London, Apr 25, 2007 / 11:48 am (CNA).- In anticipation of the World Day of Prayer for Vocations – which the Church celebrates this coming Sunday, the 29th of April, the National Office for Vocation of the Bishops Conference of England and Wales has launched a new vocations program which utilizes Japanese-style "manga" illustrations.
“We have chosen the Manga cartoons for the 2007 campaign, because we hope it will appeal to young people under twenty as well as people in their thirties,” Fr. Paul Embery, Director of the National Office for Vocation, explained to the Italian Religious Service.
“Many of today’s priests and religious people say they first thought of their callings at the age of ten, sometimes even earlier.”
A poster with the cartoons showing the future priests and religious of England and Wales has been distributed in nearly five thousand Catholic churches, schools, and places of prayer around the country a dedicated website will be launched next Sunday (www.calledtoday.com).
The website tells the life of the five real characters with a real story to tell, experiences that will be told live by a priest, two nuns, a monk and a lay man who devoted his life to the Church.
Well I am not expert on Manga, though I was once homeported in Yokosuka. But their characters really don’t have that Manga feel to them – for one the eyes are too normal. Though I am glad the eyes are not the size of the ones on the stained glass windows in an otherwise beautiful church in downtown Akron.
Though it is somehow fitting that Manga be used to promote vocations, just as long as they don’t say that Jesus is the God-Manga.
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Hmmmm….I would think Trinity Blood would be more useful in promoting vocations: a futuristic, post-Apocalyptic Vatican, fighting Rosicrucian vampires (the “Contra Mundi”) who want to destroy the world. Their main fighter: Abel Nightroad, a human being thousands of years old and enhanced with nanotechnology…and a Catholic priest.
I love anime/manga.
I’m waiting for someone to say “True God and true manga,” myself.
-J.
Manga and Catholicism DO seem to go together, though why they do is difficult to explain.
Trinity Blood has such beautiful artwork, and you gotta love Anderson and his blessed knives in Hellsing, but it typically has little to do with actual Catholicism– more so the trappings of.
Fullmetal Alchemist, though, has some genuinely Christian themes in a Tolkienian “applicability” kind of way.
I really want to see explicitly Catholic manga/anime. Now that would be something!! I have a few story ideas myself ^^
Yes, stories we have aplenty, but unfortunately, making comics these days requires state-of-the-art graphic workstations and color printing all of which is prohibitively expensive unless you have something unbelievably likable that would sell like hot cakes across the country.
As for why the two go together, I think it would have to be how the simplicity of the drawing style yields a clean yet beautiful image. Though there are many manga which reject the clean-line aesthetic of manga, simplicity is a key aspect of anything Japanese: from architecture to poetry. The cleanliness that results gives the overall work an organic unity that comes apart when you muck things up with detail.
If you picture sin as an unnecessary addition to the picture of life, you begin to see the correlation. Sin obstructs the flow of life just as unnecessary detail obstructs the flow of the eyes.
Jeff, large eyes are perfectly fine. Or can be. Think icons.
Though I do see a difference, Maria, between large, round, puppy-dog eyes that evoke images of “cuteness” and the almond-shaped, heavy-lidded eyes of Eastern Christian icons.
All your Catholicism are belong to Pope.
Tolkien1138: I just started watching FMA, under the recommendation of my roommate (who also introduced me to Trinity Blood) and it’s DISTURBING at times (poor Nina!) but really good. The theological aspects are definately interesting.
Years ago, I already did start a catholic manga based on the book of genesis. See my website for details.
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