So last Christmas Eve, I asked, “Is there an anime for everything?” It turns out I may have been asking the question too narrowly, as there may very well be a manga for everything. Case in point: At work a few days ago, it randomly occurred to me that “Wittgenstein” sounds similar to “Frankenstein”, and so wouldn’t it be funny if someone wrote a parody of Shelley’s Frankenstein based around the life of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein?
Naturally, I wasn’t going to let this ingenious insight be lost for posterity, so I tweeted it out.
Curiously Dead Cat @crslydeadcat
A book I’d like to read: “Wittgenstein”, about a corpse brought to life by electricity who spends 300 pages questioning the nature of Language.
Well the author is heavily influenced by Wittgenstein but SakuUta also has corpses brought to life (metaphorically) and discussions about the nature of specific words. Throw in some philosophy on life and happiness and it’s basically what you want, maybe?
Nani???
Sakura no Uta, it turns out, started life in 2004 as an unfinished visual novel game, became a manga released from 2005-2006, and finally was released as a visual novel in 2015 (according to The Infallible Wikipedia). Alas, if I want to play/read it I’ll have to learn Japanese—not that I’d object to doing so, just that it’s going to be a while in any case!
The website for the VN, btw, has this awesome image, which is so awesome I also put it as the featured image on this post:
Notes
* No, seriously. When Wittgenstein began studying philosophy, one of his friends wrote, “He expresses the most naive surprise that all the philosophers he once worshiped in ignorance are after all stupid and dishonest and make disgusting mistakes!” See, this is why philosophers don’t get invited to more parties.
Haha as a disclaimer, I’d like to make clear that I am very much stretching certain ideas in the story to match the idea of a corpse brought to life. It’s probably quite different than you might be thinking, but I don’t think you can really go wrong if you enjoy philosophical works.
If you want to dabble in some SCA-DI though, perhaps try Subarashiki Hibi? Same Wittgenstein-influenced author but is much more mystery-orientated with literal corpses, and even has an English release. The big downside that always prevents me from mentioning it is some heavy sexual content so viewer’s discretion advised.
Thanks, Kaze! Yeah, I gathered that we were using loose definitions, and I’m cool with that. For me, part of the fun is drawing unusual connections and parallels like this. 🙂 And I’m grateful for your recommendations in any event!