Hiraya Manawari: From Fragments to the Frame
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Carbonell, Julian
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Ramsay, Emily
Harris, Miriam
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Auckland University of Technology
Abstract
Hiraya Manawari: From Fragments to the Frame is a practice-led research into the revitalisation of Philippine pre-colonial mythology through contemporary visual media—specifically 2D hand-drawn animation and an original Philippine komik employing anime and manga-influenced aesthetics. Rooted in a decolonial framework drawing on Walter Mignolo and Linda Tuhiwai Smith, and following Hazel Smith and Roger Dean's Iterative Cyclic Web Model, the research asks: How does transitioning oral stories to contemporary media and storytelling, including animation, comics, and manga, help revitalise cultural identity and heritage?
The project centres on the Apolaki-Mayari and Bakunawa myths—documented by Landa Jocano, Maximo Ramos, and Damiana Eugenio—as foundational world-building elements, from which original characters are developed. Rather than retelling existing myths directly, the work positions Philippine mythology as a living creative resource capable of sustaining new narratives and new emotional worlds, drawing on The Witcher franchise and Hargrave's analysis of Cartoon Saloon's Irish Folklore Trilogy as precedents for mythological world-building and indigenous animation as decolonial practice.
Theoretical grounding is drawn from Scott McCloud's frameworks of iconic abstraction and panel transition logic, Thomas Lamarre's account of limited animation as philosophical mode, Mizuko Ito's concept of participatory media culture, Richard McGuire's formal innovations in layered sequential art, and Susan Napier's analysis of Miyazaki's mythological practice. Together these inform both the critical and the creative dimensions of the work.
The research argues that anime and manga aesthetics—deeply embedded in Filipino popular culture as documented by Bernadette Canave Bravo and Gutierrez—represent not cultural colonisation but strategic remediation: a form of cultural agency through which Philippine pre-colonial mythology can be made accessible to all Filipinos, in the archipelago and across the diaspora. This is not a work of preservation. It is an act of participation. Filipino stories, told through a visual language Filipinos already love, made by a Filipino who grew up receiving those stories in fragments.