Graphic Novels Can an American make a manga?

This is me when I'm watching Mock the Week or Russell Howard's Good News. I have to have my iPad at the ready to look up names of Brit celebs and politicos with whom I am not familiar.

 

Okay, the difference in language barrier there is a few U's and fags/cigarettes. Not a different reading direction, let alone type-set and grammar composition.

I'm not irked to your comments of anime; just the general lack of open-mindedness. If you were saying that Kafka's work, and German novels in general, were terrible and not worth reading, I'd be replying in their defence just the same.

Who are you going to cite? Someone could easily say they think Genocide is a good idea, and: "It's not just me who thinks we should kill all the purple people. SO THERE!"

I understand that you don't like what you consider wacky/boring Anime. I agree with you on most of that, however, I don't think you understand gain or value.

Tell me, Lemex, what is "good?" What does "good" mean? Don't tell me it means quality or excellence, because then the circles start.

 

It was years before I found out what a station wagon was (and I think it was you who told me). I had to work out what a 'sedan' was, and references to the New Deal in Frost were at first without the internet completely lost on me. I don't know why anyone who isn't interested wouldn't look this stuff up.

As I've pointed out I do actually like some anime, some would even say I like a lot of anime. Recognizing the quality of a genre as a whole is not closed-minded, it's being honest. Would you be saying this same thing if I said fanfiction was all crap? Because I do.

I don't buy into the cult, there is no reason to get emotional about it. Your admitting you would defend anything, regardless of quality, though is odd but I suppose admirable.

This is very poor logic, that displays you are emotionally hurt by my comments. As already pointed out by someone else, the creators of South Park are critical of anime. Frankly I'm not going to come up with some list just to satisfy your curiosity. Look around even the internet, it's not hard to find.

Wackiness is not the same as boring. I never used the word 'wacky'. Where did this come from? I think I know.

Well, the principles of Ars Poetica have stood up long enough as pretty good as standards of quality. For something to be 'good' it has to be eloquent in presentation (quality of drawing style - if you don't know anything about drawing compositions this one will be lost on you), a unified and internally consistent whole (think how Death Note had to pull an 'L Training School' out of it's arse to finish the story) and characters have to be drawn consistently and accurately to life so it seems natural - this one speaks for itself. Also, it must be said, while it is down to personal taste to a degree, people agree what is good or bad by consensus.

I also again will happy admit my ill-feeling toward comic books like Marvel, frankly there is no faster way to bore me than to start talking about Deadpool or Captain Underpants Man or whatever, but opposed to other traditions of animation is anime really all that special? When I look at it without the odd cult of anime around it I don't think it is.

Thus my original question (admittedly very belligerently put) why would you want to. If you like it, go for it, but it'll not be read outside the fanatical community of people who care, and even then you are limiting yourself among those for the fact it's not from Japan.

 

To be fair, anime was always bizarre to me. Even if the characters were drawn as life-like as possible, they would always have these weird quirks where they'd have overly-exaggerated facial emotions to convey what they're feeling, giant vein/water drop that sort of thing. In some stories they're fine, but in others they put a dent in the drama. How can I take what's supposed to take a scary moment seriously when one of the characters' eyeballs suddenly grow to take up half their entire face?

Plus, as said before, comics drawn to the style of anime/manga outside Japan will not be considered anime/manga simply because they weren't made in Japan. Do we consider Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra anime because they have some of the anime-style quirks? No, it's a cartoon show. A very good one, to be sure, but not anime.

 

That works both ways. Check out the book Shakespeare in the Bush, which tells of the cultural difficulties of tell Hamlet to a completely different culture. There, Hamlet wouldn't act on his own or make a fart joke or talk to people of certain rank. To get the story across, lots of changes had to be made for another culture to get the larger picture of what Hamlet was supposed to convey. English and it's history (no that those who speak English always know our own history well) isn't universal either.

Plus, anime is just another cultures' version of an entire medium. Saying it's bad is like saying paintings are bad. Or books are bad. Just like all mediums, most will suck and only a small percentage of that will appeal to a single person.

 

You are right, but few people will seriously contest the statement that most fanfiction is bad - so I don't see any problem with pointing out most manga is bad. Fine, I take back manga as a medium is bad, but I stand by my intention to say most manga is bad.

 

You're deflecting. Me saying that I know of people who like Anime has the same weight as your earlier comment, and I'm surprised you don't realise that.

I apologise if it appears I am getting emotional. I will refrain from sarcasm and use fewer smilies if it makes you feel less of a need to be defensive.

And yes, I would be saying the same thing regarding fan-fiction: people have completely different expectations and gain completely different things from the same stories. Isn't there someone here who was inspired into writing by a MLP fan-fiction? I went and read the story; it was interesting, though it doesn't make me want to go out and write something similar, because I was affected differently.

I agree. However, that comes down to opinion, as there are varying degrees that satisfy people differently.

