Three months ago Yoshihiro Togashi broke the internet. Togashi, a Japanese writer, has been suffering in recent years from terrible pain in his back resulting from hard work in the studio over the years. After a long break from writing, he decided to open his first Twitter account and announce: “I’m back.” His audience cheered. In an unprecedented way, within 24 hours he was followed by a million people. Not even a hundred days have passed, and the number of followers has already risen to three million. More than Netanyahu, Bennett and Lapid combined. Each of his tweets receives at least one hundred and fifty thousand likes, at their peak they exceed half a million. The two series of books he wrote sold over 130 million copies, and were adapted into successful television series. Yoshihiro Togashi is one of the most popular writers in the world, and you probably don’t know him. The reason for this is simple, perhaps even infuriating. Togashi is a comic creator.
Unfortunately, if there is a medium less appreciated among lovers of high art than American comics, it is manga, the Japanese comic book. Even if few films, such as Studio Ghibli films (“The Wonderful Journey”, “Princess Mononoke” and others) or the cyberpunk style classics “Akira” and “The Ghost in the Shell” still receive the attention of critics, then the anime itself, the Japanese animated series based on the manga , are immensely popular in the world and are not appreciated by the old cultural community. Major cultural newspapers in the world do not bother to criticize Japanese animated series, they are not nominated for conventional awards.
In the article “I said Marvel movies are not cinema, let me explain” published by Martin Scorsese in the New York Times, he wrote: “Cinema for me and for my generation is an aesthetic, emotional and spiritual revelation. Cinema is about characters, the paradoxical complexity of human beings, the way they hurt Each other, love each other, and suddenly face themselves. Marvel movies are not art, because they don’t say anything significant about human nature.” Scorsese of course did not speak for himself. He took the trouble to state several times in the article that he speaks on behalf of his contemporaries, the community of “filmmakers” that he represents.
In many ways, anime is the Japanese equivalent of Marvel movies. Like the Marvel movies, anime are based on comics, and like the Marvel movies, anime don’t just come to tell a story, they first and foremost come to build a mythology. While the filmmakers that Scorsese mentions as a miracle in his article, like Bergman, deal with the intricacies of the human soul, converge inwards, anime works laterally. These are works that include hundreds, and sometimes thousands of figures. For the worlds they create they create extensive history, genealogy, legality and geography. In many cases, Scorsese’s claim is indeed true. Anime is so busy creating characters and building a world that they often forget – or maybe just choose not to – say anything meaningful about humans. Nevertheless, Yoshihiro Togashi is a virtuous individual. It is not for nothing that he is so widely popular. He is an unusual storyteller in his qualities, effectively jumping between the territory of Stan Lee, and the territory of Marcel Frost.
In 2011 “Hunter x Hunter”, Togashi’s magnum opus, was adapted into an animated series. On IMDB, the democratic internet movie and series database, “Hunter” is ranked 35th in the list of the best series ever, right between “Seinfeld” and “True Detective”, and maybe you can (mostly jokingly, but still) define it as a combination of the two
In the first part of the story, John Freex is a 13-year-old boy who goes on a journey to find his father. As part of the journey, he tries to obtain the coveted title “Hunter”, an international status given to strong fighters and grants them many international rights. We quickly learn the rules of the game. In “Hunter”, conflicts are solved with the help of reason rather than with the help of violence and the heroes are not hunchbacks who solve everything with the help of will alone. As in life, in “Hunter” the plan always goes wrong, and the characters are forced to improvise their way out. In “Hunter”, kind characters die left and right, and sadists continue to exist unhindered. The battles scar the characters, and in many moments we see strong people in a total mental collapse, a step from absolute madness.
In Togashi’s work, as in most anime, everything is exaggerated. It starts with huge, expressive eyes, and continues with the obvious emotions the characters feel at every moment. The apparent simplicity, the grotesque, is a barrier to entry into the field for many, who feel that anime is childish because of the exaggerated appearance. I offer a different interpretation. Togashi’s work is so delightful precisely because it is childish, precisely because it is extreme. Like a soccer broadcaster shouting “goal”, like the last chorus in a rock ballad, anime allows us to reach emotional release. In a world that distances us from the inner child in us, there is great value in works that connect us back to him. Togashi manages to touch exactly these pure points. However, and this is his greatness, he also succeeds in creating an interesting social political allegory, and instilling in his mostly older fan base, despite all the limitations of the genre, a deep sense of truth.