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Why Does Manga Succeed Where American Comics Fail?
Otaku_0245 writes "I read a really interesting article at slushfactory.com entitled 'Why Does Manga Succeed Where American Comics Fail?' discussing/comparing the comics industries in Japan and the US. It's basically a 3-way conversation including Frederik Schodt (author of 'Dreamland Japan' - one of my favorite books about Japanese pop culture), and very thought-provoking."
IMHO, I think it has to do with the deeper stories about mans plight with technology and how it seems to be taking over our lives. Plus it seems the artistry is a little more alluring. Don't get me wrong, Comics are great in thier own right. It just seems that people can get a little tired of super heroes after a while...
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The answer here is culture. Not so much traditional japanese vs american, but just a level of acceptance.
In the US comics are still seen as trash. the language of people who aren't bright and have nothing to do with their time better than waste life. This is not true however, the perception remains.
In the US there is of course a subgroup who appreciate such works, and know there is more to it
Japanese culture in general appreciates these things a little better. Without judgment on the content, there hasn't been such a strong surge of "these are trash" during the last 40 years.
Whether or not something is good or bad is often irrelevant. When it is pushed under it becomes a subculture, which in the US is what we have more than Japan
The female characters have much better/larger personalities
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
it has variety, not afraid to discuss 'taboo' topics, and every series ends, unlike american comics where most of the super-heroes are still alive or are just re-introduced as X "Unlimited".
Since when did American comics fail? Last I looked Spiderman, Superman, Batman, X-Men and many others were on just about every newsstand. Not to mention MAD and other, more satirical comics. I, for one, read hundreds of comics set in the X-Men universe when i was younger (The New Mutants, X-Force, Cable etc). On the other hand I've only read a couple of mangas and wasn't too thrilled. Not to say manga is bad, just it's not very appealing to me. I found the storylines a lot more "real" in the X-Men Marvel universe, ironically. It spoke about real political and environmental issues affecting America today, whereas a lot of manga seems to be more about internal or personal issues... Perhaps traditional "geeks" can identify more with the latter, but for me tackling racism and the political environment head-on was a lot more interesting.
It's worth mentioning that here in France there is a very big market for manga-style comic books read by adults and teens - most book stores have big shelves of these comics. Japanese manga and anime is also available and relatively popular. The same situation also exists in Germany and Italy - Japanese manga is very popular in these countries. English-speaking countries really seem to be the exception here in that in these countries manga is virtually unknown and comic books are seen as inferior to text-only books.
Personally, I think it's all in the binding. In japan, you can get them as books (same size, etc). In america, they are this large thin peice of crap that will tear by looking at it.
It's people's perception of it.
I find it amusing that the title of the post is "why does Manga succeed where American comics fail," and yet the first answer to the first question in the article basically states that the manga industry is falling into decline in exactly the same way that the U.S. comics industry has.
It's simple, really. Manga is no different from American comics, in terms of writing quality and artwork. It's simply a matter of what's in style. Manga, like Anime, has enjoyed quite a lot of success in foreign markets like the U.S., where it is something of a novelty.
People enjoy the exotic flavor of things like this. Often times this is augmented by feeling like you're in part of a niche audience - it makes you feel like you're clued into something that everybody else is ignorant of. But these are not good foundations for any business that desires longevity and stability.
Manga is just the hip new thing, that's all. It's what's in style. But it is already starting to wear thin (Let's face it - there's only so far you can take an industry when everything is drawn with so little variance in art style). So I think this is a loaded question - manga has nothing to teach American comics. If anything, American comics have learned the hard lessons first, having had a lot more experience dealing with a fickle readership. I think they could probably teach the manga industry a lesson or two.
Probably because there's a stigma for adults in the U.S. to be reading picture books, just as there's a bias for adults to consider animation kid-fare.
Doesn't mean that it's right or wrong, but it's there. Aside from shorts, and comic strips, the adult audience in the U.S. is very unlikely to go out and buy serialized graphic novels, or watch 2D animated films, irregardless of quality (unless it's a Disney film.)
Also, "comic books" in the US has a very specific designation, for a maybe 30 page pulp story, sold in racks. If you broaden the term to include stuff like Doonsbury, Peanuts, and Garfield, then I'd argue that we have a pretty good penetration, which reflects format. The article mentions that japanese will buy manga to pass the time while on the subway - I'd just buy a newspaper, and take a glance at the comics while I browse through the business section. Different media drive different formats, for different audiences.
If you look at it that way, then US syndicated short format strip comics are not a failure. It's the traditional larger format pulp stuff that isn't selling well, probably because it's so damnned expensive. Hell, $3.00 for a single issue of Usagi Yojimbo??? For the cost of two comics, I can buy a remaindered copy of a Tom Clancy novel. That'd take up at least a week's worth of commuting on a bus or subway.
I was never a hardcore comic book reader, but there were a bunch of American comic titles that I used to read back in the late 80's and early 90's. Around the early 90's, though, things started getting ridiculous. Comics wanted to be treated as *visual art*, they got much more expensive and "collectible". That first issue of McFarland's Spiderman comic was the beginning of the end. That thing was what, twenty pages long and cost three bucks? But the picture sure were pretty, and the paper sure was glossy. *gag*
Now, you can't even buy comics at the convenience store any more- at least not many of them. They're marshaled away in specialized comic book stores, where collectors go to peruse.
