@Mckk: Well I have read quite a lot of manga Ummm tbh I don't think their entirely different as you put it. Yes the art is different and the panel layout to but that's not exactly enough to stop me from viewing manga as a comic book because ....hmm at the end of the day ....it is one. Art different? Art is different in every comic/manga you'll read depending what artist is working on the book. Yes Japan and American comics have different styles but everybody draws differently to a degree and as for the panel layout but a lot of comics have different panel layouts to but with manga biggest difference with that is reading in reverse. But yeah their are differences The art styles of America and Japan comics differ, American comics are more populated by superheroes (but there is a lot of other stuff to but I mean when you think of comics....off the bat I think most think supeheroes) and in Japan its more...genre friendly, maybe? But as someone who has read manga and btw Bakuman is a great choice......though Death Note was pretty good up in till certain parts Bakuman had me enthralled till the end, damn fine read. But I never really had to work to understand manga that much. Perhaps I haven't analyzed manga enough when I read it and I do agree there are differences. But they both are comics but from different places......I never saw them as that different of beasts but eh .... Though I tell ya one thing manga has that our comics should do....is cheap books. You can buy like 3-4 volumes each for like six or seven dollars and get pretty good chunks of reading but with American comics collected issues of trades/graphic novels will run you about 11 to sometimes even 30 dollars (depending what you buy)
I don't find manga difficult to understand at all, but then I grew up with manga. I admit I've never really read American comics - I've seen them around but their art and storytelling style never appealed to me. Far too rigid. I've definitely come across Europeans and Americans who have struggled to understand manga due to a lack of exposure - your ease of reading might simply be because you're used to it. For example, you know how in manga, they put those 3 or 4 dashes across people's cheeks to indicate a blush? I had an English friend ask me, "Why are there scratches on that person's face?" Another time I explained to an American friend, when in a frame you see a character in the foreground, and there's a background set against black with speech bubbles presented like they're exploding - that's the character thinking, and the background is the things the character sees in his head. My friend stared at it for ages looking very puzzled. She understood how that could work but the interpretation was far from intuitive for her. Anyway, Deathnote - hahaha "up until certain places". Yeah. Totally agree. I still enjoyed the whole thing (only watched the anime) but it definitely wasn't half as good afterwards. I'm only on Chapter 16 or something of Bakuman, so not that far in. I love the art. Makes me wanna draw manga again. I keep being amazed at how the author/artist have managed to keep me interested when nothing much happens at all and with so much infodump on the process of publishing a manga!
I respect your statement but you don't realise I studied manga almost my whole life and grew up with it! I know manga well and will draw in the style of manga as I always will. Yea, I am from the usa.
And so you should. Draw in the style, enjoy the creativity and share your talents and stories. I wouldn't deny anyone that. I fully support it. All I'm saying is that calling it manga means it's Japanese.
My brother is Australian and he does it. Just pour your heart into whatever you're good at. Don't worry about whether it's 'acceptable' or whether it's your place to do it. If you're good and you put the effort in, you'll be fine.
Ciabatta is still ciabatta if it's not made by Italians. Flamenco is still flamenco if it isn't danced by Spanish people. Calling something by it's non-English name doesn't make it a rip-off.
Marvel has already published a mangaverse and Tokyopop was already accepted american writers and artists. I don't think a non-Asian writing a manga is new.
Anime is popular in Spain and the animation industry there follows the Japanese style pretty closely but has in many ways made it their own. But anime is a bit more culturally accessible to non Japanese (in some cases) than manga. I'm not sure you can make a non Japanese manga in anything other than style though. I suppose if you enjoy drawing like that you could say it was a manga style. I lived in Japan for a while and manga is very culturally specific to Japan. There is an absolutely enormous amount of manga produced every year on every imaginable topic. Unless you can speak, and read, Japanese pretty fluently then 99% of it will be a mystery to you even if you could get ahold of it outside of Japan. As a foreigner you may consider that to be a good thing, it's an interesting medium but there are a lot of topics that 'we' would not want addressed in a comic book that the Japanese dont seem to mind. They are rather too comfortable with the sexualisation of children for my liking and there is manga that is aimed at kids, or at least salarymen who are interested in manga that is aimed at kids, that crosses a line in my opinion. Quite why or how they have ended up with that is beyond my comprehension and something which is culturally peculiar to them. There are commonly accepted mores that dictate how the stories develop, what the in jokes are, and guide the reader in what to expect, and its not respected in any way as an artform by the mainstream. I'm not sure that you can just draw people with spiky hair and call it manga, but who knows.
If you like manga, you could try something very similar (at least in concept, as it's not a Japanese thing) with web comics. They can be very popular, and some writers/artists make a living off of them.
