is a
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese
seinenis a subset of manga that is generally targeted at an 18–30 year old male audience, but the audience can be much older with some comics aimed at businessmen well into their 40s. It has a wide variety of art styles and more variation in subject matter, ranging from the avant-garde to the...
mangaManga consist of comics and print cartoons , in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 20th century...
by
Naoki Yamamotois a male Japanese manga artist. In his early years, he also used a pen name as well as for his adult-oriented works, but nowadays he no longer uses it...
and is his first weekly serial manga created entirely without the help of any assistants.
Believers was first serialized in Weekly Big Comic Spirits between May and November 1999 and is published in two
tankōbon, with a literal meaning close to "independently appearing book", is the Japanese term for a book that is complete in itself and is not part of a series, though the manga industry uses it for volumes which may be in a series...
by
Shogakukanis a Japanese publisher of dictionaries, literature, manga, non-fiction, DVDs, and other media in Japan.Shogakukan founded Shueisha which founded Hakusensha. These are three separate companies, but are together called the Hitotsubashi Group, one of the largest publishing groups in Japan...
. The plot to
Believers revolves around themes of sexual desire and the line between dreams and reality. It must be noted however, that while
Believers contains many scenes of graphic sexuality, the sex and nudity is used intellectually and not merely as
fan service, fanservice, , or simply , is a vaguely-defined term primarily used for anime and manga to refer to elements that are unnecessary to the storyline. Fanservice explicitly refers to material that is designed to amuse or excite the audience with sexually-derived content...
.
"Believers" is the word for members of the "Smiley Face Center", a cult organization with the goal of achieving purity of self and reaching "the land of comfort".
is a
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese
seinenis a subset of manga that is generally targeted at an 18–30 year old male audience, but the audience can be much older with some comics aimed at businessmen well into their 40s. It has a wide variety of art styles and more variation in subject matter, ranging from the avant-garde to the...
mangaManga consist of comics and print cartoons , in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 20th century...
by
Naoki Yamamotois a male Japanese manga artist. In his early years, he also used a pen name as well as for his adult-oriented works, but nowadays he no longer uses it...
and is his first weekly serial manga created entirely without the help of any assistants.
Believers was first serialized in Weekly Big Comic Spirits between May and November 1999 and is published in two
tankōbon, with a literal meaning close to "independently appearing book", is the Japanese term for a book that is complete in itself and is not part of a series, though the manga industry uses it for volumes which may be in a series...
by
Shogakukanis a Japanese publisher of dictionaries, literature, manga, non-fiction, DVDs, and other media in Japan.Shogakukan founded Shueisha which founded Hakusensha. These are three separate companies, but are together called the Hitotsubashi Group, one of the largest publishing groups in Japan...
. The plot to
Believers revolves around themes of sexual desire and the line between dreams and reality. It must be noted however, that while
Believers contains many scenes of graphic sexuality, the sex and nudity is used intellectually and not merely as
fan service, fanservice, , or simply , is a vaguely-defined term primarily used for anime and manga to refer to elements that are unnecessary to the storyline. Fanservice explicitly refers to material that is designed to amuse or excite the audience with sexually-derived content...
.
Plot summary
"Believers" is the word for members of the "Smiley Face Center", a cult organization with the goal of achieving purity of self and reaching "the land of comfort".
Believers follows the events of three such people that have been left stranded on a deserted island off the coast of
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. The three "believers" are referred to only by their rank and they practice various activities in an effort to purge their bodies from the perceived evils that society has subjected them to, such as lust and possession. But the "believers" are not able to resist their past temptations so easily, and the faith in their "organization" gradually weakens as the "believers" begin to question what is right and eventually what is even real.
Main characters
The is the highest ranking of the three "believers" on the island. He is a failed novelist but believes this is due to society rather than himself. Every night he has a continuing, epic dream that he can never remember upon awakening but believes that if he could reproduce his dream in print that he would be a best selling novelist. He rationalizes that this it is for the best that he is unable to; stating that if it wasn't for his inability to replicate his dreams, he would have never joined the "organization" and would have been stuck in the evil material world. He is slowly resented by the other two "believers" when, after having a fever due from food poisoning, he begins to act delusional and his sanity begins to come into question.