Manga, however, has always taken the opposite approach, the one American comics used until the time period I just described. Manga keeps things cheap, fun, and disposable. For the equivalant of a few bucks, you get a couple hundred pages of manga. Easy to pick up and put down, and it's not "collectible", so you can carry it anywhere. The stories are pulpy and fun, and they don't try to be more than they are. Sure, there are some though-provoking plots (Shirow, etc) but it never takes itself too seriously like a lot of American comics do.
(I know there's plenty of exceptions to the things I talked about. I'm talking "in general", not "absolutely and completely")
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The first is variety. There is manga about everything: Sports (pick your favorite), vampires, giant robots piloted by 14-year olds, biker gangs, romance, religious themes, (and, yes, porn)...the list goes on and on. It's true that US comics aren't just superheroes, but American comics don't exist in the variety of genres that manga does.
The second is literacy. People like to claim that Japan has a huge literacy rate; I don't have any figures on how true this is. However, most books are damn hard to read, especially if you're interested in something likely to have uncommon kanji like sci-fi. (I recently brought a copy of the Japanese translation of the Heinlein book _The Door Into Summer_ to the school I work at, and many of the teachers had trouble with it.) On the other hand, manga is very easy to read. A lot of the time, you don't even have to worry about the kanji, since it's accompanied by furigana. The fact that the story is a combination of pictures and text makes reading a lot less mental effort (which is good, because it's likely you're already mentally exhausted from school or work). In America, there doesn't seem to be a functional difference in the level of literacy required between a comic and a novel, so there's not as much reason to shell out $2 or $3 for a 20-page comic (with advertisements) when you could get a paperback for twice or thrice as much.
Sono koro, bokura wa, sore ga sekai no shinjitsu da to shinjite ita.
i find that most manga comic characters seem to have that subtle sex appeal that makes them interesting. it's not that i don't like donald duck but he doesn't have that expression on his face that i see with a lot of manga stars.
and i'm not talking about the pr0n stuff which i personally can't really find very pr0nific.
--
my 5 cents and your 5 cents are ten.
We are all individualists!
Its all about story. And having one. And hacking off limbs... and killing main characters and... sex!
I went into a book store and occaisionally glance through the "manga for girls" (how embarassing, crazy gaijin doesn't know that's the girls section!) and its got as much sex and violence as the stuff for guys!
Well maybe not as much violence.
That's what superman's missing... some good graphic sex and cheating on Lois.
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Sounds like an excellent thing to collect! Anything that is so common and cheap that it is disposable can become very valuable indeed if you keep a copy in good condition for a few years. This is because very few other people will do so, and yet the number of people who will appreciate the thing is fairly large. (this has happened in the past with other comics, books, fine art, furniture, etc. so there's no reason to suppose it won't happen again.) And it's not even a difficult or expensive thing to get into doing...
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
...is better than ANY American OR Japanese comic. :-]
That was classic intercourse!
Even at the risk of being modded down for saying this, I think one of the reasons might be that us-american comics simply lack quality. Of course there are exceptions, but most of them seem to be nothing more than reiterations of the same worn-out themes and stories with the same worn-out character stereotypes - at least that is my own personal impression.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
From the CIA World Factbook
Literacy in Japan: 99% (1970 est)
Literacy in US: 97% (1979 est)
But those numbers are pretty meaningless being a generation out of date. Even if those numbers are accurate a difference of 2% is no difference at all. More interesting figures would be the number of people who read the newspaper daily, or who read outside of work. I suspect those numbers are quite low in North America.
This may be slightly offtopic, but I have been wondering, why there are no more Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck comics in the US?
They still seemt to be very widespread in Europe, but I can't recall seeing any in the US recently.
big eyes I tell ya 0.0 they are like windows to the soul :)
Seriously tho..
its socially accepted for a 38 year old man businessman to read sailormoon in Japan on a train.. try doing that on your local train in the states and see how many dodgy glances you'll get.
The reason that comics in the US do not have the wide appeal of manga in Japan is obvious in just listening to a comic fan attempt to describe manga. It usally goes something like, "they're like comics, but they're about anything. Everyone reads them."
There's a perception in the US that comics (the name itself is skewed, which is why so many have tried to use terms like "graphic literature", etc.) can only contain "kids" stories and their only fan-base are otaku.
This is not true, of course, but it's correct for a majority of comics (getting less so over the past 10 years) and a majority of readers (still quite true). Until both of those change, the stereotypes will remain. There *should* be more comics about everyday life that appeal to everyone.
If you've been out of the loop and are interested in catching some of the more interesting comics out there, here are some of the ones that I've found interesting (note: not all of these are traditional comics, but some are and the rest are certainly not mainstream literature by any measure):
Superheros:
* Astro City -- What its like to live with supers
* TOP10 -- In a world where everyone from the meter-maids to the homeless are super-heros, what are the police like? Odd premise, great book.
* Rising Stars -- In a midwest town, a meteor strikes causing all in-utero babies in the area (113 of them) to develop unusual abilities when they're born. The 24-issue series follows their lives and deaths and the politics that surrounds them.
Fantasy / Alternate History:
* League of Extraordinary Gentlemen -- An amazingly cool look at an alternate history where all of the late 1800s and early 1900s fantasy, adventure and science fiction books are true. Everyone from Sherlock Holmes to Captn. Nemo to Dr Jeckle are in the story, and it works well.
