In February 2015, Tamiki Wakaki, the creator of The World God Only Knows, began serializing a manga that “talks philosophy,” Neji no Hitobito, on MangaONE. This was no easy undertaking. It reminds me of Eisenstein’s grand ambition to make a film of Capital: he tried to recreate in images this world-changing theoretical work, but never completed the project in his lifetime. Wakaki and Eisenstein faced a similar difficulty. Both had to mix a great deal of explanation and reasoning into a story.
In 2008, the German director Alexander Kluge took up Eisenstein’s unfinished ambition with his 540-minute documentary News from Ideological Antiquity: Marx–Eisenstein–Capital. But this was no longer narrative art.1
Reasoning and explanation are usually regarded as alien elements in narrative art. They require logically rigorous language in a formal, written style; narrative, centered on depicting characters’ actions, resists such language. “Stories are non-rational”: if events are to flow smoothly in an epic, novel, play, comic, film, or television drama, the proportion devoted to reasoning must be strictly controlled.
Reasoning and explanation can seem just as alien to any other art form. Robert McKee writes in Story: “[T]he exchange between artist and audience expresses idea directly through the senses and perceptions, intuition and emotion. It requires no mediator, no critic to rationalize the transaction, to replace the ineffable and the sentient with explanation and abstraction. Scholarly acumen sharpens taste and judgment, but we must never mistake criticism for art. Intellectual analysis, however heady, will not nourish the soul.”2
I. Reasoning and Explanation in Narrative Art
Yet storytelling itself is not simply a matter of “senses and perceptions.” Building individual episodes into a complete, internally consistent narrative undoubtedly requires reason and logic. People love to romanticize great artists as possessed by Dionysus, producing their work in a single inspired burst. In practice, creation demands repeated, painstaking refinement. Making a story is really much like assembling a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces fit perfectly together.
Nor is it easy to find a narrative work whose content genuinely excludes reasoning and explanation. A few stream-of-consciousness novels and films may manage it, but they have already moved far from narrative. No story with a definite theme and plot has entirely dispensed with such material.
Divided according to purpose, it falls into roughly three categories:
(1) Serving the Plot
1. Backstory and Background
As noted above, the lengthy, formally written passages needed to develop an argument are precisely what narrative resists: they interrupt its focus on characters’ actions. Yet a play or film can hardly present every event involving its characters onstage or onscreen. Some events in their earlier lives, or in the story’s background, are nevertheless vital to the construction of the whole. These can only be conveyed through narration or the characters’ own accounts. In such cases, narrative itself becomes as dependent on words as reasoning and explanation, and likewise interrupts the characters’ ordinary actions.
In the ancient Greek classic Oedipus the King, the action onstage is confined to the day when Oedipus discovers his crimes and sends himself into exile. His earlier defeat of the Sphinx and unwitting murder of his father are presented through dialogue.3 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, neoclassical dramatic theory went further, establishing the rule of the “three unities”: a play’s onstage action had to follow a single plotline, in one place, within a single day. Skillfully filling in characters’ earlier lives and the story’s background through dialogue gradually became a traditional technique of drama.
There is also a simpler method: add a narrator or storyteller from outside the story. Examples include the scroll at the opening of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the sprite who climbs out of a book in The Snow Queen, and the grandly declaiming narrators who recount ancient legends at the beginning of each film in The Mummy trilogy. This device often appears in stories with elements of fairy tale, legend, or mystery. The storyteller already carries an ancient aura, one that suits the atmosphere of the story itself.4
Of course, this material is still part of the narrative. It is discussed here because its reliance on lengthy verbal description and its effect on narrative rhythm resemble those of reasoning and explanation.
2. Technical Principles
Stories rich in fantasy or science fiction inevitably explain scientific, technological, or mystical principles. These principles are not the story’s main concern. They are wonders encountered on the protagonist’s adventures, or means of solving problems. They therefore need not conform to reality, provided they are consistent with the rules of the fictional world.
