Forum - View topicReading manga from Right to Left is a FAD
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darkhunter
 Posts: 2992 Location: Los Angelas |
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I found this article by Bill Randall to be very interesting. He rant on about reading Translated Manga in the japanese style is a fad and consider unflipped manga to be half-translated. You can say he really like the flipped format by all the title he listed. I don't disagree with what he said, but I also don't agree---in other words, I feel indifferent.
My whole take on the situation: I would prefer the manga to be unflipped because I'm used to reading manga that way, but if it happen to be flipped, I don't mind if it's done correctly. I'm confortable reading manga/manhwa in any direction so it's not a big issue for me. Also one interesting thing in the article was the statement of Legend of Kamui (21 volume total by Sampei Shirato) outrank Blade of the Immortal, Lone Wolf & Cub and Vagabond in the swordplay department. Since I never read LoK because it was cancle at volume 2, I wonder how good it really is cause I'm interested So is reading manga in the original R to L order a fad? Last edited by darkhunter on Thu Jan 05, 2006 6:54 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Cloe
Moderator
 Posts: 2728 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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A fad? No, I don't think so. A mistake? Well, I think it depends on the particular title in question. However, whether or not unflipped manga is considered an injustice by fans and critics has little to do with its trend in the marketplace. Right now, the amount of unflipped manga in stores vastly outnumbers the amount of flipped titles. And manga fans have made it fairly clear they prefer things this way. So I don't see this trend (if it can even be called that, anymore) disappearing anytime soon.
As for my personal belief? I agree with Mr. Randall that some of the finer care that went into translating and arranging flipped manga faded away as soon as "authentic" became the norm. However, I believe there are more pros than cons to leaving manga in its original format, despite problems in readability. (The biggest pro, of course, being able to see the original artwork.) I would like to see more care in layout, text size/font, and paper/ink quality for U.S. unflipped manga releases, though. From a strictly intuitive point of view, reading flipped Black and White or Push Man is a much more enjoyable experience than reading unflipped Princess Ai. But titles like Nana and Sexy Voice and Robo work fine reading right to left, while Nausicaa and Battle Angel look great either way. All in all, I suppose I'm like you, darkhunter. As long as the quality of the release is good, I don't care one way or another. As a side note, I just checked the recommended titles in my Public manga list and 7 out of the 10 of them read left to right in the English language releases I own. I don't know if this indicates I like reading flipped manga more, or if my taste in manga just happens to coincide with flipped U.S. releases. 
Also, thank you for the article. His recommendation list is very good; much more insightful than I expected. |
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darkhunter
Posts: 2992 Location: Los Angelas |
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I caught that typo right before you posted
 , it's 4am over here, I'm not thinking or typing straight when it's so early in the morning.
I do miss the high production quality of a lot of of the flipped GN. If Viz decide to release 20th Century Boy on high quality paper and larger size like their older Editor's Choice/Pulp title than I would be on 
Last edited by darkhunter on Thu Jan 05, 2006 7:21 am; edited 7 times in total |
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shadow_guyver
 Posts: 307 Location: Tokyo, Japan |
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My problem with flipping a manga is that the art gets reversed. It isn't really all the big a deal, with possible exceptions of images of real world places, but that's always nagging at the back of my mind when I read a flipped manga. I've also gotten so used to unflipped manga, that I've openned non-manga books at the back because my hands were just running on autopilot.
As for being a fad, I don't think it is. I don't find unflipped somehow special, which seems to me is his arguement for it being a fad, but rather find flipped to be somehow odd. |
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Cloe
Moderator
Posts: 2728 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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I noticed and edited my post right away.  It's 6 am here; I haven't gotten a wink of sleep all night!
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marie-antoinette
 Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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I very much doubt it's a fad, seeing with how openingly it's been embraced by manga fans. Flipping pages causes more trouble then it's worth, really (for example, in the original release of Fushigi Yuugi, after they flipped the entire thing, they had to go and unflip the Chinese symbols which appear on many of the characters' bodies). And since people are more than willing to read right to left, why bother?