Serials go in all kinds of directions, kind of like Dr. Who. Did the original writers imagine him falling in love with one of his, uh, women-tag-alongs? I think it's generally agreed that show is a good series.

Many will disagree with that. The dude from The Scream didn't look so natural. I'm happy with the look of a character being representative of something, as are quite a few other people.

@Lemex: so it is popular opinion that anime, according to your latest statement, is "mostly bad?" You don't have an ounce of data for that, and neither do I. Unless there's been a poll I cannot find by searching Google?

Edited to hopefully fix some of my atrocious grammar.

 

No. What I said was poor logic was your commenting that something awful like genocide is considered good by some, so anime. It's poor logic because one is moral relativism, and one is cultural relativism. Anyone should be able to see the difference - if you genuinely can't, cultural fads when I was growing up in the 00s like Nu-Metal seem strange and silly to teenagers now, something like genocide, though, is a moral crisis of an age and is symptomatic of a major cultural trend.

Basically, to compare anime to genocide is poor logic.

I'm not defensive, I'm just pointing out that you appear emotional and emotion clouds logical thought.

I guess this comes down to a personal philosophy of art, I think there are objectively good or bad things. I like reading Dan Brown novels - I think they are trash, and not worth the price they go for in shops, but if I can get my hands on them I read them happily. They are fun, and can kill a few hours, or a lazy afternoon. How much I enjoy or was affected by something has no baring at all on if I appreciate it as a work of art, because the flip side is I can appreciate something like Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein, but I don't enjoy reading it I find it boring as sod. And Gertrude Stein was an egomaniac.

Yes, this is right.

I wouldn't know. I've not watched that show since the red-headed assistant left. I only watched it to for ... guy reasons.

The painting? Well, that's doing something a little different because it was basically half way down the road to Modernism. Impressionism I think it was, The Scream isn't supposed to be representational, but the fact it wasn't - the fact it presented a distorted view of things, is entirely the point of the painting.

If you were talking about a specific manga/anime like FLCL which clearly isn't going for consistency or accuracy to life then yes your point would be perfectly valid, but since we are talking in general terms where manga is while a cartoon, at least depicting admittedly exaggerated 'what ifs', and not something outright surreal like FLCL I feel that guideline applies aptly.

You don't know what data I have. But since you've asked, I'll provide. Here's the results of the google search 'Anime is overrated': https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1DSGQ_enGB454GB454&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=anime is overrated site:answers.yahoo.com&safe=off

654,000 results there. It's not an uncommon opinion.

Google result for the search 'Anime is bad': https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1DSGQ_enGB454GB454&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#safe=off&q=anime is bad

About 23,200,000 results.

There's my data, collected in less than 5 seconds.

 

https://www.google.ca/search?q=anime+is+good&oq=anime+is+good&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.2079j0j8&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8 mll

If we're going to play that game, 68 million results for "anime is good." I disagree with either statement. I will not label anime good or bad, especially from counting Google search results. I will say I don't like it or like it. It's anime, and I will not view it prejudicially.

You're saying that, logically, anime is "bad" in general. I disagree, though I found this conversation interesting. It's always cool to feel out other peoples' opinions and reasoning.

 

Wasn't it you (I honestly forget, and I'm too lazy to even look back through this thread) who said that most of any genre is rubbish. That is something I tend to find true, and thus it is my default position unless a genre can prove to me otherwise in investigation. Anime hasn't passed this 'test' for my I'm afraid, coupled with the fact I'm instantly suspicious of things people seem to love unconditionally. I tend to trust people's opinions who can find faults in the things they love, because that shows to me they have a good level of critical thinking skills. The only time I've ever seen an exception to this is with Dante, because everyone is allowed one exception and contradiction.

I'm not saying all anime is bad (at least not any more) I can't for the life of me work out why people would want to it. It may be my ill-feelings toward comics. It may be I don't really see the point of trying to enter such a small and fanatical circle where a major part of the community will reject you anyway for the simple fact you are not Japanese.

But, I can't (and nor would I) physically stop the original poster trying. People should do whatever they enjoy, and it's no skin off my back. The question I've been trying to raise all along is if a non-Japanese person tries to make a name for them self in manga-anime, the odds are stacked almost impossibly against them, and it's bad enough if you try novel writing as it is. And the rewards don't really seem all that worth it from where I'm sitting.

Can? I don't really know. Should? I would say it's not really worth the effort.

Anyway, been fun chatting.

 

i'm not sure where you've been, but in recent years most writing forums seem to be full of people who advocate fanfiction and wil give you the same argument as to why most is bad (most of everything is bad and only little of the good stuff will appeal to one person).

I'll agree with you that most manga is bad. Not the medium, but most of what I see is both objectively and subjectively bad (though this may be different in culture and I don't know how much leeway one can give a mangaka when they end up working every waking hour to barely afford ramen).

