Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Is OEL Manga Really Manga?
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kgw
 Posts: 1096 Location: Spain, EU |
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Quoting someone, you are doing the wrong question; it's not, "Are they manga?" but "Why should they be manga?"
How do you decide what's a manga except from their country of origin? Big, round eyes? Kinetic lines? Girls who go UWUU? The power of friendship? That's... a bit reductive, isn't? If apparently, you can do manga anywhere about anything, then everything is a manga —so nothing really it is, quoting other character— But here at ANN we don't have pieces about Marvel movies or superhero comics, why is that?
Now, that's not true. Murakami was the next series in line to replace the first cancelled series. It was Anemone as it could have been any other. But its author, Rin Matsui, get lost in his spectacular art to deliver a coherent history. It's not "too different", but "not too good". Also, when Daiki Ihara's Protect Me, Shugomaru was published in WSJ, he received a lot of vitriol from "manga fans" because to them, it was no "manga enough". Ciberbullying at its worst which ANN is encouraging in some way. It's a little bit like the legal protection for food labels: in the same way you can't sell your fizzy drink as "Champagne" if you are not in the Champagne region, or you can't put Bashmati rice and chorizo and calling it "Paella", you cannot make manga outside Japan. You can make a great comic, visual art or whatever, even better than what the Japanese authors are doing; but it is not manga. And if you need the "manga" crutch to help your comic, maybe it wasn't that good to start with. Yeah, it's my opinion. |
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Ryo Hazuki
Posts: 366 Location: Finland |
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There are several Western comics pulblished in Japan by Japanese publishers just like there are several Japanese comics comics published by Western publishers. I don't see what's noteworthy about that. For me manga is less a style than an industry. Felipe Smith moved to Japan (even if temporarily), because he thought Japan's comics industry would better enable him to make the kinds of comics he wanted to make. The reasons to why manga is the way it is, such as copyright deals, deadlines, editors, assistant system etc, have more to do with the publishing industry than any specific individual. |
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Gem-Bug
 Posts: 1247 |
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I think it was coherent, it was just burning slow and definitely felt like he got a pink slip a month ago and had to throw an ending together. |
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gsilver
Posts: 626 |
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I dunno, I've always seen it as, in English, manga is a loan word from Japan to describe comics from Japan.
In Japanese, manga just refers to comics. The same applies to anime. Though for something like JRPG, I've felt is a style/genre, so Undertale and Omori are JRPGs (even though they weren't made in Japan) while Final Fantasy XVI is not. Even if the original JRPGs like Final Fantasy 1 were heavily inspired by western properties like Dungeons and Dragons, they translated it into a videogame much differently than western developers did at the time. Now, newer games largely abandon the 'JRPG style' unless they're intentionally retro throwbacks. |
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Nekbone
Posts: 23 |
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Not to mention it's always the most boring requirements. If people are going to say something with a certain art style or gimmick makes something a manga, then I'll ask questions like where the fanservice is since 99% of the time that's completely absent from American series. Obviously anything Adam Warren or Scott Campbell draw is going to have it but most of the time a lot of series that try to bill themselves as manga (and anime) are extremely tame and safe and conform to American sensibilities in most areas. Asking for that is just as valid of a benchmark as saying something is a manga because it has big eyes or whatever. But I feel like 99.9% of the time people know what they mean when they say words like anime or manga and it's just people arguing for the sake of it. If I say I'm into manga and you bring up an American comic you're either someone who doesn't know what manga is like my dad or you're being disingenuous. |
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Stampeed Valkyrie
 Posts: 840 Location: PA |
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outside the play on words.. if its from Japan then yes its Manga. If its from the US, then its Comics. American Comics styled like Manga will always be American Comics. You can use terms like Manga style or simliar but it will never be Manga.
Otherwise you risk confusing everybody no matter what your preferences are. Manhwa is Korean comic art. and Manhua is Chinese comic art. Basically just identifying the nationality of the art style. |
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Nigel Planter
Posts: 81 Location: London, UK |
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I've never heard of Felipe Smith but I have heard of Yuu Kamiya the penname for a Brazilian man who created No Game No Life. NGNL is pretty indistinguishable from it's LN peers and very popular. Presumably because Kamiya has lived in Japan since he was a little kid and grew up in the country and industry. Actually after some Googling I have heard of Felipe Smith before, or at least his series Peepo Choo. That's the series that one panel people like the post about a Japanese character lecturing an American otaku to not fetishize their country as some kind of gotcha against anime fans. It's a bit funny to now know where that scene came from. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4489 |
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Is it manga? I don't think so, just as I wouldn't call cartoons made elsewhere anime, even though it is technically just the Japanese word used for animation. The word carries certain connotations, and it seems fairly obvious to me that the main reason it gets used like this is to help with marketing. Whether that is signaling that it's "not like" American superhero comics, or it's like that stuff you enjoy so you should give it a chance. I think a prior post raises a valid point about using the word "manga" specifically, even if there are other similar types of comics with their own word for what they are. Manga has a certain acceptability for sales purposes, so I think the usage serves a very deliberate purpose.
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gsilver
Posts: 626 |
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A different way to look at it is, if a language already has a word for something, like comics, why use a loan word from a different language if not to apply some additional characteristics?
