Life void of color

As Professor Serrano has mentioned in class, Tasumi’s Good-Bye includes a lot of visual metaphors of melancholy and mundaneness of life during the post-modernism. These metaphors are usually shown through the protagonist’s alienation from the society and the crowd. For example, the visual metaphor that I liked the most is the protagonist standing in the rain without the umbrella on page 14. As we have discussed in class, the “black rain” not only depicts the consequences of atomic bomb, but it also acts as the visual metaphors - the protagonist standing under the rain by himself and other people walking on the road with the umbrellas suggest the protagonist’s feelings of isolation and depression. I also think that the absence of color in this comic enhances the effects of visual metaphors, as the black and whiteness of the panels also portrays the idea of the dullness of life. Additionally, the absence of color in the comic also portrays the idea of the flexibility of the meanings in the story as the interpretations of the story are open to the readers, who can add their own colors to the story to make the story more personal.