* Girl Genius -- A fun story about a world that can only do high-tech through magical individuals known as sparks.
* Lucifer -- The title character is the angel, cast out of heaven and formerly ruler of hell. This is a spin-off of the classic late-80s/early-90s series Sandman.
These are the books that I read now. Fantasy and super-heros are well established genres for comics, and they're done well in many cases. It's just too bad that there aren't more genres being allowed in. Real science fiction makes an attempt every now and then, and sometimes it works, but often it does not. The slice-of-life stories that really made manga are almost non-existant. In fact, the closest US comics came to that, AFAICT is Archie.
Yeah, well 99% of all Anime/Manga/Anything else japanses... I used to be really into anime, to the point where i watched enough of it to realize that, while there are a few really good ones (cowboy bebop, eva, a handful of others), the VAST majority of it is complete and utter crap.
Also, hentai is the sickest thing around. Seriously, what kind of warped people think up tentacle rape porn, and then proceed to actually DRAW it, frame by frame?
Manga is literature.
Comic books are not.
It's a cultural difference. Reading is discouraged in this society. There is also the fact that manga publishers see markets other than boys 8-15.
Presenting a shoujo manga to the average U.S. publisher would be like trying to show a medieval fisherman how to use sonar.
Also, there are more genres in manga. There are sports manga, business manga, sitting in the park and watching the sunset manga. They may all have 0.00001% of the market, but together, it's the most widely published form of literature in Japan, and like anime, it is slowly going to gain popularity in the U.S. until the competition either wakes up or goes out of business.
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In the U.S., yes comics are either trash or treasure. If you are a mainstream kid, they are cool. Mainstream adult, garbage. Fanboy adult, treasure. An audience of children and fanboys is pretty big, but when your material is not varied enough and prices for each book are high, you will attract zero new readers.
In Japan, EVERYBODY reads manga. It appeals to everyone. The appeal explains the saturation. The saturation explains the print quality. The print quality explains the cost. The cost explains part of the appeal.
The disposable manga marketing model is so profitable because of Japan's disposable culture. Don't fix or keep old things, especially at the cost of living/storage space, if newer and better things can be had cheaply. This profitablity attracts publishers big and small, which creates a demand for artists and writers. There's your variety. Think American comics industry in the 1980's on a bigger scale over a much longer period of time (decades).
The article points out the collector mentality that American comics fans have. I share this mentality, because I like to think of every purchase I make as SOME kind of investment. I also have a huge house and ample storage space for my stuff (in the bay area, it's a wonder I can afford food, but yes, my house is quite respectable and my collection is as well). So comics are expensive, because as a collector, quality media production isn't just a premium, it's a requisite for purchase. Problem here? Joe Blow sees the price tag and walks away from the neewsstand thinking, "I miss my 60 cent Uncanny X-Men books." No new readership? Then regardless of how shiny your book is, you will get no new readership.
Schodt had the whole thing covered. As I see it, America will never have the same level of saturation for this type of media as Japan. Their culture and the publishers' understanding to their culture facilitate high consumption rates. America isn't Japan. The differences shouldn't cause concern for anybody but Marvel and DC.
Cute anime girls with guns/tails/cat ears > steroid pushers in spandex with stupid capes and dorky names.
and they suck because American comics are considered as childish, dumb and cheap. Honestly, I don't know why but I'm sure some people have theories.
So the whole business is seen as unattractive and people buying them are labbelled as dorks. Go to a Borders or BN and ask for the "Graphic Novels" Section, you will see the look they give you.
In Europe, comics are an art form. It's big business and therefore it attracts lots of creative people like writers and graphic artists. So there is some pretty strong competition going on.
There're books for every age but there're all pretty good. Usually, parents read comics too, so they can detect crap quite easily.
Also, it takes a lot more work to produce a volume. Profilic artists release two or three books PER YEAR. Books are also a lot more expensive (goes from $8 to $20), bigger (A4 is the norm), with a good paper quality and a hardcover. Such a book usually survives for 30 years.
I own a few american comics : the first Alien VS Predator, some Star Wars stuff... The stories, the graphics, the colors can't compare to some middle-quality european comics.
Of course, we do have our fair share of garbage too. Stories running for 20 books (at $12 at pop).. Computer generate drawings...
Finally, anecdotal evidence makes me think that the talent is there (the absolutely amazing Strangers In Paradise serie (www.strangersinparadise.com), strip comics, Will Eisner (The Spirit and some other books), movies...), but it isn't promoted.
Anyway, Europe's situation 50 years ago was similar to the US' situation today, so there is hope.
Nobox: Only simple products.
In Europe, particularly in Belgium and France, both american comics and manga have a wide following, but there is a much larger reader base for other types of 'Bandes Dessinées': cartoons of all sorts that can be entertaining (the well known Asterix, Tintin for instance) as well as thought-provoking, very well written, complex and rich stories anchored in real life, history, politics, fantasy or sci-fi. /. crowd would be hooked to the wonderful and intelligent stories of the 9th Art.
Drawing styles follow very different and wider rules than comics and manga, from the hyper-realistic to the almost impressionistic.
