Naoki Urasawa's "Bat Billy" finally came to an end in August 2016 after several years of serialization.
This is a work of great ambition. "Bat Billy" uses all kinds of inconclusive historical suspense or conspiracy theories: the black curtain of the Japanese descent incident, the real murderer of the assassination of US President Kennedy, whether the Apollo landing on the moon is a lie, the relationship between the cultural industry giants such as Disney and Hollywood and the political circles, etc., each event has had many jokes or deductive versions.
These elements make The Bat Billy's subject matter richer and broader. However, it is precisely because this intricate history network tends to give readers an expectation of the "ultimate truth" that many readers cannot be satisfied with the final ending of "Bat Billy". If you have to be serious, many of the conspiracy theories and the so-called dark side of political culture in the book are also untenable; especially the depiction of the "current situation" and the status of the Kalkin group in the aftermath of the Twin Towers in the United States, many places have a sense of emptiness and absurdity similar to the political and religious depictions of the late Twentieth Century Boy, simplifying and exaggerating a lot of things in order to achieve dramatic effects.
Readers will have strict requirements for "authenticity" of Naoki Urasawa, perhaps precisely because the language of Naoki Urasawa's manga gives people a strong sense of realism; this sense of realism gives people the illusion that Naoki Urasawa wants to rewrite history. However, Naoki Urasawa is an idealistic manga artist at his heart, and all historical puzzles exist for the sake of "human nature" as the object of discussion, and "hope, courage, and love" as an idea. He depicts the shadow not to realistically restore the object that cast the shadow, but to describe the light. Just as Twentieth Century Boy has a strong autobiographical nature, Billy the Bat projects a lot of Naoki Urasawa's own feelings about the manga.
The memes of historical events may be an important element of suspense, but they are not at the heart of the story. The most important core of the bat billy comic is the "comic" itself.
<h1>A manga drawn for a manga</h1>
After Kevin Yamagata mistakenly believes that he has killed someone, he falls drunk on the side of the road and cries to Xiao Jing, who is passing by: "I am a cartoonist!" I am a cartoonist who brings courage and hope to children!! Teach them what a righteous cartoonist is!! But I... I'm not qualified to draw comics anymore..."
Chubby Yamashita said to the manga artist Sakai, "After reading the manga of the master, there will be a feeling of 'wow-- ' in my heart." It's like traveling the whole world, and your heart becomes so open... And the whole body will be full of courage. ”
After Agent Smith was rescued by Du Weiwei, he heard that Kevin Hill Wasting was still alive, and for a while he burst into tears: "I didn't expect that in my lifetime, I would be able to see a sequel to Kevin Hill County's work..." The old man was still obsessed with Kevin Hill's Bat Billy comic until his death.
Many plots point to the love of comics; not to mention the small children who are keen on comics everywhere in the whole work. Painting exists across the times and across language and cultural barriers, and the stories that exist by relying on pictures can break the cultural shackles and infect people belonging to various nationalities around the world.
In fact, from the prologue of the work, it is already clear that "comics are the real theme". At the beginning of "Billy the Bat", when the colorful american comic style story is confused by the reader, the color suddenly fades, the characters gradually become sloppy, become line drafts, and turn the page into the original manuscript of Kevin Yama's men, the tone of the "meta-narrative" of this work has been laid down:
This is a manga drawn for manga.
"If I had the talent to draw..."
"Billy the Bat" is full of expressions of the desires of cartoonists to create and the dilemmas they encounter when creating. Therefore, people with creative experience (or a good understanding of the creative process itself) and no creative experience will have a completely different look and feel; the depth of creative experience will also greatly affect the intensity of resonance with the work. Many of the plots in "Billy the Bat" can be said to be out-and-out "bootlegs" - "comic creators" have never received such a high status in the comic book itself; comics have become a key hub for saving the world and transmitting hope in this work.