Apart from films such as The Martian, which adhere rigorously to real-world conditions, most stories give the principles supporting their plots only perfunctory treatment. This has even become a stock routine. The hero is trapped in a struggle with the enemy, with no way forward. Suddenly, a scrawny, severely nearsighted nerd—usually from an ethnic minority—has a flash of inspiration and bombards the hero with technical terms that sound highly sophisticated but are actually made up. The hero is sure to interrupt: “Hey. In plain English.” Only what the nerd says in plain English afterward moves the plot forward.
This routine has become so ubiquitous that it is frequently criticized and mocked. The crowdfunded 2015 comedy Kung Fury offers a particularly funny parody. Yet even today, this stupid routine is not a thing of the past. The reason is that neither storytellers nor audiences want to make the mental effort to understand complicated principles. Knowing that the hero has done something COOOOL is enough.
(2) Imparting Knowledge
For some educational narratives, including those that popularize science, the situation is exactly the reverse. Imparting knowledge is the purpose of the work; the plot is merely a container and a lubricant for the explanation. In “Introduction to Educational Animation,” Professor Nie Xinru writes that animation intended to impart knowledge is not only “a narrative art that engages the audience emotionally”: it also calls on the audience’s “cognitive system for understanding.”
Such works contain many stretches in which the plot stands still while something is explained. Take Three Thousand Whys of Blue Cat, once an enormous hit in China. Each episode lasts about ten minutes, with roughly one or two minutes given over to an exceedingly stiff science-education segment. The preschool animation Charlie and Lola also includes plenty of educational material. But its audience is younger, the knowledge is more elementary, and the teaching is full of playfulness, so the separation between plot and knowledge is less conspicuous.
The reasoning and explanation in Neji no Hitobito chiefly serve to impart knowledge. The chapter titles alone show that Wakaki introduces and explains a philosophical topic in each installment. Chapter 22 even incorporates a bibliographic reference directly into its subtitle.
These philosophical views are worked into debates between characters, much as in works that present ideas through dialogue, such as The Republic and The Analects. These debates account for 54.6% of the manga’s 443 pages. Of its 25 chapters, 11 name the philosophers whose views they invoke, and philosophers’ portraits appear on six occasions.
(3) Theme
We all dislike stories that preach at us. But rejecting preaching does not mean that a story must never explain an idea or make an argument. Stories still carry intellectual significance and judgments of value: their themes.
The worth of its theme is decisive for the quality of a narrative work. The 1995 theatrical version of Ghost in the Shell, for example, is full of Mamoru Oshii’s characteristically abstruse dialogue. Yet its exploration of the reality of memory, the body, and the subject still makes it an excellent animated film. The 2017 live-action remake retains all the important scenes and tells its story more smoothly, but remains disappointing overall. The main reason is that it abandons the exploration of profound themes in favor of the already formulaic “love, freedom, and self-identity.”
Expressing a theme undoubtedly requires reasoning. But we generally believe that a good story itself makes the case for an idea: its characters’ choices and actions, rather than explanatory language, establish its theme. Writers therefore take lines of dialogue that look like everyday grumbling but actually explain the theme, and carefully insert them at the joints of the plot. In commercial films with relatively formulaic scripts, an explanation of the theme generally appears within the first two to five minutes. At the beginning of Antz, for instance, the protagonist discusses with another worker ant whether to assert his individuality or support the team. Ratatouille likewise uses a television program within its opening scenes to raise the question of whether an ordinary person can become a great chef. But we know this is really a metaphor for whether a little guy can realize a big dream. Since Cars begins with an action sequence, its thematic statement arrives later: in the tenth minute, a former champion tells McQueen that he must learn to rely on his team rather than go it alone.
II. How Neji no Hitobito Works Reasoning into the Story
Narrative art, then, cannot entirely dispense with reasoning and explanation. This is especially true of stories such as Neji no Hitobito, which present a great deal of knowledge: dry reasoning that depends on verbal explanation can easily interrupt a smoothly flowing narrative. Wakaki, however, handles this extremely well. His varied methods make Neji no Hitobito a handbook for working reasoning and explanation into stories. After this small-scale, 25-chapter work ended, he reportedly kept a copy even in his bathroom, and would often enjoy reading it himself.