If an English speaker said that they wanted to read bande dessinée, you wouldn't assume that they wanted to read Superman or Dragonball. But if someone just said that they wanted to read comics, you might recommend something by Mœbius. |
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FishLion
 Posts: 61 |
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Yeah, to be honest caring too much about the difference has the same vibe as drawing lines in the sand between "graphic novels" and "comics." Manga (specifically in the context of the English loanword) is a label we made up instead of simply calling them Japanese comics. For comparison, "Graphic novel" was coined in 1964 by a fan historian to describe a genre of comics that had existed for decades if not more than a century and then it eventually became a popular term to market comics to a mature audience and to signal it was a complete story as opposed to a serial. This is certainly a useful distinction to have, but I have also heard people argue endlessly about what is really a graphic novel and what shouldn't count. The more graphic novels became popular the more the style mixed with traditionally serialized comics to the point where many serialized comics are indistinguishable from "graphic novels" besides the fact that they are serialized. You can say serialized comic books technically aren't graphic novels and that graphic novels technically aren't comic books, but at the end of the day it is the same medium ( technically different forms but how the stories are shared is the same, printed sequential picture books) and the difference is much more akin to the stylistic and production differences between TV and film (two different ways to view filmed videos with different production methods based on how the content is sent to the viewer) than two entirely separate things. I feel like manga (as a loanword) has reached the same point. If you say manga to mean Japanese comics then that's fine. If you want to use manga as an inspiration or genre signifier by calling non-Japanese comics manga, then that is fine too. People just need to be aware that genre definitions are vague and if we use it to mean anything beyond "comics originally published in Japan" people are going to argue about where the lines in the sand are and what counts as manga and what doesn't. That is also fine, but as there is no technically correct definition outside of originating from Japan I doubt there will ever truly be a consensus and people will probably call your definition wrong. Even if the vague way genre conventions work means that all sorts of things fit into that second definition, people will argue about those conventions and have varying opinions and there is no way to prove them correct or incorrect. That is why I just stick to saying manga to mean comics from Japan and I talk about anything else as "manga inspired" but don't like to get into the weeds of what is technically manga outside the first definition. I won't think you're wrong if you call any form of comics book a manga, but I would rather skip the nomenclature discussion and talk about what I love, sequential art. |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5886 Location: Virginia, United States |
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When I was much younger, I probably would have cared, but now, who cares what others call it. I watch and read what I want, labels are irrelevant.
I consider Adam Warren's version of Dirty Pair a masterpiece. I liked Ninja High School and love MegaTokyo.
Perhaps this was talked about in another column in the past, but what is so controversial about Antarctic Press and Ben Dunn? I only really liked Ninja High School and Warrior Nun Areala, much of their other stuff meh....Forgot about Gold Digger, but don't know if that is considered in the same class as NHS. Liked Ben Dunn's artwork, not so much his successors. |
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King Chicken
 Posts: 100 |
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I like comics from Japan. Label them however you wish but that is what I like. If I wanted to read an American or European comic I would do so. Throwing in some comment about how it was influenced by manga or you consider it honorary manga is not going to make me like it any more. As someone mentioned it's more of an industry thing. If I pick up a manga I know what to expect. Just as If I pick an American comic I know what also to expect. For example every western attempt at a magical girl series simply does not do certain things that Japanese magical girl series do. You're always going to see traces of the country of origin in a piece of media because that's how culture and people work. No amount of imitation can really change that. But despite that I still enjoyed the first few storylines of the Italian W.I.T.C.H. comic. But I would never mistake it for a manga or Japanese magical girl series. Presumably that's why they actually adapted the series into an actual manga when they tried to market it in Japan back in the day for a better chance at it taking off there.
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AsleepBySunset
Posts: 220 |
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While it might not be the original intention of the word, to me... nowadays... graphic novel means a single-volume comic published by sections of the comic industry which operate like the actual novel industry, that is to say they're either a single, self contained story, or they're written using the "standalones with sequel potential" model traditional fantasy novels and children's fiction use (instead of published as a true serial). On the other hand, other sections of the comic industry, on some level actually function more like manga, they publish works first as issues, then these issues are compiled into volumes (which are also called "graphic novels" or GNs for some reason admittedly, this is quite confusing) and later omnibuses |
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redpapermen
Posts: 3 |
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Speaking of Felipe Smith, there's a fascinating and insightful interview with him on Cartoonist Kayfabe where he goes deep on the Tokyopop days.
But even more impressive, how he broke into the Japanese manga industry to get published by Kodansha. Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdJICluC7Pc&ab_channel=CartoonistKayfabe Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIlp__zyovk&ab_channel=CartoonistKayfabe Be warned, it's long. But he goes into incredible depth and there is a lot to be gleaned by those who have similar ambitions. |
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pushknife
 Posts: 7 |
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The only OEL I've ever read was Scott Pilgrim if that counts I liked it back in the day as a high schooler but I wonder if I'd find it as good now. The show was ok but I wish it adapted the comic and wasn't one of those weird alternative reality sequels. Other than that my only real exposure to this kind of stuff was those "How to Draw Manga" books that were everywhere in the early 2000s which always looked really weird to me.
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