 Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode, another edition of A Week in Geekdom here on YouTube, Geo here, and today we're going to be talking about Aki's Olympus Manga. This was published by Yen Press a couple years back, and it is a single story about this retelling of Ganymede. If you don't know your Greek mythology, you should know that Ganymede, one of the princesses of Troy, is said to be one of the most beautiful men in existence. In mythological tales, he gets captured, I guess, or abducted by Seuss, because he fell in love with him, and he was the cupbearer, I guess, or something. It's been a while. But the reason I have this book is pretty interesting, because normally I don't buy into blind purchases when it comes to manga, but for this I was, or I still am, part of a group on Facebook that deals with manga, anime, and otaku culture, I guess, and somebody I cannot remember for the life of me, who was talking about Olympus, but they were going on and on about how this is an amazing book, it's gorgeous, the art, it's fantastic, yada yada, and my brain went like, oh, a good manga, okay, I bought it, and then I got it, and it's a fantastic looking book, but I never got around to reading it, and it just sat on my library for a very long time, I think like two years and a half, something crazy like that. So I finally decided to give it a go and read it, and share my thoughts with all of you. So what this basically is, you have Aki doing a fantastic reimagining of the tale of Ganymede and at the hands of Apollo. As you can see here, they are very elaborate, they have a very intricate character design, is what I'm trying to get at. Here's Apollo, and here we have our boy Ganymede right there. I didn't know what to make of it when I started reading it, I didn't know where the story was going, because I do know my Greek mythology and all that stuff, I loved that ever since I was a kid, so I didn't know where they were going with this. Fortunately, it's a really interesting tale of what happens when you re-imagine these characters in a more philosophical and dramatic purpose. You see Ganymede gets abducted. I believe there was sort of this parade, a victory parade in the city of Troy, and Apollo swoops in and kidnaps him, and it's not necessarily for what you think it is, and it's more about these Greek gods, these figures from mythology and how they muse over their existence of time, space, life, death, the true meaning of beauty, the true meaning of eternal life, and the nature of humans as a species, I guess, and planet Earth. There's a lot of themes and a lot of questioning from these characters. You do get to see Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Artemis, characters like that, and they have very interesting conversations about the nature of things, and in the middle you have the character of Ganymede who doesn't really know what's happening and is trying to figure out why am I trapped in this ethereal miniature garden that Zeus made, how do I get out, and how do I reunite with my family? The book doesn't really go out of its way to answer all of these questions, instead it presents you a more philosophical view of these characters and their musings, like I just mentioned, but the main selling point that I think a lot of people will be interested in is the artwork. It is insane, super detailed and gorgeous to look at, and I loved it. Even though the story may not be for everyone, I know it wasn't exactly my top favorite thing I've read in a while, I did enjoy the art from beginning to end, the characters look gorgeous, and one of the things I really liked about this take is that, or one of the themes that get explored is machismo and Greek pathology, because if you know about these characters and their statues and all that stuff that exists in the real world, they're depicted very muscular with the poses and whatnot, but you don't get that here. We get very androgynous looking characters that are more, they're skinnier I guess, as you can see here with Apollo, who is said to be one of the most beautiful things ever I guess. One of the descriptions I liked about this character, or this version of this character is that they mention that his eyes are rainbow colored, so I kept thinking, and I kept telling my friends, I wonder if it's like the hollow cards for the Pokemon trading card game, where you move it and there's a whole bunch of colors in it, and it's your purples and reds and blues and all that stuff, so maybe it's like that, and I think, I don't know if the camera can pick it up, but I think Aki did a good job of kind of doing that with the way the cover looks, this hollow foil cover, I don't know, I dug it. You see that more here with Ganymede, but the art is extremely expressive and gorgeous to look at, like I mentioned, I really loved it, even though there are a lot of scenes where you don't really see a whole lot, empty backgrounds, keep in mind it's not supposed to be on earth, sort of an alternate plane of existence I guess, so I don't mind, but look at that character detail, it's impressive, the hair specifically, hair is a very tough thing to draw, and if you can pull it off, it looks fantastic, and