Welcome to the very last Book Club (and Random Manga Roulette) of 2022!
Today, we'll be taking a look at a short, one volume title: Bomba! (1970) by the grandfather of manga himself, Osamu Tezuka. Now, a few disclaimers here: this is the first of Tezuka's manga I've read. I'm a collector, so I read what I buy and stay away from digital manga (generally) because I don't like reading electronically. It's only recently that a lot of Tezuka's works are getting brought over here, so while it sucks it's taken this long for me to get to it, it makes sense. But for someone who reads as much manga as me, it's about time I give one of Tezuka's titles a try, and I'm glad it was this one.
Second disclaimer: as a special post for the end of the year, I'll be talking about this one in a little more depth than usual, so spoilers from hereon out.
With that out of the way, let us establish: What is Bomba! ?
Bomba! is a story of a middleschooler -- Testu. Thoroughly abused at home and by the other adults in his life, he has come to fall in love with his teacher, Miss Mizushima, because she is the only person who treats him with kindness and respect.
Testu, however, is troubled by something else: in times of isolation, often when it's dark, he hears the distant clopping of hooves getting nearer and nearer...
The manga opens with this, framed by distinctly angled dynamic panels that play with the contrast of whites and blacks to depict a train station shrouded in darkness.
Tezuka, with only a few pages, has displayed some incredible craftsmanship in the world of early manga. It goes without saying that this art style is outdated today, and what we can construe as "better" art exists in abundance, but it's pioneers like Osamu Tezuka that laid the groundwork for the industry as it is now. I was distinctly moved by many of the pages of this manga, because if there's one thing I revere in this world, it's skillfull artistic craftsmanship. In comparison to another trailblazer, Leiji Matsumoto, (whose four volume space opera, Queen Emeraldas, I have reviewed here) I noticed that Tezuka's art and story has more structure, breadth, logic, and an acutely nuanced scene transition, in contrast the vision, yes -- but also lack of depth -- I found within Matsumoto's work.
We should talk more about the narrative, though.
Testu eventually comes to realize that this spectral stalker is a horse, with disturbingly human eyes:
(The horse also peeks in on him while he's using the toilet, which is fittingly intrusive to the character and the reader)
This human-like symmetry on something like a horse is a perfect utilization of the uncanny valley effect. Tezuka queues us in with multiple avenues of storytelling that there is something very wrong with this horse.
From here, I'll give you a bit of a quicker rundown. As it turns out, Tetsu's hatred for someone, and wishing unto them death, compels the horse to seek and destroy that person. As I've seen put in a review on the (awful) website MyAnimeList: "It's like Death Note, with a horse instead of a notebook." In more ways than one, this is an apt comparison! Bomba! predates Death Note by over thirty years, so I wouldn't be surprised if a work like this from such an influential artist was direct inspiration to the Shonen Jump series.
I'll come back to the Death Note idea in a moment.
For now, understand that Testu is humiliated at nearly every turn before the second act of the story. To quote:
I made an observation about this page while reading; Tetsu's feelings toward Miss Mizushima are quite Freudian, due to him comparing romantic feelings to those of motherhood. We will also come back to this.
After the horse kills a particularly abusive teacher whom Tetsu wished would die, we are catapulted into a dark world where Tetsu's spite doubles into a vengeful, self-important life-long escapade wherein everyone who dare cross him dies beneath the hooves of Bomba, implied to be the ghost of a war horse his father took care of in WWII. Its rider, a general in charge of Tetsu's father's battalion, would abuse and mistreat the man -- to the point of making him eat Bomba's feces -- until one day he wished for the horse to kill the general. The horse did, but then died in gunfire the man could have saved him from. Instead, he chose to free a woman from wartime prostitution, and she became Tetsu's mother.
There's a lot to unpack here about the idea of revenge, mistakes, and "love," if we can call it that. First, we have to start at the most glaring symbol: the white horse.
Wikipedia: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
In classical, Biblical, and moreover Western symbolism, a white horse is often the personification of death itself: and if not, then at least the steed upon which death rides. I think Bomba, as an entity in the story, has a lot to do with the idea of karmic spite, but it's no doubt that any white horse that brings death is definitely an allusion to this broader symbolism.
A few years into the story, Tetsu sends Bomba after his mother and father, who had boarded a bus for a trip. Bomba appears as a ghostly giant and knocks the bus off a cliff, killing them, but also dozens of innocent people.
While Bomba's first victim was a child abuser and perpetrator of sexual harassment, and therefore, not innocent, he was but one victim of the horse; but now, the horse -- or, I think, Tetsu's hatred -- has killed a group of bystanders who had nothing to do with his spite.
This continues to escalate, which eventually spirals into a nationwide panic over a "ghostly white horse." Real mass-hysteria style. Bring in that Death Note comparison again, and I think it's even more fitting when we see the effect the "Kira" phenomenon had on the world in the story. As it happens, the idea that people are now investigating this phenomenon also links components of the story now to Freud's psychology, which is the other point I said we'd come back to! That's a double win for my reading comprehension! Yay!
But does this add another piece to the puzzle?
"A dream of riding a horse, for example, represents sexual desire."
Integral to both Tetsu and his father's stories, is the "love" they share for someone else. Respectively, of course, Miss Mizushima, and Tetsu's mother. While I don't know the exact details to make any of these connections super coherent, I do think Bomba utilizes this symbolism too, as a motivation for Tetsu's rage happens to be his love for Miss Mizushima. Also, it's only after his father runs off with his mother does Bomba materialize as a revenant. I might be reaching, though, but either way I find all of these ideas interesting, because they're clearly adjacent to one another, so I know Tezuka picked them on purpose.
But ahh, I can't quite connect the dots. Looks like a loss for my reading comprehension, actually. Boo!
Anywho:
The most important element of the story is Miss Mizushima's death, which devastates Tetsu. Furthermore, what he perceives to be lies about her having seven suitors perpetuated in newspapers compound his insanity, to the point of outing himself as the master of Bomba publicly.
But he's in for a rude awakening.
Bomba, of course, now comes after him. When we see remember that Bomba can only go after people he hates, the end of his pipe dream of being with Miss Mizushima -- and the destruction of her reputation -- manifests in Tetsu as self loathing, and he laments how much of a fool he was. It's all kinda sad to me, because Tetsu's whole life is framed as nothing but domestic abuse and a crush on a woman he'd never have. Furthermore, he'd caused much death and destruction all from the resulting spite, which doubles down on this strangulation of all hope from the tone.
Up until this point, I found Bomba an extremely compelling manga. Unfortunately, I didn't like the ending, really, and I found it a bit of a cop out. I know I've spoiled quite a bit already, but I'll actually leave the ending itself out of the argument in case there are those of you who want to give it a try. I see what Tezuka was going for thematically, so it DOES make narrative sense, but I'm not a fan. However, that doesn't mean you won't be. Maybe let me know what you think!
Despite my thoughts on the conclusion, I do think Bomba! was a very solid read. After having read so much modern manga, going back to a lot of where it began, or where influential pieces were mostly made, is a treat, a challenge, and very informative.
Thank you for reading the last Book Club of 2022!! I'm planning an update post soon to catch you guys up on where I'm at, and what's next. Stay tuned!