I really find it a shame that the immense majority of this art form does not find its way into many other languages, I can assure you that the
1. Overused / unrelatable characters. In the US comic market, there are three types of characters: thoroughly recycled, new but testosterone saturated, and "girl's stuff." The "New" spiderman has been done for so many generations it is hard to get anyone interested. The Maxx was a highly accessable character with a surprising amount of depth... if you could get past the fact that he looked like a van with p3nises coming out of his hands. Most people can't. And if you are only selling comics in bastions of testosterone (comic book shops), how do you plan to sell comics about human issues? Japanese comics come in all flavors, all sizes. They're not as stereotyped, but they don't go out of their way to fit a stereotype. Not every manga cover in Japan involves a big sweaty guy holding a weapon. (Yes, I'm aware that Johnny the Homicidal Maniac is a small sweaty guy holding a weapon. That's why he's more accessable.)
2. Most American comic books are franchises of a successful main character, while manga are plot-driven stories involving characters. Many comics are written as independent stories by multiple authors, which makes it difficult to change anything canon about the character / world without getting a quorum at a committee. The character is left exactly where he started at the beginning of the comic book having gone nowhere. And there generally is only superficial interaction between the independent stories. Manga seem decidedly more plot driven, with characters serving as focal points rather than subject matter. Kaneda was hardly in Akira in any substantive way, and mostly served to allow the story to unfold. No one in their right mind would suggest an Akira 2 just because you could carry the character over. But such a thing is assumed in American comics all the time.
3. Comic books are unsatisfyingly short. After actively searching out a source, finding a comic book shop, and driving to it to get the latest copy of Big Sweaty Guy with a Gun: Reborn, you would expect to be have at least some entertainment from it... right? Well, unless you found that rarity of American comics, the compilation, chances are it is 20 pages long, 1/2 of which are action tiles and need no reading, and which can be finished in about 7 minutes. And don't forget to tune in again next month when they release the next 7 minutes of the story. Either your story is going to have a plot that wouldn't challenge the teletubbies, or your reader is going to get bored and move on in the year and a half it takes to finish your storyline. In japan, compilations seem to be far more common than they are here, with many, many more pages to read. I have never seen a japanese comic anywhere near as short as ours, page for page. It's just not worth bothering to spend 20 minutes every month for a year picking up a comic that you are going to read in 7... but picking up one of those ubiquitous manga in 30 seconds while shopping, and reading it for 2 hours? That's not a bad deal.
Sadly, none of the above seem to be changing any time soon. Plot driven comics with accessable characters served out in meals not bites? Sadly, not while the big two are still in charge.
The ______ Agenda
Because it's not an American comic.
Seriously. A lot of people will prefer Japanese stuff to similar American, simply because it's different. Why? Because it's more interesting. When we perceive something as different to what we're used to, we can either find it intimidating (if it scares us or we don't understand it) or interesting (if it seems harmless enough and there's a chance we'll grow to like it). When it comes to anime and manga, it's rare that a person will find themself frightened by a mere foreign comic book.
There's also the fact that anime and manga are gaining popularity, and with good reason - they're generally rather good. Anime is an art form - the drawing of the characters, colouring, shading, movement, balance, character design, sound and storyline are all well thought out and well implemented. Compare this to a western cartoons which are very often unsatisfying in their portrayals of characters - they're just too flat and hard to empathize with.
The best manga and anime are most often the ones ported to the english language, which reinforces the idea that anime is good. Not to mention its wide range and the huge audience it can reach. Once someone finds an anime they like (many people start on a dub of something like Dragonball Z), they are much more likely to gain an interest in other series of a similar style.
I don't think I have to mention the fact that while American comics and cartoons target kids who are used to watching costumed superheroes and anthropomorphic animals in their daily six hours of watching TV, Japanese animation has Dragonball-style dirty humour, Evangelion's depth and confusingness, and Ghost in the Shell's commentary on what it means to be human.
It seems to me that one other major factor was overlooked - furuhon-ya, or used book stores. Generally more than half-full of manga (which reportedly is half ot the published material in Japan,) these tend to be large, brightly lit, extremely efficient, and amusingly named. (Perhaps the best example: Book Off. [link in Japanese])
In the article, Tamai mentions that the price point of tankouban, or collected volumes of manga, is around 500 - 1200 yen. Most people I know in Japan who buy tankouban do so exclusively at used book shops, for much less than half of that price. It's not uncommon to be able to buy an older series for 100 yen per book, especially when buying many volumes together in a set. Of course, you can sell the books back after your done, again at a fraction of the price you paid.
The point is when you think "used comic shop" in the states, you imagine paying $10 a pop for some plastic-encased hard-to-find issue. In Japan, the idea of paying more than the original sale price is almost ludicrous. Anything that is even remotely successful will be published to death, and republished as long as any demand exists. In the meanwhile, it will be mercilessly imitated by other artists. Only a few classic writers (Tezuka, Shirow, Miyazaki...) have unimitable style that retains its market value years later.
I'm not sure whether these shops actually benefit the manga industry or not, but I would imagine so, as there doesn't seem to be any attempt to shut them down. Over the last few years, video game manufacturers started printing "Not for Resale" notices on their packages. This was overturned in Japanese court, thank god... in rental-forbidden Japan, used book stores are about the only sane way to try and buy games.
At any rate, this is another interesting aspect of the "recycling" motif that is prevalent in manga but completely missed by the American comic market.
Donald Richie has lived in Japan for over 40 years and is a well known cultural critic, specifically movies (I believe he did the commentary track on the Criterion Seven Samurai DVD and was interviewed extensively for the Kurosawa documentary on 20th Century Masters on PBS). He has also written several books on Japanese film and its stylistic differences from the rest of the world.
