Monday 11 May 2015

Not enough love: Aphorism

Not to be confused with the wikipedia definition, but it definitely applies here. In Japanese, words in kanji can be used to mean several things and the author uses it to great effect.

Aphorism by Kujo Karuna is a manga that takes place in a prestigious high school whose students are guaranteed to be successful in life upon graduation. Unfortunately, it is also a high school that accepts only the students who can see the floating island in the sky.

Upon acceptance, our protagonist Rokudou Momiji and his class is told to write a single word (in kanji) on a piece of paper with no other information than that it will determine his future. Since he met a pretty classmate that he wants to impress and feeling inadequate about his lack of smarts, athletics and height, Momiji writes down the word for 'change'.

Then monsters appear out of the ground and attacking/killing students.

The teacher (being really unhelpful) tells them that the word that they just wrote is their weapon and they must use it to fight off the monsters. For example, the person who wrote down the word 'knife' can manifest a sword and use it to kill said monster. The person who wrote down the word 'fire' can create fire and use it. The possibilities are only limited to the word that the student had written down.

As a writer, I thought the concept is interesting. We, who lives in the western world and uses English, have so many different words that means the same thing. However, in Japanese kanji has multiple meanings to the same word and the reader uses context to get the meaning.

I would be very happy if someone licensed this and start selling in Canada. *cough* Viz,I'mLookingAtYou *cough*

What kind of word would I have written had I not known that I would be fighting for my life in the next minutes?

What kind of word would you have written?

You can read Aphorism here.
If you can read Japanese, you can buy Aphorism as soon as I find a proper link for it. (Amazon does not count as a good link.)

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