Among the Japanese cartoonists in the 1970s and 1980s, there are two female cartoonists who are most worth mentioning. One is Ikeda Riyoko who created "Versailles Rose", and the other is the authors of " Moment Apartment ", "Inuyasha", " Fushiki Boy ", and "Ranma 1/2".
Ikeda Riyoko may not be familiar with her work, because her work was created in the 1970s. Although the plot of "The Rose of Versailles" was rated as one of the three masterpieces of the 1970s in Japan, her feminine style is not aimed at readers of all ages.
, and everyone must be familiar with Rumiko Takahashi. What you remember is usually her relaxed and humorous and funny style works, but in fact, Rumiko Takahashi's script creation ability is not ordinary. She once graduated from drama painting master Koike Kazuo Drama Village School, and is a classmate with Ashifu Tanaka, the author of "Military Rooster", and is the senior sister of Tetsuo Harahara's author of "Bei Dou Shenquan".
, let’s study the comic "Mermaid Forest" created by Takahashi Rumiko in 1984.
and listen to the story.
1. The imprisoned woman
According to legend, as long as you eat the meat of a mermaid, you can get an immortal body.
There is such a village where the elderly in the village live forever, and the elderly serve a 15-year-old girl. One day, a young man passed by here. The elderly thought that the young man was exploring their secret of immortality and killed him.
The young man strangely resurrected from the dead. Then, he kidnapped the 15-year-old girl, and the old man chased her with a heartbroken look. It turns out that the people in this village are all mermaids, with immortal bodies, and young people who have resurrected from the dead have also eaten mermaid meat.
His purpose in searching for mermaids was to restore the human body, because he would never die, but his wife died in the end, and he was tired of this kind of life.
The 15-year-old girl in the mermaid village has always been regarded as a treasure by the elderly. People can live forever after eating mermaid meat, while mermaids must eat human meat if they want to restore their youth.
If you eat ordinary humans, you will grow old every few decades, so they found the 15-year-old girl and let her eat mermaid meat, become immortal, and finally become their delicious food.
Finally, the young man rescued the girl, the old man from the Mermaid Village turned into an ugly mermaid because he didn't eat the girl. A 15-year-old girl had a discussion about life with a young man who had lived 500 years old. The young man who believed that life was boring decided to continue living with the girl until the day of impatientness.
2. The end of the pirates
0 The pirates in the Pirate Village make a living by collecting tolls from passing merchant ships. The pirates accidentally learned the legend of mermaids and immortality. Coincidentally, an immortal young man who had eaten mermaid meat was discovered by the pirates.
The pirates used tricks to make a girl's father seriously ill. After the girl begged, the young man took the girl to sea to find mermaid meat. After finding it, he was beaten up by the pirates.
The pirate who gets mermaid meat tastes big, and there is also the pirate boss’s wife. Although mermaids can make people immortal, more people will mutate into ugly monsters.
None of the pirates who ate mermaid meat were spared and all turned into ugly half mermaids, while the wife of Yuzhai was safe and sound. It turned out that she was a mermaid herself. Because she had been pregnant for three years and needed to eat mermaid meat to supplement nutrition, she had to temporarily surrender and use the pirates.
The girl and the young man finally became a husband and wife. However, since the mermaids often eat mermaid meat, will the human girl and the young man who have eaten mermaid meat eventually turn against each other?
3. Sister and sister
The young and girl who had eaten mermaid meat before broke into an old house where an old woman and a young girl lived. When I learned that the girl was an immortal who had eaten a mermaid, the girl locked up.
The girl drank mermaid blood when she was young. Although she became an immortal body, part of her body turned into an ugly mermaid. She grabbed the girl in order to exchange her deformed body with the girl.
The old lady's family is a doctor's family. The family owns a box for mermaids. The old lady told the young man that when she was young, she had a sister. Because she was seriously ill, she decided to drink mermaid blood for her sister. The young girl who appeared before was the sister who drank mermaid blood.
However, my sister has another version in her mouth. My sister has heard of the legend of mermaids and wants to stay young forever and stare at the mermaid meat at home. I heard that mermaid meat is highly poisonous. In order to verify, she tricked her sister into drinking mermaid blood. Seeing the huge changes in my sister, my sister gave up on the idea of eating mermaid meat, lived an ordinary life, gave birth to children and grow old.
Because she drank mermaid blood, her sister was locked in a dungeon without seeing the light of the sky for 50 years. She found the mermaid meat for revenge and let her sister eat it. Her sister was frightened and was actually scared to death.
If you can live forever, but you can only spend it in a dark dungeon, what's the point?
At the end of the story, a couple who are immortal, the boy asked the girl, what if she disappeared? The girl answered naively, I will keep searching.
Interpretation of "The Legend of Mermaid"
Takahashi Rumiko created "The Legend of Mermaid" in the 1980s. It was the end of Japanese economy still in the continuous rapid development. The medical and economic development brought about aggravation of the problem of aging.
When the elderly were young, they worked overtime day and night like ants, but when they were old, they had to face the inflation crisis and the scenery they missed when they were young.
Although mermaid meat can live forever, it can also cause death. Moreover, those who have eaten it must remain young and will continue to eat it. It is hard to say whether those who have eaten mermaid meat are happier or more painful than ordinary people.
In this world, there are no secret recipes and medicines. If you want to get them, you have to pay the same price and risk.
Humans want to become immortal mermaids, but they don’t know that mermaids also envy the life of normal people, right?
Who knows?
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