Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Is OEL Manga Really Manga?
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Dr. Wily
Posts: 364 |
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I mean that's easy, Sonic's a global brand with video games, cartoons, merchandise, etc. Ditto for Transformers. And while I don't know for sure about other IPs, I would feel comfortable guessing that the Street Fighter comics (or any large video game brand) probably has some overseas translations. |
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enurtsol
Posts: 14873 |
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The US Nintendo Power magazine had a Zelda comic serial by renowned manga artist Shotaro Ishinomori (Cyborg 009, Kamen Rider, Super Sentai) that was published in English first (January 1992) in left-to-right format, before releasing in Japan (March 1993) in Japanese but retaining the left-to-right format
Ishinomori is 100% Japanese born-bred and 100% manga artist |
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mdo7
Posts: 6360 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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And I can say the same for Eldo Yoshimizu (although that scenario is way different given that Yoshimizu is not a well-fame mangaka like Ishiomori).
But Sonic the Hedgehog is not well-known or doesn't received a lot of love in Japan. Even his Japanese fanbases is way smaller then his overall global fanbases. That's why I found IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog sales in Japan very impressive and mind baffling at the same time. How could a character like Sonic who has a less then stellar reception and overall smaller fanbase in Japan somehow got his American comic book to sell out in Japan like crazy. |
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Adamanto
Posts: 154 |
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Indeed. Or as creators that have so little faith in their own creation that they need to market it as something it isn't in order to catch the attention of people that wouldn't have bothered if you had told them what it actually was. It just comes across as sad, really. |
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mdo7
Posts: 6360 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Unfortunately, this was a thing back in late 2000's/early 2010's, I remember when American publishers that publish manga has also licensed Korean manhwa for US release, those publishers were worried that manhwa wouldn't sell in the US because they weren't Japanese and at that time, manga was gaining popularity (but not at the mainstream level like we are now). So some of the American publishers have tried to market or pass off manhwa as Japanese hoping manga reader that are ignorant enough to mindlessly to just read and buy them no matter what country it's from. This was before Webtoons and other Korean pop culture's mainstream popularity (ie: K-drama, & K-pop) help break manhwa and webtoons away from being associated to manga and help people not associate South Korea to Japan. Now fast forward to today, I have not seen any Japanese manga being mislabeled as manhwa or webtoon, nor have I seen webtoons being marketed as manga as of like compared to 20+ years ago. But because of K-pop's high-profile mainstream popularity (thanks to Psy, BTS, Blackpink, etc...) in the US and the west, there's been some worries about non-Korean Asian group including J-pop/J-music may try to label themselves as K-pop/Korean to attempt to pandering to the K-pop fandom/communities because of K-pop's mainstream popularity in the US market. I have talked about it on another thread when talking about J-pop/J-music last year. The only J-pop group that tried to pander to the K-pop demographic is a group called XG. JYP Entertainment and Republic Records created an American girl group, Vcha that is marketed and pandered to K-pop fandom in the US. Seeing XG and Vcha, I'm worried that this could lead to Asian pop group (or even music group) like let say from Mainland China, Taiwan, Philippines, and even Japan to try to pander to K-pop group by marketed themselves as Korean/K-pop in the same manner when American publishers back in late 2000's/early 2010's try to market manhwa as manga (and passing them off as Japanese) to fool manga reader. Now I'm worried if Japan's music companies may try to do the same thing with their music and idols and tryo to confuse K-pop fans also at the same time angering hardcore J-pop fans (or whatever's left of that already shrunken fanbase). This is what I worried about as someone who's been in both anime/manga and K-pop fandom for a long time. Marketing and pandering to a certain demographic because of that one country's foreign export's mainstream popularity (that would be South Korea's K-pop) by covering up a pop group's country of origin (whether they're from Japan, Taiwan, Mainland China, etc...). |
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funkfoot
Posts: 78 |
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That's probably because the comic industry is unfortunately irrelevant these days. 25 years ago manga was rocketing towards the top of the market in America and comic companies were trying their hand at OEL or manga-inspired comics to try to win readers back and stay relevant in a rapidly evolving market. Young Justice 1998 was heavily manga-inspired and Marvel introduced a whole "Mangaverse" in 2000. Companies were doing all they could to combat manga's rising popularity. These days the American comic market is over half manga, and the majority of the rest is children's graphic novels like Dog Man. Traditional floppy comics like Marvel and DC seem to have settled into their own niche of progressive/LGBT-focused stories these days. But the real money is in the live-action MCU and DCEU projects so comic books are an afterthought. If they want a piece of the anime or manga audience they'll just farm the IP out to an actual Japanese studio like the Deadpool manga or Suicide Squad Isekai. A far more relevant discussion and argument point these days would be comics from China and Korea. Webtoons, manhwa - those are manga's biggest competitors and where these discussions usually revolve around these days. |
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That Little Rapscallion
Posts: 58 |
