War manga
33The Teaching · 33Also written: senso manga, war comics
Manga about war, especially the Second World War, from personal testimony to adventure stories.
33A 33 by its term: master teacher (33), and therefore the teaching.
What it means
War manga are manga about war. In Japan they are dominated by the Second World War and its aftermath, and range from adventure stories about pilots and battleships to some of the most powerful anti-war testimony in any medium.
Testimony
Keiji Nakazawa's Barefoot Gen tells the story of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima from the experience of a boy who survived it, as Nakazawa did. Shigeru Mizuki, who lost an arm in the war, drew Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, based on his experience of being ordered to die in a pointless charge.
Other forms
Postwar boys' magazines published many war adventure stories, some romanticising the fighting, which drew criticism. Later works, such as Fumiyo Kōno's In This Corner of the World, about a young wife in wartime Kure, approach the war through daily life.
Why it matters
War manga are one of the main ways Japan has remembered and argued about the war. Their testimony has reached readers around the world who would never read a history book.
The term by its numbers
Every letter here carries a digit; together they make 33 on the nose, with no reduction to do. The weight sits in “manga”, which carries 18 on its own and reduces to 9.
What the 33 brings is service. The reference files it as a transmission. Whatever else this entry is doing, it is doing it with the 33's devotion to lifting up everyone it touches.
The vowels alone reduce to 3, the consonants to 3. The subject wants exactly what it appears to want, which is expression — an unusually undivided reading.
The 33 asks you to trace who learned from this and what they did with it. The 33 gives itself away entirely. The teachers here are frequently better remembered than read. The other entries that reduce to 33 are collected on The Teaching.