Powerful Images of Pika-don

I have read historical fiction and purely historical, data-filled accounts about the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All accounts of the bombing bring forth terrible visions, but seeing a graphic novel of the events is a completely new experience. Adam mentioned how the graphic novel can disarm a reader, because it’s seemingly new and innocent way to tell a story. I read Pika-don without expectations for the path of the story. It disarmed me in the sense that I was not expecting such a powerful message from this medium. It’s true that in the form of a comic, the story seems to ask nothing of you as a reader- it is not trying to convince you of anything except that here is a terrible true story of human suffering. Fox Bunny Funny was certainly powerful in its own way, but Pika-don was special as our first example of a story with average human characters. The phrase “average human characters” also reminds me of an interesting element of the nonfiction graphic novel. Though these novels all tell true human stories, devoid of superheroes in capes or superhuman traits, they seem to enter the fantasy genre. The nonfiction graphic novel emphasizes the elements of an individual person’s life, and become more powerful through illustration. Pika-don is an example of one human story that seems fantastical and too amazing to be true. Thus Tsutomu is the superhero, living through atom bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and his story is a powerful example of truth being stranger than fiction.

The sparse use of color brings a feeling of desolation to the pages of the novel, mimicking the after-effects of the bombs. Black and white could have easily been the only two tones, but the addition of the off-yellow color adds the feeling of earth being blasted through the novel, as if flying dirt has stained the pages. In fact, Tsutomu describes some immediate effects of the bomb on page 51 as, “A dark yellow dust begins to fall.” Perhaps this dark yellow dust is the color that works alongside black and white to tell Tsutomu’s story.

Some illustrations at first seemed unintentionally basic to me, though a pattern exists between the scenes of action and non-action. During times of dialogue or otherwise calm scenes of the novel, the illustrations are fairly detailed and carefully drawn. However during the scenes when the atom bombs hit, like the one that starts on page 42, the illustrations become rougher and more hectic. Page 42 and page 43 contain simply the first blast, which contains mostly white. These pages with so much negative space are some of the most powerful in the novel, simply for the reason that they do not contain illustrations. Nothingness on the page as an intensely powerful scene is a unique feature to the graphic novel. Authors can write direct, minimalist sentences to communicate emptiness or extreme emotion on a page, but they do not have the option to leave the page almost completely blank and expect the reader to understand the message. Graphic novelists have this option, and Pika-don exemplifies how such negative space can portray a powerful scene. After the explosion of the bomb, the destruction of the land and the people is shown. The frames become jumbled and the illustrations are rougher, communicating absolute disorder and chaos. People simply become human figures with less detail than in previous illustrations. This shows that many people are simply walking dead, but also that the bomb has turned a previously vivacious and diverse landscape into a desert of sameness, full of indistinguishable figures. Verbal descriptions of the devastation are powerful by themselves, like “I walk past piles of red and black flesh,” and “Some people are black- like charcoal.” The illustrations, though, forced me to confront the unpleasant images described. While some readers can read over words without visualizing the images presented, the graphic novel forces images on the audience. Pictures of charcoal skeletons, dead bodies floating in a river, and melted bodies cannot be ignored. Nor can they be easily put of one’s mind. Another advantage of the graphic novel is that it can put a very particular image into the reader’s mind, simply because it can be illustrated instead of described with words. Because the medium of the graphic novel can disarm readers with its seeming innocence, powerful images of human suffering are all the more stark and effective. And with fewer words than pictures, interpretation of the pictures becomes paramount. Pika-don sends a powerful message against the forces of utmost destruction because of the powerful images.