I think a very specific point in his A Hundred Years of Japanese Film (which I recommend regardless) might answer this. Richie says that one of the fundamental differences between Japanese and Western (specifically American) cinema is the drama that they are derived from: Japanese plays (Noh, Kabuki) are presentational while Western plays are realistic.
Ok so what does that mean? Well in Western drama (and which was then carried over into Western cinema), there is an assumption of naturalism: things are as they seem, as they are in the Real World. Japanese drama though, with its stylized movements, its paramount importance of placement means that in many ways the form of the style dictates much of the logic.
This has meant that many things that are considered avant-garde (i.e. Adult) in the West (Expressionism, Surealism) are actually incorporated into all levels of entertainment in Japan.
An example would be a sword fight. In the West when someone is hit with a sword they are expected to bleed normally, scream out, and fall down dead.
In Japan you can have someone hit in the throat with a sword, stand there, say something ("The irony... to hear it from my own neck"), then a gyser of blood shoots out, and they tip over silently (ala Lone Wolf and Cub). Where in the West this would be seen as an experimental choice, in Japan it is commonly accepted.
This is important for anima as animation is a stylistic choice. So fans of Japanese cinema would have no problem accepting it while a standard Western audience, with their realism indoctrination, have trouble accepting such a Fantastical step is Adult entertainment. The touching adult morality of Neon Genesis: Evangelion is thus less than the realistic dopiness of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, based purely on how the form of each is perceived.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Only they're talking abount manga.
Blue hair says "fun"
Manga is usually in black and white.
exaggerated high-pitched squeaky voices mean "happy".
If you hear voices coming from manga, you may be having a psychotic episode.
In every single case, the guy who likes Anime has some sort of difficulty dealing with or confronting women sexually.
I think the whole point is why is it different in Japan, where just about everyone reads it (or watches it in the case of anime). Married, single, male, female, old, young.
I sense a great deal of anger in you. I don't quite understand it; are you terrified of the weaknesses you think anime displays because you worry about seeing those weaknesses in yourself?
No joke, the Japanese read more comics because of their lower rates of literacy.
No, this isn't because they're stupid or their education system is poor, it's because of the complexities of their written alphabets. The Japanese have 4 written alphabets in regular use: 2 phonetic ones, hiragana and katakana; the chinese alphabet, kanji; and the english alphabet, romanji.
The problem is that the more high-brow the text, the more likely it is to be written in kanji. Kanji is a one-symbol-is-one-word system. You have to have a bloody large vocabulary to make any sense of it.
These comics tend to be written in one of the phonetic kanas (hiragana or katakana), so they're easy to read and accessible to anybody with a gradeschool education. This makes them more popular.
Just imagine if all English books were written in Shakespearean english, or worse Old English. How popular would comic books be with adults then?
Ok, this is a common theme with people who don't understand the Japanese, so I'll field it.
You take a generation of children. You make them all dress the same. You emphasize gender differences in clothing, to make sure nobody accidently becomes attracted to members of the same sex. You do this throughout the entire period a person develops genitals, develops sexual feelings, hits puberty, falls in love, enters the most intense period of sexual excitation in their lives, peaks, then slowly eases off that peak. Only then do you let the opposite sex wear whatever they want. I can guarentee you just made a double-digit percentage of that group a fetishist of whatever clothing that opposite sex group wore. Women are lucky (sort of) in this situation because they don't peak until significantly after such a time when their opposite sex group can change clothing, and therefore generally don't develop this fetish.
And, of course now the only people wearing thoes fetishized clothes are age 6-19 year old girls. But it isn't really about the children, it's about the clothes. My mother (japanese) looked like she was 12 until the day she turned 50. If you're attracted to 14 year old japanese girls, chances are you would be every bit as attracted to a 35 year old japanese woman in a schoolgirl outfit. Without falling onto all look same stereotypes, you probably wouldn't be able to tell the two apart.
Schoolgirls in manga isn't about child pornography, it's a deeply rooted schoolgirl uniform fetish. It's one of the more powerful fetishes I've come across (though I don't have it, thankfully), and it is one that we are going to pass onto our children if we persist with these rediculous school uniform rules we have popping up around the country.
The ______ Agenda
The article was not about the few the Manga titles that get imported to the USA from Japan. But rather the state of the industry in Japan and how ubiquitous comics are in Japan. Also the fact that the majority of manga is in very thick, low quality, cheap volumes that are read and disposed of (like a newspapers or cheap paperbacks) rather than the expensive pamphlets of the US (oops my WEF roots are showing).
Also you're dismissal of the entire Manga industry on the basis of Ranma 1/2 is the equivalent of dismissing the publishing industry based upon romance novels, or the film industry based upon childrens movies like "Home Alone" and "Free Willy". If you don't like one example it's not a case for condeming the entire medium. But then I guess straw men are much easier than real opponents to knock down.
The success of Cerebus is actually similar to that of Manga in that it is the collected volumes not the original comics that are the final repository. Also Dave Sim has control of his creation which is a very rare thing in the US comic industry. His story also has a specific goal and will finish soon. This is extreemly rare in the US industry and more than anything leads to the repetition and unenven quality which is why a large number of people stop reading comics after a certain time.