(1) The Pope in the Pool
“The Pope in the Pool” is a screenwriting technique introduced by Blake Snyder in Save the Cat! It pairs a long-winded stretch of dialogue with an entertaining action—such as the Pope swimming—to conceal the tedium of exposition. Exposition means “backstory or details of the plot that must be told to the audience in order for them to understand what happens next”: the backstory and background discussed earlier.
This technique is common in comics, films, and all other stories that involve a visual element. In the 2013 series KILL la KILL, for example, whenever the homeroom teacher gives Ryuko information relevant to the plot, his clothes mysteriously slip off. This detail has nothing to do with what they are saying, but it certainly makes a dry explanation entertaining.
Neji no Hitobito repeatedly uses the same technique. One memorable instance comes on pages 9–10 of Chapter 9, where Mako and Takahashi’s dialogue accompanies images of them finishing their food and drawing little figures on their plates.
The manga also includes “pools” that cross the boundaries between forms. On pages 8–10 of Chapter 17, the characters’ dialogue appears in a text-message interface. On page 13 of Chapter 18, a conversation in the editorial office is presented as prose from a novel.
(2) Spokespeople for Reasoning and Explanation
The narrator’s voice, once a very common element, is gradually disappearing from narrative art. A narrator’s account is objective but lacks warmth; the speech of characters with distinctive personalities brings explanation to life. These days, even wholly informational shorts, such as the fire-safety announcements shown before a film, try to have characters deliver the lesson. In Neji no Hitobito, the characters who do the explaining come in all sorts of bizarre forms.
The most ordinary, and most frequently seen, are two classmates of the protagonist, Neji: Rune and Mako. Rune has the least personality of anyone in the manga, and scarcely seems like a real person at all. On his first appearance, he resembles a second self within Neji’s consciousness, talking to Neji during class before suddenly disappearing. Even afterward, his everyday life rarely intersects with that of the other characters. He appears almost exclusively when some viewpoint needs explaining.
Chapter 5 introduces two rather odd figures, a nun and a bald man. Their fight over a pair of underpants prompts a debate about subjective and objective truth.
In Chapters 4 and 7, two nonhuman characters appear: a wall clock and a starfish. The clock explains Plato’s allegory of the cave. The starfish goes on to take a more human form and becomes Neji’s friend.
Most interesting of all are probably the author’s own appearances. In Chapter 6, Wakaki enters the manga as a hand holding a pen and talks to Neji about what he has learned from his own creative work. The manga also mentions the band he formed in high school and his life as a shut-in after graduation. Clearly, Neji no Hitobito is a deeply personal work.
In Chapter 18, Wakaki even brings editorial discussions onto the stage and takes part in the lives of Neji and his friends. The story’s dimensions of time and space expand as well.
(3) Turning Concepts into Images
Neji no Hitobito discusses many fairly difficult concepts. Explaining them requires clear language, but manga is, after all, a visual art. It contains many entertaining diagrams and concrete images that serve as metaphors for abstract concepts, making the explanations livelier and more engaging.
Simple, direct diagrams like those below, for instance, appear very frequently.
More interesting, though, are the images rich in symbolic meaning. The most important is the nut on Neji’s head, which symbolizes thinking itself.5 It suddenly appears at the end of Chapter 1, signaling that both Neji and the manga have begun to think seriously about everyday life. In Chapter 7, when Neji tries to stop thinking, the screw suddenly falls off. By Chapter 14, the screw has even become something that can be given as a gift.
There are plenty of similar symbols. In Chapters 15 and 16, there is the god of slave morality, burning with the flames of nihilism. In Chapter 3, Mako first appears invisible, only becoming visible once Neji has reached a conclusion. Chapter 17 uses a multitude of billiard balls to symbolize too many “truths”; Chapter 2 removes the panel borders and backgrounds, leaving blank paper to symbolize a space of pure thought. These, too, are intriguing symbolic objects.
Wakaki’s other works also give invisible things concrete forms. In The World God Only Knows, loose souls represent the characters’ psychological problems; driving out these spirits is really the act of resolving those problems. This layer of metaphor adds considerably to the story. In KING OF IDOL, Wakaki introduces a device that turns singing into something physically visible. The effect is clearly less successful. Unlike abstract mental activity, singing can be received directly by the human senses. No figurative device, however good, can make up for the absence of the singing itself.
