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zawa113



Joined: 19 Jan 2008
Posts: 7357
PostPosted: Wed Jul 15, 2015 10:10 pm Reply with quote
You've still got about 16 hours left to pledge for Tezuka's Storm Fairy! Not only that, but the goals for the Unico reprint (add $40 to your pledge) and Crime & Punishment (add $18 to your pledge) have been reached! And a lot of the previous books are also available for add-on. And you can get most all of the digital books as add-on too. They say they plan to do all sales via Akadot from now on btw. So you can basically go in and get what you want and not worry as stretch goals have been reached!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/digitalmanga/publish-tezukas-storm-fairy-and-reprint-unico
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lem



Joined: 29 Sep 2007
Posts: 734
Location: Land of trying to figure sht out
PostPosted: Wed Aug 12, 2015 2:34 pm Reply with quote
As reported previously here.

KICKSTARTER wrote:
About this project

Our goal is to print 4000 copies of a new, hardcover edition of Barefoot Gen, and distribute them to as many schools and libraries as possible.

This classic manga memoir about the bombing of Hiroshima should be read far and wide.



Barefoot Gen for Schools and Libraries
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lem



Joined: 29 Sep 2007
Posts: 734
Location: Land of trying to figure sht out
PostPosted: Tue Sep 08, 2015 3:37 pm Reply with quote
This "update" is actually "A Note From The Author" (for those that haven't already read the ten volume paperback release it's in Volumes 1, 2, 3 & 4)

KICKSTARTER wrote:

Update #9

Sep 8 2015

The Birth of Barefoot Gen

by Keiji Nakazawa (1939–2012)

The atomic bomb exploded 600 meters above my hometown of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 at 8:15 a.m. I was a little over a kilometer away from the epicenter, standing at the back gate of Kanzaki Primary School, when I was hit by a terrible blast of wind and searing heat. I was six years old. I owe my life to the school’s concrete wall. If I hadn’t been standing in its shadow, I would have been burned to death instantly by the 5,000-degree heat flash. Instead, I found myself in a living hell, the details of which remain etched in my brain as if it happened yesterday.

My mother, Kimiyo, was eight months pregnant. She was on the second floor balcony of our house, had just finished hanging up the wash to dry, and was turning to go back inside when the bomb exploded. The blast blew the entire balcony, with my mother on it, into the alley behind our house. Miraculously, my mother survived without a scratch.

The blast blew our house flat. The second floor collapsed onto the first, trapping my father, my sister Eiko, and my brother Susumu under it. My brother had been sitting in the front doorway, playing with a toy ship. His head was caught under the rafter over the doorway. He frantically kicked his legs and cried out for my mother. My father, trapped inside the house, begged my mother to do something. My sister had been crushed by a rafter and killed instantly.

My mother frantically tried to lift the rafters off them, but she wasn’t strong enough to do it by herself. She begged passersby to stop and help, but nobody would. In that atomic hell, people could only think of their own survival; they had no time for anyone else. My mother tried everything she could, but to no avail. Finally, in despair, she sat down in the doorway, clutching my crying brother and helplessly pushing at the rafter that was crushing him.

The fires that followed the blast soon reached our house. It was quickly enveloped in flame. My brother yelled that he was burning; my father kept begging my mother to get some help. My mother, half-mad with grief and desperation, sobbed that she would stay and die with them. But our next-door neighbor found my mother just in time and dragged her away.

For the rest of her days, my mother never forgot the sound of the voices of her husband and son, crying out for her to save them. The shock sent my mother into labor, and she gave birth to a daughter by the side of the road that day. She named the baby Tomoko. But Tomoko died only four months later- perhaps from malnutrition, perhaps from radiation sickness, we didn’t know.

After escaping the flames near the school, I found my mother there by the roadside with her newborn baby. Together we sat and watched the scenes of hell unfolding around us.

My father had been a painter of lacquer work and traditional-style Japanese painting. He was also a member of an anti-war theater group that performed plays like Gorky’s “The Lower Depths.” Eventually the thought police arrested the entire troupe and put them in the Hiroshima Prefectural Prison. My father was held there for a year and a half. Even when I was a young child, my father constantly told me that Japan had been stupid and reckless to start the war.

Thanks, no doubt, to my father’s influence, I enjoyed drawing from an early age. After the war I began reading Osamu Tezuka’s comic magazine Shin-Takarajima (New Treasure Island); that had a huge impact on me. I began slavishly copying Tezuka’s drawings and turned into a manga maniac. Hiroshima was an empty, burnt-out wasteland and we went hungry every day, but when I drew comics, I was happy and forgot everything else. I vowed early on to become a professional cartoonist when I grew up.

In 1961 I pursued my dream by moving to Tokyo. A year later I published my first cartoon serial in the manga monthly Shonen Gaho (Boys’ Pictorial). From then on I was a full-time cartoonist.

In 1966, after seven years of illness, my mother died in the A-Bomb Victims Hospital in Hiroshima. When I went to the crematorium to collect her ashes, I was shocked. There were no bones left in my mother’s ashes, as there normally are after a cremation. Radioactive cesium from the bomb had eaten away at her bones to the point that they disintegrated. The bomb had even deprived me of my mother’s bones. I was overcome with rage. I vowed that I would never forgive the Japanese militarists who started the war, nor the Americans who had so casually dropped the bomb on us.