In Japan Rumiko Takahashi, responsible (you may prefer culpable) for Ranma, has created 4 major series the first three of which reached conclusions and stopped (the fourth is still ongoing). Rather than the concept becoming stale and repetitive she finished and started another new story. Also her stories are about the characters. Whilst the situations provide the background for the drama and conflict it is the characters which make people want to read them.
Whilst the best of American comics may reach this level sometimes it is normally in only one small area (superheroes) which do not appeal to a great number of people. In Japan the breadth of the subjects of manga are those of any literature and so most people can find subjects that are interesting to them. So whilst areas of this may go through peaks and troughs as a while it continues in strength.
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Everyone should check out the Seven Myths about Literacy in the United States. Turns out that the perception of American literacy rates rapidly sliding downhill is largely due to (surprise surprise) media frenzy.
But I guess the hackneyed old tradition of U.S. bashing is still in vogue. Will it ever go out of style?
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Even those who purport to understand Japanese culture around here (and then proceed to talk about manga as child porn) are so off base I just had to act...
The Japanese consider their culture to be nearly impenetrable to westerners. Even if you go in with an extremely open mind, there are many aspects to the culture that we, as westerners, could probably never understand. Simple direct observation of the culture from within (yes, you have to actually *go* to Japan to understand this) along with said open mind doesn't hurt, though, and having a Japanese wife certainly helps too.
Looking at manga in terms of western comics is completely misguided from the start. Manga in Japan is simply the way quite a lot of literature is presented to the public; it's the accepted method of reading most less serious fiction and non-fiction for both children *and* adults. How-to books, instruction manuals, even novels come packaged in the same artful style and the variety of subjects is endless. There's not what you would even call a "manga industry" in Japan in the same way as there is a "comic industry" in the US - the manga industry is simply the Japanese publishing industry. They obviously have non-illustrated books too, but illustrated literature is a standard, accepted form of literature in a way that it is not here. Manga in Japan is quite literally everywhere - it's not something you go to the "manga shop" to buy. You couldn't get away from it if you tried.
Many of the causes for manga's success listed in the linked article are actually effects. The fact that there is so much variety in subject matter is less a reason for success than it is an effect of the cultural acceptance of the legitimacy of illustrated literature. The Japanese are very visual people, and I would argue that their alphabet itself - which is itself entirely symbolic - is one of the root causes for this. In other Asian countries you see similar phenomena (illustrated literature is very popular in Korea as well, for example). The Japanese are used to looking at iconography and determining meaning from it - it is necessary for them to get through life - whereas we largely are not. I would argue our brains are wired more for conceptual analysis than iconographic analysis; we assign meaning from text and speech rather than visuals.
It's also completely untrue that there's no collector culture in Japan. The fact that many "manga" books are disposable doesn't mean they all are. You may buy a disposable paperback at an airpot to read on an airplane here but that doesn't mean that hardcover first printing of "A Farewall to Arms" you've got at home is in the same category. Again, this just shows a lack of understanding and acknowledgement of the fact that the "manga industry" is simply the publishing industry in Japan - the variety in manga extends not just to the subject matter but also to the durability of the literature. My wife has illustrated books of Miyazaki stories that she's had since she was a kid, and most Japanese people I know are the same way. And these are not even otaku - hardcore fans - who actively collect as much of this stuff as they can.
Anyway, the main point is that it's a mistake to look at anything in Japan through western eyes. You need to at least *try* to look through Japanese eyes, as impossible as that is. There are things you can at least begin to understand if you attempt to delve deeply into the culture, but you'll never get close if you insist on looking through our perspective.
Japan is a nation that relies almost entirely on mass transit. People spend a lot of time on the train, or the bus, or waiting for the train or bus. Rather than sit around and be totally bored, many fill the time with reading manga. More recently, people are just as likely to sit and play games or message friends on their cell phones.
For the same reason the super-high-tech japanese cell phones and DoCoMo features haven't really caught on here in the US. While this might also work in New York City, the vast majority of the US is much more spread out. Most Americans own cars, and few outside major cities use mass transit. Even less use it for trips longer than a half-hour/hour (which is common in Japan). The critical mass for this sort of thing just isn't there.
I've built up so much character I have an alter-ego
The image of comic books is largely still that of simplisticly written and drawn adventure stories. This hasn't been true for decades now, and some comics have writing that's superb. The X-Men movie sequel is largely based on a Graphic Novel called God Loves, Man Kills by Chris Claremont (longtime X-Men writer). How's that for quality source?
Plus, I think comics are gaining MORE respect among the public. People in my age group (I'm 34) grew up with quality stories and art, so that explains the mounting acceptance and popularity of superheroes for film matierial. Some of the most popular movies of the past few years were inspired by comics. The first 2 Batman movies, SpiderMan, Men in Black. All great movies with widely diverse audiences. There were some stinkers, too (Tank Girl...Ugghhh), but as a whole, the medium is getting better and some of the public know it.
As for the continuing lack of respect for comic books as an art and profession....I lay that blame squarely on other writing and artistic professions. It's basically snobbery on their part. Writing comics isn't "real" writing to a novelist, or journalist. Drawing and inking comics isn't good work compared to, oh, I don't know, abstract art that no one outside the academy gives a shit about. I heard an interview with Stan Lee on NPR a while back, and he talked about how depressed he was in the 70's, because other media outlets (newspapers, time magazine, fiction writers) didn't respect what he was doing, and when he tried to branch out, doors were slammed in his face everywhere. Ironically, he made a bigger impact on our culture than anyone from NewsWeek or the New York Times ever did.