Laiqi Kiyoshi, who acted as a "villain" in the early stages of the plot, and his life was so unfortunate that he wanted to let the whole world bury him, the most depressed thing was that he did not have the talent to paint. When the bat on the moon tells him, "I can let you re-experience the life you want," the ideal life that Kiyoshi has built in his mind is the life of a manga artist. In the life he expected, he was often surrounded by his friends in his childhood, and they loved his paintings very much; his family did not die in the earthquake, nor was he excluded by the crowd because of political factors; his parents were very supportive of his creative path, and his debut works were also very smooth, and he was satisfied to sign for readers at the signing party...
In another episode, the fake Chuck Karkin asks Hitler, if you could turn back the clock, when would you most like to go back and change things? Hitler looked at his painting and said with a sad face that if I could make people come back again, I wish I had passed the entrance exam to the Academy of Fine Arts. A towering dictator whose greatest desire in his heart is in the field of painting; all the power and fame in his hands seem to be inferior to the joy of the recognition of that piece of paper (the historical Adolf Hitler did have artistic ambitions, and could not turn from art to politics later). This material is used just right here, and it's handled well—after this brief "outpouring of affection," Hitler immediately returns to normalcy, and the next two "wishes" are all about political ambitions, which makes that artistic aspiration seem more real).
The status of "creative talent" in this work is almost sacred. Moreover, the bat that appears in front of the eyes of cartoonists to talk to them and tell them about the progress of the "plot" is not only a monitor and manipulator beyond human history, but also its other aspect is the embodiment of "creative talent".
Bat had always been clamoring in Kevin Hill County's ear for him to draw the prophecies of history, but he always stressed to the later painter Kevin Goodman: "You came up with the story yourself." "Since the main point of view of the comic changed from Kevin Hill Hill to Kevin Goodman, the suspense elements of the early stage were negated little by little in the later stages, and the source of inspiration for the bat artists was from the beginning of the external indoctrination by the bat, and finally to the person himself. Timmy Sanada can't see bats, and when he "predicts" what will happen in the world, it is only his imagination as a manga artist, a speculation made after watching many current political shows. After discovering this truth about Timmy, Kevin Goodman began to reflect and doubt himself—was the story that came to his mind his imagination as a cartoonist, or was it really the bat that told him?
Such suspicions are growing. When Kevin Goodman finally found Kevin Hill County, who had become an old man, the latter confirmed his suspicions. Kevin Hill told him that when he went to Dallas, he only happened to go there to get materials; it was also a coincidence that he saved the young Kevin at the scene of the Kennedy assassination, and there was no "bat guidance".
This statement contradicts the previous bat's claim to Oswald that "I am the manager and I am the guide of human history." The "bat" outside the world has been erased, which may make many viewers feel confused: is it the bat that tells the painter the plot? Do bats that manipulate history exist?
Here, the author boldly plays a handful of metaphysics and does not give a clear answer of one-or-no choice. Black bats, white bats, and moon bats finally simulate the "Trinity" of Christian theology. Bats are not only human ambitions, but also human humility, but also man's ability to create the world and make up stories; it is both the alien will that drives and manipulates human history, the restorer of the cosmic order, and the high-dimensional existence beyond the world.
"Can you see bats?" If bats represent a mysterious force of history, then "seeing bats" actually means an insight into the world and history, which is also the core of creative talent. The so-called "truth of the world" is thus linked to "human activity" at the creative level.
It is not easy to turn these very abstract ideas into plots to be active on the picture; obscurity becomes an inevitable thing. It is no wonder that although it is also a work that depicts the creative process and the animation/manga industry, it has not become a work that is as popular and popular as "Dream Eater", "White Box" and so on ("Bat Billy" was even published a few months earlier than the similar theme of "Dream Eater"), and the discussion of it is more limited to a core circle.
The reason why Billy the Bat is ambitious is because it is trying to explore the ontological, almost metaphysical content. If "Dream Eater" tells the story of how two newcomers overcome various specific difficulties to become mature cartoonists, and is a youthful inspirational work, "Bat Billy" expresses more like a comic book author's "midlife crisis" - it borrows the mouth of bat painters to constantly reflect on the concept and original intention of creating comics: "Why should I draw comics?" "After all, what exactly is a comic?" "What's the point of comics, and what can it do?" "I was stuck in a bottleneck and couldn't draw... What should I do at this time? ”
To be continued...
Text: Wang Huiyuan