So yeah, essentially, it's the new norm, not a fad, the only things you'll find out there from left to right are what was originally that way (such as manwa or the recent North American comics in manga form). |
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Kagemusha
 Posts: 2783 Location: Boston |
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Yeah, I remember seeing this article a while ago. Interesting with ALOT of good points, but in my opinion TCJ often likes to to bitch for the sake of setting themselves apart from the uncultured hoards. They're better than just about anything else out there though, and the recent shojo issue was good.
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Kouji
 Posts: 978 |
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This article from Bill Randall screams biased all over it. Is it safe to assume that Mr. Randall is one of those people who can't bare to watch subtitled anime because he has an inability to walk and chew gum at the same time and it's just plain not American? I mean, it's just not patriotic to read something in a different way (sarcasm)! He claims unflipped manga to be a fad, but he doesn't backup why he thinks so. He doesn't interview other people to ask them why they like unflipped manga. He claims that most of the manga of today are crap, but only offers two or three examples and doesn't even explain why he thinks they're crap, other than that "they're predictable." He says that unflipped manga are only half-translated, but he doesn't explain what he means by "half-translated" or why he thinks so, other than that he doesn't like them leaving in Japanese text, because apparently anything that's not in English is just not patriotic. I don't know a lick of Japanese at all, but I find that I can read my "half-translated" manga just fine and dandy, and most unflipped manga these days include a little thing Mr. Randall should look into called "translation notes".
Mr. Randall just doesn't want to put any effort into doing something different because he thinks his way is the only right way and anything else isn't patriotic. He claims that flipped manga had more accurate translations than unflipped manga, but doesn't explain why. Obiviously, Mr. Randall never read the flipped versions of Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, or Magic Knight Rayearth. Mr. Randall says in the article, and I quote, "The point of a translation is to make a work intelligible to a completely different culture, to interpret it so that the barriers of language and custom are no longer insurmountable." So, would Mr. Randall like it if the Japanese took one of his favorite American comic books (which are somehow less predictable than manga even though I don't understand why because he never tells why) changed the artwork so that it was in black and white, flipped the artwork so that it read in right to left instead of the sacred left to right format, and changed the American comic book style sound effects to Japanese sound effects? The point of translating is not to localize it in a way so annoying xenophobic Americans can read it because actually thinking while reading is too hard. It's to translate it in a way that it sounds natural in whatever way you're translating while at the same time, preserving the original intentions of the creators. I myself enjoy unflipped manga. Indeed, I do like it more because I think it's important to preserve the authentic feeling of the manga, just like how I think it's important to preserve the authentic American feeling of a DC comic book when you translate it into Japanese. These are JAPANESE comic books, after all. If I wanted to read something left to right, I would read one of Mr. Randall's favorite less predictable American comic books because everything back in his day is better than everything today. Nice try attempting to convince me that unflipped manga sucks, Mr. Randall, but the next time you claim that unflipped manga is just a fad and that unflipped manga is "half-translated", how about trying to prove it by writing an article that isn't "half-written" like your current one is? |
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apple pro
Posts: 190 |
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not a fad —
keep integrity of the original art at all costs. that's respectful to the original medium, the story and the artist. |
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alice20th
Posts: 74 |
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Is it a fad or not?
