PART 21 of 52 ONESHOTS in 52 WEEKS
田中政志の『ゴン』 “Gon” by TANAKA Masashi
Gon is a manga by Masashi Tanaka, known mostly for its wordless storytelling, as well as its detailed artwork and lovable central character. Published in Kodansha’s Morning magazine from 1991 until 2002, it is the author’s longest and most well-known work, following the daily life of the eponymous Gon, a miniature dinosaur miraculously existing within the Paleolithic Age, whose encounters with various animals make for some lively adventures.
It was brought to the UK by Mandarin Publishing in 1994, making it one of the first manga I ever encountered. The manga’s lack of any dialogue or sound effects, as well as its episodic format and natural setting, without any cultural specificity, make it a particularly accessible and universal work. It is possible to pick up and begin Gon at any point in the story without the need of any translation or context, but for readers wanting a bite-sized taste, there is a oneshot in the form of a supplementary chapter published after the manga’s official run. The story, titled Gon: A Very, Very Lucky Birth, appeared in Evening magazine in 2003 and depicts the pilgrimage of a family of rotund mammals as Gon observes nearby.
The oneshot serves as an ideal sample at just 16 pages, around half the length of a typical chapter in the Gon manga. The artwork is immediately notable; the author’s astounding line work and shaded detail wholly exhibit his expertise, with comprehensive foreground and background art that melds seamlessly to form lush settings and animated scenarios. Tanaka has mastered expression in the absence of dialogue, realising his characters through their visual language, in how they walk, move and react. This is demonstrated to great effect in many of the comedic portions, with all manner of expressive animal characters sporting priceless dispositions.
Although his art style is largely realistic, Masashi Tanaka’s plotlines in Gon are typically comedies, often with absurd scenarios incorporating both the highs and lows of the natural world, depicting births, deaths, predator and prey. In the manga, the humour is similar in tone to the Scrat shorts in the Ice Age franchise, with Gon’s curiosity and antics often landing him in trouble. These escapades span countries and continents, with dramatic action spectacles where Gon is swept up in all manner of disasters.
The oneshot veers into tragicomedy territory with an animal family beset by seemingly endless adversities; they drop one by one—scorched, stomped, and eaten—besides the most portly member of the group, who marches on nonchalantly, avoiding harm through sheer luck. When a bird of prey finally seems to have him its grasp, the land mammal’s brilliant mass proves an accidental champion, squashing the bird under its weight. The central animals are described by the author as stylinodons (an extinct mammal with a blunt face), but they are illustrated with the stout charm of a pygmy hippo. In the manga, Gon typically encounters a broad range of Paleolithic animals, with each chapter focusing on between two to four different species, but in the oneshot there are much older depictions.
Gon: A Very, Very Lucky Birth is a fun-sized rendition of Masashi Tanaka’s distinctive storytelling, with all the visual impressiveness and effective humour that his larger manga boasts, but it’s missing a key ingredient, with Gon himself only present in the background of 4 pages. It is Gon, charismatically journeying from calamity to fortune, characterised by a lovingly robust demeanour and stubbornly curious attitude, that is the manga’s greatest asset. Resultantly, while it’s certainly a good taste, the oneshot lacks the big personality that makes the manga truly great.
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Morning, Roo 