Dead Dead Demon's Dededededestruction

Even though I'm an atheist I feel like that's true.  I like all the classic, religious Christmas carols and really dislike most of the jingle-jingle and a lot of the frantic consumerism.   However, Jesus Christ in the bible was born in summer, not at the winter solstice.  Christmas is a winter solstice celebration that was hijacked by Christians because they couldn't kill it.  Most of the trappings came from pagan Germanic Yule celebrations, while the gift exchange stuff came from pre-Christian Roman Saturnalia celebrations.

So even aside from the Japanese having a very eclectic mix-and-match take-what-you-like approach to religion, there would actually be a lot  to Christmas without Christ.

Read this interview and you get why this is funny. But it contains spoilers about Punpun, so read Punpun first. Everyone who have read it should read this interview now. Seriously. http://mangabrog.wordpress.com/2014/07/06/inio-asano-interview-reality-is-tough-so-read-this-manga-about-cute-girls-and-feel-better/

Ok I'll quote the non-spoiler, the last paragraph is about the cute schoolgirls:

 

–Your news series has finally started. The story takes place in a city somewhere, three years and two months after a UFO comes and starts looming in the sky. The main characters are Ontan and Kadode, two girls in high school.

 

Asano: I’d been thinking about what to do for my next series since a year or two before Punpun ended. This manga is the result of taking a bunch of ideas I’d had and sticking them together almost like a jigsaw puzzle, so it’s difficult to explain exactly how it came to be what it is. I originally wanted to do a manga with some creature living at the protagonist’s house, like Doraemon; the manga at the start of the first chapter is a vestige from that.

 

–You mean Isobeyan, with his secret tools that he keeps in his four-dimensional pocket. Is there any chance this manga-inside-a-manga seep into reality in the story?

 

Asano: It might. The UFO over Earth probably came from space for some sort of reason, too. In order to force me to keep the story moving, I’ve prepared a lot of things like that, but those things aren’t the focus of the story, so you’re not going to see it turn into a really hardcore sci-fi manga. My focus here is keeping these characters doing fun things.

 

–This really fantastical thing is happening, but the pages are mostly filled with teenage girls and their giddy conversations. There’s some monologue in here, but it’s really not much at all compared to your previous work.

 

Asano: The way I have it planned, it’s going to keep on going like this. This isn’t like Punpun, where I started with an outline from the start and had this big overall plot ahead of me; I just want these characters’ day-to-day lives to continue on and on. Part of my inspiration for this came from when I met Hikaru Nakamura, the artist of Saint Young Men, a while back.

 

–Saint Young Men, the short gag manga about the heartwarming lives of Buddha and Jesus as they share a run-down apartment in Tachikawa, Tokyo.

 

Asano: I asked her why she makes manga, and she told me that it’s because she wants to enter the manga world that she creates. It made a real impression on me. I envied her for being able to think that way. She’s got these happy characters who are great friends, and they’re so fun for her to draw that she even wishes she could join them — and then that’s fun for the reader, so her manga sells. It seemed like such healthy, happy work.

 

–Isn’t that the complete opposite position from what you were doing with Punpun?

 

Asano: Well — needless to say, I want people to praise my work. With Punpun, I used to try to make people say “wow!” by doing new and exciting things with manga, and getting that reaction was my connection with the reader. But in fact, readers will praise you anyway so long as you’re making something fun to read. That’s all I want. I want to do a fun manga. Something people can causally read.

 

–The backlash against Punpun might have something to do with this too, I suspect.

 

Asano: I feel like I saw the reader as the enemy back when I was doing Punpun. (laugh) I knew that some people would be annoyed by it, and that some of them would even start hating me. But then when I went to fight back against that criticism and hate, I started to think about how I could annoy those people and make them hate me even more.

 

–A vicious circle! But then, maybe that’s exactly what a manga like that needed. (laugh)

 

Asano: I would never have been able to finish Punpun if it weren’t for that twisted pleasure I got out of it, but I would really rather not have to do that anymore. For this next project, I’m going to make it about positive things that people want to see.

 

–Things people want to see… Well, the girls you draw are really cute. (laugh)

 

Asano: Something I realized as I drew Punpun was that drawing cute girls might be what I’m good at, which is why I thought I’d focus my next series on that. It’s a lot of fun for me to draw right now — nothing but girls, hardly a single male character. (laugh) I’m giving the characters a really round look to them too, and the overall art’s really different — I’m doing it more by analog now. It’s really fun for me at the moment, getting to draw things I’d never drawn before.