That's almost beside the point of Randall's article. When publishers with ties to the comics establishment (such as Dark Horse) made manga that was similar to mainstream comics, he liked them (or, at least didn't feel threatened by them). But now manga has gone around not only mainstream comic's methods of storytelling, but also their marketing strategy, format, and distribution channels to dominate a category that American comics used to own, and Randall does feel threatened. So he's putting out an article that is supposed to tell you why you shouldn't like what you like. The calcified reader will always tell you that modern works are simply derivative of older works. Hell, Shakespeare was derivative of the ancient Greek playwrights. The calcified reader will tell you that modern works are crap. He's probably taken a sampling of perhaps three or four books, none of which matched his tastes (few people who take a large sampling would generalize that badly), and thus he condemns all modern manga. Dispite his reasons why manga is impossible to enjoy, people seem to enjoy them (how dare they?). It goes against his logic, and therefore must be a fad. A fad is the only model that fits his world -- people going crazy for something and later wondering themselves what all the fuss was about. Mass hallucination. In Randall's world, it's the only possible explanation. He deserves pity. Manga is more popular than American comics right now, and people like Randall, rather than trying to figure out why manga is popular, stick their heads in the sand and scream, "Fad." He's fighting the tide, and the tide always wins. |
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Neo-Yasha
 Posts: 67 Location: Man., Can., Earth |
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To call reading manga from Right to Left a Fad is to say that the more sensiable thing to be doing is to read them Left to Right. Why is it so wrong to appreciate a way a culture does something? And is it wrong for an American/North American publishing company to just translate the words, while keeping the format? What Mr.Randall is actually stating is that he belives it should be completly Americanized, and the only part that you don't change is the artwork (of course, I wouldn't be surprized to soon here someone of Mr.Randall's calibur to start saying that, “We should get some American Artists to re-illistrate all the manga's that come in. There's being fair to the the original makers of this 'Manga', but why should we, The People, have to suffer with hack job artistry. I say no more!”. This, my friends, is what's known as a Melting Pot. Sorry to say, i like the idea of letting a culture have their unique style, and for their products to represent a little bit of that style. Call me crazy, but I support the Right-to-Left way.
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DemonEyesLeo
 Posts: 844 Location: Japan |
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A fad? Well, yes and no. It could be considered a fad because reading in the right-to-left style is different than the norm of English reading and this style is followed by a selected, although a very large, group of people. On the other hand, a fad is something that is temporary, and I don't see right-to-left publishing going away anytime soon; and also that by un-flipping the pages, the artwork remains as it was drawn. So in a way it's a fad, but I think it's a "technical" fad in that it's different, but at the same time it's original.
That being said, however, Mr. Randall does make some good points about this right-to-left reading being "half-translated." He wrote: "un-flipped pages set the flow of the words and the flow of the images in opposition to one another." And this is true when you think about it: your eyes are reading the words from left-to-right, but your eyes are looking at the images and following the panels from right-to-left at the same time. So I do agree with his assesment; it's a bit extreme and a bit critical because I've found no real problems reading in the right-to-left style, but it's still a good point. I'm like Cloe and darkhunter; I'll read manga in whatever style as long as the quality is good. |
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Kagemusha
Posts: 2783 Location: Boston |
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I think alot of people are taking his views in a very negative way. Attacking his character and calling him xenophobic is just stupid; the man has obviously read alot of stuff and I'm guessing is fluent in Japanese. He's attacking the trend of companies pumping out generic crap that gets embraced by fans as more "authentic" than incredible works that just happen to be flipped. He doesn't hate unflipped manga, just the direction it has taken the industry in.
As for Legend of Kamui, I've only read the two volumes that were translated into english, and while quite good, weren't as good as the three titles mentioned in the article. Maybe it kicks into gear a couple of volumes in, or maybe he's biased because he read the original Kamui that was serialized in Garo (which is supposed to be one of the finest works of adult manga ever). |
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Coffeeman
Posts: 298 |
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I think that printing manga in the original right-left format will definately continue to be published in that format by dedicated manga publishers.
For other publishers, I can imagine them switching to a left-right format. I think that one of the benefits of unflipped manga is that, essentially, it's one less thing that the publisher needs to do. |
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Haru to Ashura
 Posts: 617 Location: Termina |
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As long as Tokyopop doesn't start making OEL right-to-left manga, I'm not calling it a fad.
Last edited by Haru to Ashura on Fri Jan 06, 2006 3:52 am; edited 1 time in total |
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