(4) Knowledge Takes Part in the Narrative
As discussed earlier in the section on theme, good stories are adept at proving their themes through a particular story. Yet while a story can make the case for an abstract idea such as “war is bad” or “love is important,” it cannot depict a simple fact such as “there are 7.66 billion people on earth.” As a result, stories intended to impart knowledge always have a theme unrelated to that knowledge. Last year’s anime Cells at Work!, for instance, teaches us about blood circulation, but its story is about the cells’ fighting spirit in the workplace. This division inevitably means that attending to knowledge comes at the expense of narrative, and vice versa. When the series tells the red blood cell’s story, everything is anthropomorphized, and the knowledge cannot be conveyed with full accuracy. But when it uses an information board to explain the workings of the heart in detail, as in the “Blood Circulation” episode, the red blood cell’s story is interrupted.
Stories intended to impart knowledge find it hard to escape this division. But the philosophical knowledge presented in Neji no Hitobito consists not of specific statements of fact, but of ways of looking at things, which coincide with the story’s own themes. Chapter 20, for instance, introduces a view attributed to Max Weber—that lonely people who have lost God work to prove that their existence has meaning—in order to explore the theme “Why do people work?” Neji’s wish to resign as the protagonist serves the same theme. In other words, knowledge takes part in the narrative of Neji no Hitobito.
This participation is not particularly evident in the first six chapters, chiefly because they have almost no plot. The first four do provide situations, such as taking an exam or having a lunch break. But the characters’ discussions of “Who am I?”, “What is an answer?”, and “Is there a realm of truth?” have nothing to do with their actions at that moment. Although Chapter 5 features the nun and the bald man fighting over underpants, the incident is still only a lead-in to the discussion. Neji soon begins talking to “the author,” and the fight over the underpants is forgotten. These six chapters devote a great deal of space to just two or three hours at school. Yet during those hours, apart from discussing questions, all Neji does is take an exam, have a lunch break, and wander around like anyone else.
From Chapter 7 onward, however, the topics the characters discuss begin to connect closely with what they actually do. In Chapter 8, the question “Why do people need to think?” bears on whether Neji will pick up his screw again. Chapter 14’s reflection on the model of power embodied by the Panopticon bears on little Mako’s situation at school. The plot itself also becomes increasingly rich: from questions of romance in Chapters 9–10, to public life at school in Chapters 11–14, and then, from Chapter 18 onward, to characters considering problems with the manga’s own story. The finest stretch is Chapters 21–23, when Neji’s school friends and the editorial staff who created them all worry about his falling for an ugly girl. Neji’s romance is not merely a private affair. It also bears on a historical shift in human aesthetic judgment.
In this work, knowledge and story no longer run along parallel lines. The plot brings knowledge onto the stage of life, while knowledge gives the story critical depth.
Conclusion
Whether we consider the story’s length or the detail of the drawings, Wakaki clearly did not devote his utmost effort to this work. There is nothing particularly special about its story, either: its little incidents are among the commonest in school-life manga. But philosophical reflection on everyday situations makes Neji no Hitobito interesting and gives it depth. The mixture of reasoning and narrative lends this small-scale work an appeal beyond narrative art.
Neji no Hitobito also mixes categories in other respects. In its handling of audience expectations, it includes all manner of tawdry commercial clichés—flashing underwear, peddling cuteness—while also criticizing those very devices. In form, it is at once a little book introducing philosophical views, a school-life story, a work of criticism on that very story, and Wakaki’s own rambling diary. Today, all solid boundaries are dissolving: we see theater without a text, poetry made visual, films becoming game-like, comics set in motion. We can no longer distinguish as clearly as before among the forms we ourselves have constructed. Yet this confusion also holds liberation, nurturing the seeds of new media, new forms, and new arts. It is precisely the mixture of disparate elements in a work such as Neji no Hitobito that holds possibilities for the future.
Editor’s note:
