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A review by jn0el
Barefoot Gen Volume 2: The Day After by Keiji Nakazawa
4.0
From the cover: 'Barefoot Gen is the powerful, tragic, and autobiographical story of the bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath, seen through the eyes of the artist as a young boy growing up in Japan... Barefoot Gen serves as a reminder of the suffering war brings to innocent people.'
Barefoot Gen is a manga (Japanese graphic novel), and as such, has the power to illustrate ideas immediately. For me, the emotional effect is often stomach turning, as I see maggots crawling on the still-living and a mother begging anyone to breastfeed her dying baby because she too is starving. This series has many parallels to our current time, and while it is horrifying, it is real.
The Day After, follows Gen, his mother Kimie, and his baby sister as they try to survive in the rubble of Hiroshima in the week after the bomb was dropped. Gen is sent to find rice, a difficult task since almost anything flammable was destroyed in the fires that ravaged the city, and in the process, he meets other suffering folks: some willing to help, some in need of his help, and some so blinded by their own fear, a bag of rice is too much to spare.
Barefoot Gen is a manga (Japanese graphic novel), and as such, has the power to illustrate ideas immediately. For me, the emotional effect is often stomach turning, as I see maggots crawling on the still-living and a mother begging anyone to breastfeed her dying baby because she too is starving. This series has many parallels to our current time, and while it is horrifying, it is real.
The Day After, follows Gen, his mother Kimie, and his baby sister as they try to survive in the rubble of Hiroshima in the week after the bomb was dropped. Gen is sent to find rice, a difficult task since almost anything flammable was destroyed in the fires that ravaged the city, and in the process, he meets other suffering folks: some willing to help, some in need of his help, and some so blinded by their own fear, a bag of rice is too much to spare.