Having recently spoken about the history of the medium of manga as well as the gekiga movement, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the incredible importance of the Year 24 Group, whom I’ve spoken about before in plenty of articles but have never dedicated an article to.
Let’s begin by discussing their name as well as how it’s also a bit of a misnomer. The name “Year 24 Group” refers to the year Shōwa 24 which is equivalent to 1949 in the Gregorian calendar. The implication here is that the women who made up the Year 24 Group were all born in 1949, something that only applied to a few of them. The name also makes you think that they were a collective who all worked together but, in reality, the term merely categorises a group of women who were born around the same time that would go on to reinterpret what shojo manga was.
In order to explain the incredible importance of the Year 24 Group, it’s important that I explain what shojo manga was like before they reinterpreted it. Prior to the advent of the Year 24 Group, shojo manga was relatively basic with the majority written by men and covering safe, simple topics. That’s not to say that all shojo manga from this time were poor with notable exceptions including the Princess Knight series from Osamu Tezuka and Sugar Princess by Shosuke Kurakane. Shojo manga was, at the time, considered to be inferior to shonen manga. However, the 1970s would see shojo manga completely reinterpreted by the Year 24 Group with many notable titles including The Poe Clan, The Rose of Versailles, The Couple in the White Room, The Heart of Thomas, From Eroica With Love, Toward the Terra and many others. The question then, of course, is how did the Year 24 Group reinterpret shojo manga? This can be broken down into two categories: storytelling and artwork.
Starting with storytelling, the Year 24 Group began to tackle more serious, complicated topics such as sexuality, gender politics, psychology etc. They are credited with popularising yaoi and yuri with many of their series featuring same-sex relationships as well as tackling gender roles in society like in Rose of Versailles where Oscar is raised as a boy to inherit the position of commander of the Royal Guard, later embraces her femininity but continues to act as a man in order to act more freely within pre-revolutionary France.
With regards to artwork, the Year 24 Group pretty much reinterpreted the entire look of shojo manga. The artwork was highly detailed but stylised, emphasizing slim, pretty characters with large, beautiful eyes. This also applied to their male characters who were drawn in a bishonen art style similar to the appearance of Björn Andrésen. They are also credited with introducing a lot of flowery imagery in the background of shojo manga in order to emphasise emotions.
However, the aspect of their artwork that I am most fascinated by was how they reinterpreted the use of panels. Rather than be restricted by quadrilateral panels, as was standard, they chose to introduce more circular paneling, exploit negative spacing and softening panel borders to the point where they would sometimes be completely absent, allowing one image to flow into the other.
The impact that the Year 24 Group has had on modern manga cannot be understated and many of their manga continue to be looked on fondly as classics of the medium. Let me know your thoughts on the incredible importance of the Year 24 Group, if you have read any of their manga, your thoughts on their contributions to the medium of manga, both with regards to storytelling and art work and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk and amazon.com for all of your needs!