Barefoot Gen Volume Two: The Day After (1973)

Mostly as good as the first, though feels weaker in some vague way. Maybe it's the lack of drama in knowing what's coming. It's tragic and powerful, but I hesitate to call it a good comic--the art feels stiff and the writing is forced in places; the whole comic feels like Nakazawa was holding his material--his personal tragedies--at arm's length while trying to humanize the experience. An important story to have read, but not the most enjoyable read. ( )

Continues the story of Gen from where the first volume left off and deals with the days after the dropping of the bomb. Some of the scenes he encounters are really harrowing and make for difficult reading. But beyond the devastating images this is a tale of courage and fortitude amidst great adversity. An excellent graphic novel and highly recommended. ( )

This, the second installment of Keiji Nakazawa's graphic novel about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, focuses on the days immediately following 6 August 1945 and is truly horrifying. Gen, Nakazawa's young protagonist, his mother, and Gen's newborn sister struggle to find food, water, and shelter in the rubble of Hiroshima. Gen's mother is too malnourished to nurse her infant, so Gen embarks on a journey around the city to find rice. His journey brings him into contact with various survivors, many of whom are already nearly dead from radiation poisoning. These encounters are stomach-churning; the survivors are decaying ghouls, their flesh literally melting off of them. Perfectly healthy soldiers - who have been brought in to help rescue survivors and dispose of corpses - fall ill and die within days of entering Hiroshima, after going bald and vomiting blood.

Nakazawa also does not shy away from presenting more pyschologically-based horrors. Many of the victims of the bombing, most of whom are women and children, stoop to selfish and terrible lows in order to survive, stealing or withholding food from other survivors. Gen encounters old women clinging to the maggot-infested corpses of their loved ones; a woman's baby dies as she nurses it; Gen is attacked by a gang of orphaned boys and beaten unconscious. But there are also flickers of hope that hint at the author's fundamentally positive view of humanity in crisis.

Although this book was extremely grotesque - I had to put it down and walk away a number of times because I was actually nauseated - it is hard to argue that the author is using gore for shock value. And if he is, it is hard to argue that there is something wrong with that. The reality of Hiroshima is shocking and it is quite likely that too many Americans are insulated from that. ( )

Barefoot Gen: The day After by Keiji Nakazawa - a memoir in graphic form. This is an extremely disturbing and intense eye-witness telling of life in Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped. The author was 7 when he and hismother survived the bombing and intense fires and radiation poisoning following the bombing. His story is told as if happened and felt to him so that telling the hallucinations from non-hallucinations is difficult.

Book 2 in the ten part series tells of the days following the bombing of Hiroshima. Not really a "stand alone" work, but still powerful. ( )