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ZETMAN - A Lesson In Teaching Children To Grieve
If you watched the first episode of Masakazu Katsura’s ZETMAN or read the first volume of the manga, there were moments where the main character, Jin Kanzaki, becomes emotionally confused after the death of his grandfather, Gorou Kanzaki. Jin would then be under the care of Akemi Kawakami, a hostess who Jin saved and would later quit her job to support him. There’s one particular scene where Jin and Akemi take a bath together. Akemi asks Jin about his parents. Jin says he only had Gorou, to which Akemi hugs him tenderly and Jin begins to cry over his grandfather’s loss. It makes you think about the importance of teaching children how to grieve.
An article on Psych Central talked about what will happen to children if they are not able to grieve over losses. If left to their own devices, children will become extremely depressed, become angry, and try to avoid loss as a way to cope. While the anime does show Jin’s confusion, the manga went even further. There is a scene in the manga (after the bath scene) where Jin and Akemi get into an argument on Christmas Eve. Akemi buys new clothes for Jin after taking him in, but Jin refuses to wear them because he only wants to wear his grandfather’s clothes. Akemi yells at Jin for not being able to get over Gorou’s death. Jin gets pissed when Akemi mentions Gorou, but she doesn’t mind as she decides to make it her goal to raise him properly due to his past.
Children need a person like Akemi to understand that loss is a part of life. It also doesn’t hurt if the person taking care of them is tough and keeps on fighting despite trauma. Akemi gets her face slashed, but she doesn’t let it get her down. In today’s world, there are kids who overreact to even the smallest and most insignificant type of loss that it’s not even funny.
I don’t know about you guys, but the Jin/Akemi moments really got to me when I first followed ZETMAN. Watching the anime adaptation just rekindled those feelings. It’s moments like these that make me love the vast world of manga. I’m sure you all feel the same way too.
Remember kids, losing something doesn’t mean everything’s all over. For one thing you lose, you still have other things that will make you happy and keep you going.
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ZETMAN PV Trailer: Two Tales of Justice
One of my favorite seinen manga series, Masakazu Katsura’s ZETMAN, comes to life this April! This is probably the only anime I’m looking forward to in the Spring 2012 anime season.
I’ve heard some crazy things about the series ripping off of Tiger & Bunny. It’s actually the other way around. Though I do feel that the ZETMAN anime may have never been green-lighted if it weren’t for the success of Tiger & Bunny. Also, Katsura worked on the character designs for T&B.
What you will enjoy from this series is its gritty look at justice. I would say ZETMAN is a mix of Batman, The Guyver (John of AnimeNation hints on the series possibly being the Guyver for the current generation), and Watchmen.
If you’re interested, I wrote an entry back when I started my blog on one of the main protagonists of ZETMAN, Kouga Amagi. He’s sort of the “Bunny” in the series.
Katsura has amazed me since he’s able to go from doing romantic comedy series (Video Girl Ai, I”S, and DNA²) to something extremely dark. I hope you fans are ready for a frightful world of heroes, monsters, and emotional conflict.
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Kouga Amagi (ZETMAN)
What is justice? How do we justify what is right and what is wrong? One character, Kouga Amagi, from the series “ZETMAN”, is someone who’s trying to figure that out and enforcing his perception of justice onto the world. Kouga is one of the 2 main protagonists of the series. He represents a young man whose idea of justice is shaped from what he watched on television when he was a child.
