I'm really into Lupe at the moment. So much in fact, that I even designed one of my main manga characters off of him. Avery takes a page from many of my former students (mostly black male high school students) but he is supposed to look like Lupe. OK, so given the dearth of realistic black characters in the manga of my youth, i have to disclaim the unnatural look of my black characters... Hopefully I'll be able to throw up some samples so you can judge for yourselves. But yeah, with practice, hopefully...
This week, we got around to talking about the indigenous peoples of Japan. Concepts that we touched on: - “Assimilation” - “History is written by the winners,” and therefore - “Losers are depicted by the winners.” - “ethnic groups” - “minorities” In the first half of the class, we watched a movie – 『もののけ姫』(Princess Mononoke) – which was the most popular movie in Japan until Titanic came out afterwards. It was also the most expensive animated movie to make, up until its release date (2004), at a production cost of about $20 million. I introduced the movie by talking about the setting – Muromachi Period (1336-1573), roughly contemporary with the Ming Dynasty and the arrival of C. Columbus in what is now known as the Caribbean. The main character of the movie is an Emishi prince, from a clan of natives who have continued to resist the Japanese Shogunal government. (Historians say that the Emishi natives were all assimilated by 1300.) The main character of the movie is based on a historica...
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