About what manga is. Here is how the Oxford dictionary defines it: 'A style of Japanese comic books and graphic novels, typically aimed at adults as well as children. Compare with anime.' Wikipedia calls it a type of comic created in Japan. So in this definition, you can't make a manga. You can make a comic book in Japanese style though. However, the question remains why you would even want to. I have no idea myself, because manga is largely the most terrible rubbish. As is anime. It's just not very good, and I do not get the interest in it at all.
All depends on whether you accept The Oxford definition as - definitive. Many dictionary definitions, particularly in specialized topic areas, are arbitrarily restrictive, and at the same time can omit essential qualifications. Personally, I find the question itself unnecessarily nitpicky.
To be honest, my second question is more important to me, but maybe it's because while I have liked some anime and manga, I just don't understand the sometimes obsessive interest in it people seem to have. It seems people are mostly interested in it because it's different, rather than actually being good, and that as a concept is just alien to me.
For the same reason anyone likes anything: because they do. There are all kinds of reasons and personal history that might make a person dig it. I grew up in Hawai'i of the very late 70's and early to mid 80's. We had Japanese programming channels. I watched anime that most of today's anime and manga fans would look at with a "What the heck is that?" face. Pre anime invasion shows and films. It's part of my childhood as much as Thundercats is part of other peoples' childhoods. As for it being rubbish... Well, not everything needs to be super cerebral. And it's not all rubbish. The work of Miyazaki is gobsmacking. Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell, these were amazing. And every culture of animation has its "Disney at its best" and its "Hanna-Barbera at its worst".
There are a few good anime and manga out there I can point to, I just wonder about the cult of anime that's been around for some time. The way some people talk about it, you'd think everything about it was the second coming of Christ or something. There are only two types of red wine. One where you drink it and think 'Mhm, not bad' and the other where you drink it and go 'PAH!'. The second is the most common.
Funnily enough, you're not the first person to put this phenomenon to question. I'm sure you know South Park famously lampooned the invasion of anime and manga as a cultural invasion. As I mentioned in a different thread concerning translations, translations of manga and doujin (usually called scanlations, not translations) are often riddled with translator's notes in every little corner of free space possible. The Western consumers of these translated manga and doujin want all these little cultural tid-bits that are lost in translation. They are prized pieces of knowledge to wield in manga forums, no different to how people in writing forums bandy opaque terms at one another like filtering or narrative intrusion, or the fourth wall, all things that can be described in plain speech but those snazzy words are like badges of honor. You know things. You've been around. See how it's not so dissimilar?
I suppose so. I'm aware it's a new art form, and to be honest my unease around anime is likely linked to one of my great personal failings as a human being, my ill feelings toward comic books. Especially superheros. I would likely be a better person if I liked comic books. I will give anime and manga something - at least it isn't Marvel.
@Lemex: So, there are a few good anime you can point to (some of the ones you've seen), but all of it is pretty bad in general? Something is only good until you've decided that it's good, then? Let's agree on that for the sake of a few paragraphs: Most anime and manga isn't even translated. You see the VERY tip of the iceburg. 99%. That tip? Everything that is expected to appeal to Westerners. You, and all English speaking people are getting the Iron Man/Spider Man/Die Hard 1, 2, 3 and 6—mainstream stuff. You're the guy in Tokyo who thinks American movies are bad, simply because he only gets translations of the most unimaginative, rehashed blockbusters out there. I don't know if it's good, you don't know if it's good. If you rock fluent Japanese and fly over there for some reading sessions every now and then, I retract this. Otherwise, it's not smart to think you know. Just putting that out there for food-thought.
It's not just me who says that. So it's not me on my little island of one. If we really are getting only the most widely applicable stuff, then what does that say about the rest of it? If it's good, why not send it over? People are open minded. I mean, I living in the UK don't always get references in American fiction, but that doesn't stop me reading a lot of it. I'm sorry if you feel personally vindicated by my comments, but yes there are a few anime and manga I can point to that are good. The manga for Battle Royale was the best of the incarnations, even the film which had an atrocious ending, Cowboy Bebop and Fullmetal Alchemist were pretty good - but what else? The big three Bleach, Naruto and One Piece are all boring as sin, Death Note's alright until L dies and then who really liked Near? The films can be decent enough, but what about something like FLCL which ... I mean, have you ever tried to watch that? I've seen (read: been forced) to watch a lot of it, and there are some I like; there are some I like despite the fact I know they aren't very good. Why, then, do people keep going on as if it's this amazing thing when it just ... isn't? If it's really an applicability issue, we as English speakers have access to a lot of material that is no longer our culture, yet we can still read it for enjoyment.