But the respect war is being won. Look at the new crop of comic-based flicks coming out. Daredevil has long been a fan and critical favorite. The Hulk is directed by oscar-winning Ang Lee. And the highly anticipated X-Men sequel is once again directed by Bryan Singer, who is highly respected in Hollywood.
The Japanese culture is simply different. They were never saddled with the "comics is kid stuff" rap. They have a little more of an open mind about such things.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Where exactly are American comics failing? I've been collecting for over twenty years. I trained up as an artist. So I know what I'm talking about when I say that the comics have never been more creative, better written, professionally crafted.
Manga? I just don't get the obsession. The plotlines are derivative of bad pulp sci-fi, pre-Campbell. The artwork is adequate for the most part, just as "American" comics are. The best art is fantastic, the worst abysmal.
The plotlines in the majority of manga and anime are hackneyed, especially painful since they are run through a language and cultural translation.
I realize manga and anime (I have to lump them together) have become a religion amongst geeks and kids, but its not because of quality -- they're cool because they're cool. Literature, they are not. For the most part. Just like comics.
I can't understand why bunny girls or twenty years out of date cybercowboys ripped from Gibson are more interesting than the tortured old man in "The Dark Knight Returns", or the reinvented heroes in "The Watchmen". Love and Rockets. Dork Tower. Men in Black. Liberty Meadows. Silly and sublime, ten cent junk or graphic novels, American comics have grown up in spite of great resistance from the public at large.
One can argue that manga can be capable of interesting stories, but that doesn't make it more successful. Remember, there is a large amount of manga that doesn't make it in the mass market -- misogynistic, violent, xenophobic, and adored by Japanese of all ages, byt not suited for our culture. We only see the tip of the iceberg, sort of comparable to thinking Brit TV is all Masterpiece Theater, when it's mostly bad game shows.
IMO, altho I've seen incredible artwork done by Japanese artists when relieved of the more everyday restrictions of manga, the comics I see daily are dull, unimaginatively drawn, with bad, bad, and I mean BAD writing with insipid plots. Remember Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is shit.
Manga... the characters all look the same. This is not a generalization -- they are intended to look alike. There's something weird about how the eyes are never drawn with epicanthic folds, considering that they are drawn for a Japanese audience. Running through the genre an obsession with young girls that would get you talked about, not to mention tracked by Ashcroft's goons, if you were drawing in the U.S.
I realize young fanboys and fangirls devour manga the way I used to chow down on Marvel, but that doesn't make American comics "bad". Young people like simpler stories. Manga returns to old comic roots by simplifying the artwork on one level yet showing sophistication in execution. American comics have evolved for an older audience now --there's no help for it.
I've listened patiently to plot breakdowns from rabid fans, and had my eyes glaze over. Let's see: a lone hero(ine) starts out from everyday origins to discover their hidden power that can defeat the demon which yadda yadda... essentially old Japanese folk stories rewritten, just as American comics repeat the Rugged Individualist meme from the old west. But cowboy stories have been done to death, and so has the Lone Ronin, whatever blue hair he wears.
Also, hentai is the sickest thing around. Seriously, what kind of warped people think up tentacle rape porn, and then proceed to actually DRAW it, frame by frame?
What kind of people dream up dripping candel wax on tied up people? or using toturing devices in love making? What kind of people would think of using the rectum for sex? What kind of people would then go and draw them cell by cell / page by page?
Different people from different culture may get off from differnt things. What one finds as the norm may be seen as sickening by someone with a different prespective. Granted, some fantasies may be more disturbing then others, but I don't have a problem with people expressing themselves through drawing, sculpturing or other forms creation.
Having said that, the term "hen tai", literally "changed behavior", translats to "pervert/perverted/perversion". That should hint you off what those would contain.
But the Marquis De Sade, who lived in france in the time leading up the the french revolution, and during it, was a worse sicko than most people would ever think of. He is where we get the term "sadist" from. Frankly there is a large subculture around the world that goes for rectal penetration, candle wax, and alot worse (electrocution, beastiality, necrophelia to name a few).
Some hentai caters to these people.
As far as the "tentacle monster" genre, there is a reason for that. There is a censor group in japan that deemed that A) you can't show pubic hair, and B) you can't show penises. To get around these censors the artists removed pubic hair (which had the effect of making the characters looks younger, although japanese women tend to look young in the first place), and rather than having a man having sex with these women, they used phallic replacements..and thus was born the tentacle monster.
For a good analysis of this, listen to the commentary track on the La Blue Girl Returns DVD (unfortunately priced very high).
RoundTop
American comics "fail" because American comic book publishers are hopelessly wedded to the superhero genre and are generally unwilling to take risks that will alienate their core "fanboy" market, a market that is predominantly male and ranges from teenagers to young adults. This is the conclusion I've come to after reading comics for nineteen years, reading trade publications for fourteen years, and actually running a comic book store for two and a half years.
.45 pistol and a tattered bullet-ridden American flag on the front, published in a normal novel-sized trade paperback form instead of the oversized comic-book TPB form, and got it into traditional bookstores under "Military Fiction" where people interested in military fiction might actually go to look for it.
They are stuck on the 22- to 32-page format that currently runs for about $3 each. $3 a pop for 32 pages? Even with the price of novels rising, a 200- to 300-page novel is still only about double that price. Granted, the paper quality is better in a comic book, but even though I can finish a 300-page novel in three to four hours of uninterrupted reading, it takes me about 15 to 20 minutes to read the typical comic book -- less if half of the pages are full-page "splash" panels.