The is the only female on the island and is the second highest ranking of the three. She was married to an
abusive husbandDomestic violence, also known as domestic abuse, spousal abuse, child abuse or intimate partner violence , can be broadly defined a pattern of abusive behaviors by one or both partners in an intimate relationship such as marriage, dating, family, friends or cohabitation...
who accused her of
adulteryAdultery is referred to as extramarital sex, philandery, or infidelity, but does not include fornication. The term "adultery" for many people carries a moral or religious association, while the term "extramarital sex" is morally or judgmentally neutral....
and hit her after she began to talk to a man referred to as the "3rd Division Chief". The "3rd Division Chief" then helped her leave her husband and join the "Smiley Face Center". She credits the "3rd Division Chief" for helping her denounce the filthy world and it is evident that grew to have feelings for him. She is the most doubtful "believer" in the group and often ends up going against the teachings.
The is the main
protagonistA protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, video game, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to share the most empathy...
of
Believers and also the lowest ranking "believer" on the island. He learned of the "Smiley Face Center" through his mother, who was also a member. However, later, when the "Operator" was a member himself, his mother had had the effects of the brainwashing reversed and begged him to come back. The "Operator" refused to listen and chose to stay. The relationship between him and the "Vice Chairman" is a focal point of the manga, as he begins to find himself thinking forbidden, sexual thoughts about her.
The Aum Shinrikyo and the Japanese Red Army
Naoki Yamamoto's first inspirations for
Believers came after the
Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subwayThe Sarin attack on the Tokyo subway, usually referred to in the Japanese media as the , was an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by members of Aum Shinrikyo on March 20, 1995....
in 1995. The attack caused him to become interested in researching the
Aum ShinrikyoAum Shinrikyo, now known as Aleph, is a Japanese new religious movement. The group was founded by Shoko Asahara in 1984. The group gained international notoriety in 1995, when it carried out the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subways....
, the terrorist group behind the attack. However, the Aum Shinrikyo had thus far kept their members quiet, leaving little research material. This led Yamamoto to instead read a book on the
Japanese Red ArmyThe was a terrorist far-left group founded by Fusako Shigenobu early in 1971 in the Lebanon. It called itself Japanese Red Army and sometimes Arab-JRA after the Lod airport massacre.-The Red Army Faction in Japan:...
, a different Japanese terrorist group that has former members who have written about their past experiences. After reading the book, Yamamoto began to wonder what would happen if a group of fanatics who believed radical ideology were isolated together. This thinking would eventually lead to the creation of
Believers.
The Second Sea Fortress
The setting for
Believers was modeled on the
Second Sea Fortress: a small,
artificial islandAn artificial island is an island that has been constructed by humans rather than formed by natural means. They are created by expanding existing islets, construction on existing reefs, or amalgamating several natural islets into a bigger island....
built off the coast of
Tokyo Bayis a bay in the southern Kantō region of Japan. Its old name was .-Geography:Tokyo Bay is surrounded by the Boso Peninsula to the east and the Miura Peninsula to the west. In a narrow sense, Tokyo Bay is the area north of the straight line formed by the on the Miura Peninsula on one end and on...
in the late 1910s. The island had been destroyed by the
Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923The struck the Kantō plain on the Japanese main island of Honshū at 11:58:44 am JST on September 1, 1923. Varied accounts hold that the duration of the earthquake was between 4 and 10 minutes....
and had been relatively untouched in the 80 years that followed. It was this desolation that intrigued Yamamoto when he first discovered the island in the Big Comics magazine "100 Ruins". Yamamoto used his connections with
Shogakukanis a Japanese publisher of dictionaries, literature, manga, non-fiction, DVDs, and other media in Japan.Shogakukan founded Shueisha which founded Hakusensha. These are three separate companies, but are together called the Hitotsubashi Group, one of the largest publishing groups in Japan...
to borrow the pictures for reference use. Later, about half-way through the series, Yamamoto had the opportunity to visit the Second Sea Fortress in person, along with a model and some staff. The nude photo shoot drew the attention of some passing fishboats and the entire crew ended up with
sunburnA sunburn is a burn to living tissue such as skin produced by overexposure to ultraviolet radiation, commonly from the sun's rays.Usual mild symptoms in humans and animals are red or reddish skin that is hot to the touch, general fatigue, and mild dizziness. An excess of UV-radiation can be...
. Many of the later landscape backgrounds of
Believers were taken directly from the photos of that shoot.
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