really brings your character to life, I think, especially in manga where, you know, all these characters have really iconic hairstyles, so they have some of the backdrops that I keep mentioning, that's the garden, as you can see, there's no sky, it's sort of like a starry space with a huge endless field of white flowers, and I don't know, something about that stuff just struck a chord with me, sort of that, when you have like weird ethereal dreams of scenarios like that, where you're in places that are not like any place you might know on earth, it just has sort of a nostalgic feeling to it that really made me appreciate the story a little bit. One of the things I do like is that throughout the story, you get a lot of exposition with the character Apollo, and how he is, at first, he's kind of an asshole, I'm not gonna lie, I didn't like him, but as you keep reading the story, even he starts questioning some things, and when he's presented human characters aside from Ganymede, he's trying to decipher his true nature and the, or like the state of beings, and you get introduced to Hades, which I think this is easily one of my favorite interpretations of Hades, I'd love the character work, and I can show you right here. Here we have some colored pages of Ganymede, and this just looks badass to me, I love the way Aki drew Hades, just really unique and really gives you that dark, but also alluring, mysterious framework for this character. The thing about that I was mentioning with Apollo is that at the beginning of the book, you meet the character of Hines, and I thought he was gonna be the main character. I completely forgot about Ganymede, because this is the first guy you see. You know, after Ganymede gets abducted, he is granted immortality and is, you know, basically living this immortal, boring life inside this inescapable miniature garden, and part of the appeal, I guess, is for the gods to find amusement in a situation like that, where you are in total control of an individual, and the, I guess, the spiritual and significant ramifications that come out of that. The character of Ganymede, he's fed up, he's angry, he's upset, he's a lot of things, and at the start of the story, Apollo grabs another individual called Hines. You later find out who he is, he's a historical figure as well, but through the different interactions that Apollo has with the humans, he is able to perceive things differently and maybe evolve and see things from a different perspective. He takes them to the garden, but more of an amusement, not necessarily out of love and admiration, because he has no admirations for humans, and he definitely sees them as insects, and you know, they are the superior beings, if you will, the great gods. And throughout the story, Apollo, in his conversations, little by little, there's a big nudge that starts to form, and it snowballs into him questioning things, and the nature of life, and even humans, and being accepting of other ideas and thoughts. That's sort of the theme here with this book. Eventually you meet the character of Hades, like I mentioned, and that character furthers the gap of what they thought as them being sort of the supreme beings, to them now reflecting on death and the nature of time and space. It goes into that route. Unfortunately, one of the negatives for me of the book is that it doesn't really have a conclusive ending. It does tie back into the original story and the original motivations for the characters, especially the relationship between Zeus and Ganymede, but it doesn't give me an ending that I wanted. Maybe on further reads I will get more out of it because of their philosophical chats, if you will. So if you're into that sort of thing, you might want to check this book out. One of my favorite scenes has to be the gods' descent when Zeus first appears. That was badass, and I love that scene so much. And just the way the characters depicted in this book is really unique and badass, and I loved it. Unfortunately, we don't get a whole lot more than that, so it is what it is. But overall, just a quirky, fun, alternate retelling of Greek mythology with fantastic artwork from Aki. So if you can get it, it's an interesting read. Give it a shot. Who knows? Maybe you'll like it. I know I will certainly give it another go at a later time to see if I get more out of the questions and answers that are given in this story. Have you read Olympus? Let me know in the comment section down below. If not, let me know what is your favorite mythological manga or comic that you have recently read or want to recommend to me. I'd be interested in finding out. Guys, as always, thank you for liking, commenting, subscribing, being a part of a week in Geekdom here on YouTube. It really does mean a whole lot. Thank you so very much. And if you're interested in owning a week in Geekdom merch, check out the link below in the description for some t-shirts. I do have some designs that I'm working on that will be uploaded in the near future. So yeah, give it a look. See if you like it. It'll help out a ton for this channel. As always, again, thank you for being a part of the channel and I have got to go, so I will catch all of you on our next episode.