Penguin Books has partnered with Emotional Content to publish Gandhi: A Manga Biography. Manga artist Kazuki Ebine goes over the life of Mahatma Gandhi, following him from a shy young boy, through his time studying law in England and then working for equality in South Africa, and finally the many years in India using nonviolent resistance to battle the British Raj.
Gandhi: A Manga Biography from Emotional Content and Penguin Books
Ebine tells Gandhi's biography in snapshots. This is a problem for a couple of reasons, first being that it's difficult to judge the passage of time. Gandhi's time spent studying in England takes place over a few pages, and before you can absorb the importance of it he's back in India. Without the little boxes letting us know the year and Gandhi's age, I wouldn't have said a year had passed, let alone four.
This snapshot style also prevents the important people in Gandhi's life from making a lasting impression, such as Gandhi's mother. We see her say a few motherly things to Gandhi, and when he returns from England she's dead. We aren't given a good sense of how close they are as mother and child, so Gandhi's calm acceptance of her death falls flat.
Even the tense moments feel merely glossed over, like the Hindu/Muslim relations. We realize that things are not good between these people, but a longer, deeper look at the situation could have brought a better understanding of Gandhi's power when he brings these people together.
Kazuki Ebine's Manga Art
Character designs are cleanly drawn, and Ebine's distinctness from one person to the next helped me keep track of people, even when their names escaped me. The British are not portrayed in the kindest light, but neither are they shown as sneering men in the shadows like the Americans in the Che Guevara manga biography. And the expressions that Ebine gives their faces does a lot to bridge the emotional gap from reader to story that the dialogue and narration leaves wide open. A downside to the art comes in the backgrounds, which are particularly bland. Characters often converse in empty spaces, or talk around generic looking buildings and offices.
Gandhi: A Manga Biography by Kazuki Ebine
Unfortunately the manga simply moves too quickly, not only making it hard to see the timeline of events, but nearly impossible to see how a shy boy became such an important, vocal speaker for independence and peace. The end result is a story that feels shallow and, ultimately, dull. For readers who are interested in learning about Gandhi Kazuki Ebine's manga biography is a good overview, but otherwise this briskly paced manga just doesn't get the job done.
Gandhi: A Manga Biography gets 2/5.
- ISBN: 9780143120247
- MSRP: $15.00 US
- Release Date: September 27, 2011
- Penguin Books
- 192 pages
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