 

Right. And I don't see why we should give mangaka (I've never heard of that word before, thanks for teaching me it) any more leeway than we do any other struggling writer. I say that as a struggling writer.

 

Arguing over whether non-Japanese manga style comics are "genuine" enough to have merit seems to me to be similar to arguing over who would win in a fight: the Empire from Star Wars, or the Federation from Star Trek. Who cares?

Label it whatever you want.

I'm just glad the Japanese don't have the same media prejudice the West does, because I live anime and manga.

 

Yup. The debate is an unfortunate consequence of a simple lexical gap. There does not seem to be a term that refers to the style people associate with "manga" and does not refer to any language or national origin. I will coin that term: "agnam".

Lots of people around the world make agnam. Japanese people make the most of it (so much that we have a special term for Japanese agnam: "manga") -- but so do people from other nations who write in other languages.

See how easy that is?

Kind of like how lots of people around the world make sparkling wine. There just so happens to be a region in France called "Champagne" where they make sparkling wine and they name it after the region.

 

Hello. Get ready for a rude awakening. And by that, I mean to EVERYONE on this thread. By the way, did you know that this one thread tops on Google if you look up "Can people make anime or manga outside of Japan/ are there people making anime outside of Japan"? Great example you losers are setting for people.

The only thing I smell from this pile of seven year old dung and counting is good old fashioned fathead hobby belly tossing, and dare I say, narrow minded nationalistic ethnocentric hooliganism by a bunch of Western world whiteies. The only reason why "manga is bad" is because you are a bunch of pedantic ratrace know it alls angry you aren't the ones on the throne and are more myopic and insular than you'd like to believe. Why else you all would now come to make internet forums your own claptrap hole of your own self pitying and projective garbage?

But I digress. I encourage anyone to try to make their own anime/manga/whatever by going through the ropes and doing things the old fashioned way. The key? Study and practice. Everyday. I will also say that the way of an artist is as much of a moral and intrinsic one. Listening and wallowing around egotistic jerks who pollute the internet isn't helping anyone, especially to those who wish for fortune, influence, and fame to act like more of jerks than they already are.

Another thing: quit putting anime and manga on a pedestal of exoticism and otherness. This what a controversial way of thinking called Orientalism does. The biggest draw I ever got from anime and manga is that it is as human as any creative work you'd see around the world, and that its best, famous or not, creators, see a world greater than just the shorelines of Japan. That's what got it the advantage, as opposed to a world of creativity heavily restricted by things like censorship and stigma by ingrained harmful cultural norms.

So yeah, you can make anime and manga outside of Japan. It's a wild west out there though, so the path you wish to blaze is all up to you.

Finally, this thread sucks. Go somewhere else. I sure ain't coming back.

 

I daresay our grumpy interlocutor has a point here. The idea that one must be of x ethnicity to engage in y art form "authentically" is nonsensical. It's a snooty, faux-worldly cover for the simple (and false) intuition that "those people ain't like us". Even if it's in the context of someone gushing about how wonderful/ spiritual/ blah blah "their" cutlture is, it's still talking about Japanese and other East Asians like they're space aliens.

 

r/iamverysmart

 

Actually the Unabomber's manifesto made a lot of sense up to a certain point.* I stumbled across it once, not knowing what it was or who it was written by, and was fascinated for a few pages or so (don't recall how much) before it started to get insane. That bizarre rant above kicked in immediately with the crazy.

* I just checked it again. There are some interesting ideas in the first 2 paragraphs, but after that it nosedives into crazy immediately.

 

It's so strange, usually people who start a paragraph with

make really great points.

 

Well... far be it from me to sound like a weeabo otaku rabid japanophile and continue a six year old topic, but I'm going to.

In my view, non-Japanese can't create manga, for the same reason the Japanese can't create manhwa or manhua.

Anyone can create a manga-style comic. That's relatively easy and widespread. Hell, I can draw manga-style illustrations. But manga is more than that. It encompasses as well as just an illustration style. You have to have an understanding of Japanese culture to really write and draw manga, from understanding of certain Japanese norms to Japanese humour.

For example, understanding the nuances of the whole senpai-kohai relationship, which is a lot more than just some teenage girl simpering over her older classmate.

When a Japanese author tries to depict other cultures, it is inevitably way, way, WAY off the mark. And that is part of manga too, because the depictions are inevitably how those other cultures are viewed through a Japanese lens.

And, I take great issue with with people who try to depict something Japanese when their total exposure to Japan has come through manga. Manga isn't real - it's fiction, and it's a stylised form of fiction at that. There really aren't sword-wielding schoolgirls round every corner (ok, you might run into some ninja girls at the Iga ninja castle or Akihabara).

OK, rant over.

 

I think most accusations of “cultural appropriation” are bullshit. Cultural appropriation is simply how culture works. If you don’t believe me check out the etymology of “manga.”