Mohicans Zoku no Saigo simple (PictureBox Inc)

Mohicans Zoku no Saigo simple

Not really an adaptation of the James Fenimore Cooper classic, this is a translation of Sugiura's influential 1974 manga, which was a new version of an earlier work done by the cartoonist in 1953—a work that was itself not exactly considered faithful to the novel. As pointed out in the afterword by Ryan Holmberg, Sugiura often ignores Cooper's original and relies instead on various aspects of screen adaptations that made it over to Japan, as well as his love of silent film in general and appropriations of classic western comics designs and tropes. Here, the adventures of Hawkeye—a diminutive, wide-eyed boy also referred to as the Carabine Kid—look like they take place not in the Northeastern U.S., but in a prairie from a western movie. Art styles are mixed around energetically—the Native Americans are presented sometimes as traditional Wild West Indians, but also as outlandish cartoon characters who seem absurd at best and offensive at worst, with big noses and buck teeth. Almost everything is played for laughs more than thrills. American frontier culture as filtered through silent films and interpreted by a Japanese cartoonist adapting work from the 1950s makes for a strange reading experience, with multiple levels of cultural interpretation—and misinterpretation.