatic tension.”