The state of the industry for writers and artists at the big publishers isn't much better than the state of the industry for the music artists that Slashdot seems to rally behind whenever the RIAA opens its collective mouth. Writers and artists are seen as interchangeable cogs, to be hired and dismissed at the editor's discretion. In the 90's, creator-owned projects were starting to gain widespread acceptance in the comic book market; before then, creator-owned projects were thought of the purview of people who didn't have the talent to do "real" comic book work ("If he's such a great artist, why hasn't he ever drawn X-Men?") but now the trend is starting to backslide. There are small publishers that are willing to do primarily non-superhero, creator-owned books. Also note that I refer to these as "small" publishers.
Comic book publishers are unwilling to do any serious marketing or distribution outside of the circle of comic book retailers. In an essay, one comic book writer wondered how many copies of Fury (a recent revival of James Bond-esque Marvel Comics superspy Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.) Marvel Comics could sell if they stripped all of the comic-book art off of the cover of the book, put "FURY" in big bold letters on the cover with a
Where are the Harry Potter-style comics for younger readers? What about comics for girls, like the Nancy Drew books my wife used to read incessantly when she was a child? There was a great comic back in the 90's called The Second Life of Doctor Mirage which had such a strong female readership that it actually had a soap opera actor as a guest character in the book. It died shortly after the publisher Valiant Comics decided it had to revamp its line to appeal to the fanboy market; now Valiant is owned by Acclaim which just uses the characters for videogames like X-O Manowar, the Turok series and Shadowman.
The only reason I still read and love comics is because there are stories there I can't find anywhere else. And I'm not talking about the superhero stuff, either.
Jay
Japan has a higher literacy rate than the US - despite their writing system.
Hiragana is taught to kids first, and doesn't contain that many more unique characters than our own 26 letter alphabet. Katakana is simply an alternative phonetic set. Yeah, you're learning more unique characters than you'll need for English or most of the European languages, but big deal.
You can write anything in Japanese with hiragana or katakana. Kanji are borrowed characters from Chinese, and have a few difficulties. First off, most kanji have multiple readings, so even if you know what the character means, you may still "say" it wrong. This means that you're basically stuck just memorizing the character and its readings. Obviously, this becomes easier once you see them in use.
High school seniors are expected to know the basic set of 1500 characters. This is what you will need to be able to read a newspaper as well (as compared to the US where our newspapers are geared towards 8th graders...)
College undergraduates are expected to learn an additional 500-1000 characters, based on their area of study. If you're going for an advanced degree, you can expect another 1 or 2 thousand more characters - again, based on your area of study. I've met Japanese who have studied medicine and know over 5000 characters.
Getting back to comics... There are comics for all different age and interest groups. Comics aimmed at younger readers will include small hiragana characters next to more advanced kanji to help the reader (this writing is called furigana.) However, comics aimmed at older readers, say college-aged or older, will contain *no* furigana unless it's a really rare reading or word.
While it does take some getting used to, I find that I can read much faster in Japanese than I can in English. This is partially due to the use of kanji, which condenses many words down into 1-4 characters.
And, yes, there have been studies conducted on this. People who are fluent in multiple languages were found to be able to read material faster in Japanese or Chinese, than English. One reason is the sheer number of characters each language uses in its writing.
I completely agree. I lived in Japan for a long time and could read well enough to read manga.
It's just a mindless escape from tedium, like watching endless hours of TV in the US. It's just that the Japanese aren't home to watch TV, for various reasons, so they do the portable equivalent by reading manga.
And it's like TV: the more you watch, the more you're hooked. There's just enough story, suspense, comedy, or whatever to keep you coming back for more. It feels a lot better than staring at the wall (if you turn the TV off in the US) or at the back of the next train commuter's head (if you don't have your manga in Japan.) (Or, dare I say, than doing your work, you regular Slashdot readers...;-) Ouch.)
But there's little real substance there. Not none, but not much. Of course there are a few good TV shows and a few good manga stories, but not enough to fill the bottomless demand for mental anesthesia, so the rest is just forumlaic filler....
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
That is a misconception. The expensive, coloured, thin ones were published before the manga explosion (triggered by publishing Dragon Ball under the Japanese formula, like it was discovered in France before - thick, black and white, low quality paper, cheap!). These are unsold artefacts.
The cheap thick ones were published after the manga explosion. And many series was relaunched (Akira, Alita, 3x3 eyes) under the Japanese formula, instead of the US/Euro formula and became hits.
There are 3 pulp style magazines around now in Germany, with serialized series:
Regards,
Marc
Japanese Manga is not just the actual manga that makes it popular, but the fact that it's from Japan gives it instant 'cool' status, and means it's better than some american/english nerd knocking it out, but it's a Japanese nerd.
The stories I have read are alright, and due to the complete head on approach that Japan takes when it deals with things, issues such as rape, child porn and violence are all in the more risque manga. Actually, when it comes to violent crimes like these, Japan is at the bottom of the pile for these crimes.
So yeah, I don't know how much of it is due to the automatic karma that being Japanese gives anything, or how much of it is due to the head on approach it takes. It hasn't made me read it to be honest, and I'm out here in this land, but it seems to be a winning formula!
-- [Mofette]
http://www.mofette.co.uk