Gone… reduced to atoms

Years ago as a college student, I’ve spent a handful of late nights scouring the Internet for content in between school days. I’ve spent these nights viewing the Pink Floyd movie, rewatching Naruto: Shippuden to fill in the gaps I missed while watching Boruto (finally find out what happened to Danzo), and in this case, reading the manga Act-Age, written by Tatsuya Matsuki, illustrated by Shiro Usazaki.

I remember the marketing on the Viz Media site as a story of an orphaned girl named Kei Yonagi who is left to raise her little siblings all by herself. To that end, she seeks the path of an actress and discovers that her natural talent for the art of acting is above and beyond what most would expect, even by method or character acting standards. Essentially, she reminds me a bit of Christian Bale’s dedication to his roles.

Now, as a viewer, my knowledge on the acting industry comes from research and stories, made-up and real. As far as I know, there’s a bunch of moving parts that the average person will likely never see unless they enter the field themselves or something like a scandal pops up, the latter of the two being quite commonplace in Hollywood. I can’t say for sure if similar practices exist in acting in Japan or anywhere else in the world, but I wouldn’t put it past anyone. Every organization thinks they’re normal and everyone else is weird. Maybe one day, I’ll make it a blog post.

In the manga, a lot of the ins and outs of acting as a whole are present, but one of the main selling points was the mental health aspect. Show business is a cutthroat industry to break into and has been that way ever since the Ancient Greeks were pioneering and perfecting theater and stage. It’d be something to be the fly on the wall of the original Antigone play.

Act-Age ran from January 2019 until its untimely cancellation in August 2020. Millions of views across 123 chapters, 107 of them collected into book format, spread over 12 chapters with only 2 of them in English, so basically, if that person is you, depending on how you feel about it you practically have gold or pyrite. But I’m jumping the gun.

This blog post explains that the manga is atypical for a Shonen manga at face value, trading physical punches for mental attacks, but after reading through the article, it makes sense. The term battle tends to get used quite loosely these days. Stretching the definition to any kind of struggle, physical or mental, works well in this case because Kei does undergo her own internal struggles while acting or at home. Mental strength is something that I don’t see get praised in the animanga sphere all that much outside of horror. If anyone has any recommendations that fit this mold, do share. I’d like to expand my horizons.

Memorable characters, challenging story arcs, mental fortitude and an inside look at the acting industry (at least on the Japanese side of things); all of these are a smash hit manga make. Probably even an anime adaptation, but it sadly wasn’t meant to be. The manga got the axe when Matsuki was caught performing a heinous crime on middle school girls, and everything associated with the manga was halted, including a planned stage play. As for Usazaki, she was asked whether she wanted to continue the series without Matsuki and she understandably chose not to. So Shueisha and Viz Media both shelved it for good and any and all mention of the series has been s[metal banging]t-canned for good, save for blogs like this that occasionally dig through the annals and archives to write about the tragedy that was Act-Age.

S[clapperboard]t like this makes it even harder to be a weeb. Explaining away weird plot points and out of context images/scenes is very fun and hilarious. It gets all the more dark when the series in question is in some capacity tainted by something the author did. Normally, I have no problem splitting the art from the artist, but with debates like that–and you may have your own concepts about the matter–I think it depends on the attachment between the art and the artist. I remember reading Joe Bonanno’s autobiography A Man of Honor and in that he claimed to have met the likes of Errol Flynn, praising his acting prowess but chastising him as a person, especially with how he treated women. Similarly, I think the Rolling Stones would be directionless without Mick Jagger, or that John Lennon was something of a lyrical genius, but at best it’s creepy that Jagger’s lovers are much younger than him, and at worst Lennon’s romantic life gets less and less opaque the more you read into it. Or just listen to “Run For Your Life” and pay attention to the lyrics.

Most licensed manga hosting sites have done away with the manga, especially Viz Media, out of respect for victims and survivors. I doubt it exists even on pirate sites, making it a candidate for deliberate lost media, where a work is purposely excluded from anything capable of archiving it. As I said, depending on your stance, if you managed to save the chapters for private viewing you may have gold or pyrite.

Act-Age, during serialization, was proof that it could work and was on its way to become the next big thing. There may be an alternate timeline where Matsuki wasn’t a s[horse neighing]t heel and it’s still in publication with its distinctive writing and art aesthetics, but no one can say for sure where it would be now. Maybe like Undead Unluck, it’d suffer a slump until a later arc revived it, or the anime adaptation saved it. Who knows?

But a light exists at the end of the tunnel for the original team that worked on Act-Age. For instance, Usazaki walked away from the project to work on other stuff, be it magazine covers or her very own one-shot manga. The facts were in the fondue during Act-Age’s run; she could clearly do it. The manga cover up above in this post is her own work. The link to the one-shot is right here. Enjoy!

Back into the fold, baby! For this week’s YouTube recommendation, I recommend One Punch Dad.

https://www.youtube.com/@onexpunchxdad

Run by a current U.S. Army warrant officer, One Punch Dad features TikTok-esque/YouTube Short style skits, a Star Wars parody of all things, and the warrant officer’s opinions on multiple different things from military uniforms the world over to fast food to duty stations and a bunch of other stuff.

While I have recommended channels run by prior service vets, this may be the first recommendation of an active servicemember. If you like the kind of content to be featured, consider subscribing.