I began drawing comics about the A-bomb as a way to avenge my mother. I vented my anger through a “Black” series of six manga published in an adult manga magazine, starting with Kuroi Ame ni Utarete (Struck by Black Rain). Then I moved to Shukan Shonen Jump (Weekly Boys’ Jump), where I began a series of works about the war and the A-bomb starting with Aru Hi Totsuzen ni (One Day, Suddenly). When the monthly edition of Jump launched a series of autobiographical works by its cartoonists, I was asked to lead off with my own story. My 45-page manga autobiography was titled Ore wa Mita (I Saw It). My editor at Jump, Tadasu Nagano, commenting that I must have more to say that wouldn’t fit in 45 pages, urged me to draw a longer series based on my personal experiences. I gratefully began the series right away. That was in 1972.

I named my new story Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen). The young protagonist’s name, Gen, has several meanings in Japanese. It can mean the “root” or “origin” of something, but also “elemental” in the sense of an atomic element, as well as a “source” of vitality and happiness. I envisioned Gen as barefoot, standing firmly atop the burnt-out rubble of Hiroshima, raising his voice against war and nuclear weapons. Gen is my alter ego, and his family is just like my own. The episodes in Barefoot Gen are all based on what really happened to me or to other people in Hiroshima.

Human beings are foolish. Thanks to bigotry, religious fanaticism, and the greed of those who traffic in war, the Earth is never at peace, and the specter of nuclear war is never far away. I hope that Gen’s story conveys to its readers the preciousness of peace and the courage we need to live strongly, yet peacefully. In Barefoot Gen, wheat appears as a symbol of that strength and courage. Wheat pushes its shoots up through the winter frost, only to be trampled again and again. But the trampled wheat sends strong roots into the earth and grows straight and tall. And one day, that wheat bears fruit.

###
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Wed Sep 09, 2015 5:26 am Reply with quote
BTW, since lem brought it up, as of this post, Barefoot Gen has under $8,000 and a little over 36 hours to reach its goal.
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nobahn
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Joined: 14 Dec 2006
Posts: 5120
PostPosted: Wed Sep 09, 2015 12:46 pm Reply with quote
^
That's a damned shame.
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Wed Sep 09, 2015 4:05 pm Reply with quote
nobahn: It did better than I thought it would. Anyway, now it's 26 hours.
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nobahn
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Joined: 14 Dec 2006
Posts: 5120
PostPosted: Wed Sep 09, 2015 5:09 pm Reply with quote
~$4,800 to go; and 25 hours in which to do it. Sad
I'd donate, but I haven't the $$$.
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lem



Joined: 29 Sep 2007
Posts: 734
Location: Land of trying to figure sht out
PostPosted: Wed Sep 09, 2015 6:03 pm Reply with quote
As of this post

564 backers.

$31,604 pledged of $36,000

24 hours to go

One dollar to be a backer. That's all.

One well spent dollar that will have Last Gasp printing 4000 copies of new hardcover editions of Barefoot Gen to distribute to schools and libraries.

Barefoot Gen for Schools and Libraries

KICKSTARTER wrote:


Update #10

With about 24 hours remaining we are so close. Thank you everyone!

Here is a poem by Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet Ran (1902-1963). This poem is sometimes referred to as "Hiroshima Girl" or "Hiroshima Child."

I Come and Stand at Every Door

by Nâzım Hikmet Ran

I come and stand at every door
But no one hears my silent tread
I knock and yet remain unseen
For I am dead, for I am dead.

I'm only seven although I died
In Hiroshima long ago
I'm seven now as I was then
When children die they do not grow.

My hair was scorched by swirling flame
My eyes grew dim, my eyes grew blind
Death came and turned my bones to dust
And that was scattered by the wind.

I need no fruit, I need no rice I
need no sweet, nor even bread
I ask for nothing for myself
For I am dead, for I am dead.

All that I ask is that for peace
You fight today, you fight today
So that the children of this world
May live and grow and laugh and play.




613 backers

16 hours to go

$33,374 pledged of $36,000
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zawa113



Joined: 19 Jan 2008
Posts: 7357
PostPosted: Thu Sep 10, 2015 12:04 pm Reply with quote
Whew, 6 hours to go, but they made it just under the wire! Sitting at $36,252 right now and about 6 hours to go. Still not too late to pledge $5 for a copy of "I Saw It", folks! I'm guessing they're limited to just this Kickstarter, but there's still about 300 copies left.
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st_owly



Joined: 20 May 2008
Posts: 5234
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
PostPosted: Thu Sep 10, 2015 1:01 pm Reply with quote
Just stuck $5 in.
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lem



Joined: 29 Sep 2007
Posts: 734
Location: Land of trying to figure sht out
PostPosted: Thu Sep 10, 2015 7:07 pm Reply with quote
Thanks to the 669 backers Very Happy

$37,276 was pledged of the $36,000 goal

And to the person or group perhaps? that was very generous with the $1600.00 pledge, you're awesome.
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Thu Sep 10, 2015 9:29 pm Reply with quote
A lot of generous folks on this one, considering the depressing nature of the work. Not to mention it's older than what's popular, too. I don't know if you can call yourself a 'fan' of a story so effed up, but it is commendable to see you all support such an underdog of a manga like this one.
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zawa113



Joined: 19 Jan 2008
Posts: 7357
PostPosted: Tue Sep 29, 2015 8:12 pm Reply with quote
And Wonder 3 is live! Stretch Goal is for another Tezuka manga, naturally (The Film Lives On)
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Tue Oct 27, 2015 12:25 am Reply with quote
Now it's 60 +/- hours to go and 16 grand to get to the end. So if you want Wonder 3, get it now.
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F-Man



Joined: 18 Sep 2013
Posts: 111
PostPosted: Thu Oct 29, 2015 3:33 am Reply with quote
GATSU wrote:
Now it's 60 +/- hours to go and 16 grand to get to the end. So if you want Wonder 3, get it now.

10 hours left! Please support.
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