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This image probably perfectly illustrates why I never cared for OEL/American Anime or whatever people call this stuff. Am I supposed to be impressed the writers of this show know what Dragonball (one of the most popular series of all time) is? What importance does making a character dress like Android 18 have other than I clapped because I know Dragonball. My Adventures With Superman has nothing to do with Superman other than character names and some imagery like the Superman costume because every character is completely unrecognizable. It's a show written by and for millennials who grew up watching anime. And the ironic thing is an actual anime adaption would probably try to stick closer to the source material like the Superman vs. Meshi manga which was originally just supposed to be about Superman eating various Japanese foods but has since done far more. Personally I feel a true anime-inspired Superman show would try stick as close to the comics it's based on like how most anime adaptions respect and try to adapt their own source manga. But that would be more about anime-inspired in terms of how the industry works rather than superficial traits like art style or references. So I'm not sure what it ultimately says when Japan's take on Superman is more faithful and accurate than an American's perspective on what they thought an Anime Superman series would be like. |
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mdo7
Posts: 6360 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Yep, I can probably speak on that. 20+ something years ago, it would be unspeakable for someone to claim that Japanese manga would outsell US comics in the good ol US of A. But here we are!!! Manga (along with Webtoons from South Korea) outselling and outdoing any superhero comic. You know I did a dig on ANN's past archive and found this little gem from Nov 2006: Witchblade Manga to be Flipped, Unflipped Back in 2006, when Bandai and Top Cow Entertainment licensed Witchblade manga for US release, they would be 2 different version of the manga for the US: Flipped/colored, and unflipped/B&W. Had this manga been licensed and released today, there would only be one version: the unflipped/B&W version. So this shows how far has manga in the US has gone through to rise to mainstream acceptance in North America. It's ironic that you pointed out that publishers back then were trying to win readers back and there were time that US publishers like DC and Marvel got several mangaka involved like for example: Kia Asamiya (he did several cover artwork for DC, Marvel Tokyopop), Tsutomu Nihei (before Knight of Sidonia, he did several artwork for western publisher like one shot segment in Halo Graphic Novel, and was the creator of Wolverine: Snikt), Yoshitaka Amano (yes, the guy that does character design for Final Fantasy also did artwork for western comic. Amano teamed up with Greg Rucka to do Wolverine and Elektra comic, and was also did the artwork for one of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series). Hell even Katsushiro Otomo (the creator of Akira) was involved with the artwork and story in Batman: Black & White series. If DC and Marvel want to win those manga reader, then they should talked to mangaka to see if they're willing to do artwork for them. I mean I would love to see Yusuke Murata to do a Spider-man comic book given his excellent artwork he did of Spider-man. I would love to see other mangaka doing work on DC and Marvel so you can tapped into that manga fanbase in the US. Although mature comic are niche stuff (today's DC and Marvel Comics aren't exactly kids friendly well except for re-print of their Golden and Silver age era collection), I do agree they're not going to topped any manga coming out in the US today.
Oh, I do agree with this view, I remember The Economist's article that Japanese publisher got very worried about Korean webtoons eclipsing manga on a global scale. Even before that, I remember there were 2 articles from Japan Times that illustrate that the manga industry did sort of panic over Webtoons being able to surpass manga: Japan Times 2019 article: South Korea's booming 'webtoons' put Japan's print manga on notice Japan Times Dec 2022 article: Hedge fund bets next Korean pop culture hit will be webtoons So if there's anything that can rival manga, it's manhwa/webtoons from South Korea. |
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AsleepBySunset
Posts: 238 |
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While I'm not exactly familiar with what you're talking about, this is exactly why I don't care about the "honorary anime/manga" discussion. You can carefully select works which look almost exactly like anime/manga but so? It's style over substance, sort of like modern cyberpunk. Painstakingly imitating superficial elements (which sure, I care about to some extent) while failing to actually write stories people care about. Part of what I like about anime/manga is how the industry effectively produces great serial stories in over a dozen of genres, some of which aren't even a thing in the west like CGDCT and Iyashikei. Once a great manga is becoming a big hit, that serial story is then adapted into a generally almost panel-for-panel TV series. But when, say, netflix or disney take the word anime, they don't actually copy the manga-anime pipeline, which is why you end up with rick and morty the anime or RBYW the anime. In disney's case it seems to just be smashing the word "chibi" or "isekai" at the end of existing franchises ("suicide squad isekai", "disney princess chibi", yada yada). Part of why I care about the honorary manga/anime debate so much is because the western comics/animation industry really could tell great stories people would love to consume, when the western animation actually does a straight comics-to-television-animation adaption it works great, see nelvana's tintin. But instead people are obsessed with copying, again, superficial elements like right-to-left-reading order and manga-style screentones and then they sit around pointing saying, "look! this looks exactly like my japanese manga" |
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TarsTarkas
Posts: 5913 Location: Virginia, United States |
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I can see webtoons and manhwa getting more popular and maybe equalling the popularity of manga, but not eclipsing manga. People will continue to read manga for the same reasons they always had, it's just that there is more additional options to read now. I still read science fiction/fantasy novels, history books, comic books, and other literature. Manhwa will just be another option on the balance beam. |
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mdo7
Posts: 6360 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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That is true, and you're probably correct. For me, it's hard to tell if webtoons/manhwa are eclipsing manga or they're on the same level (no gain, no loss). But seeing manhwa/webtoons gaining huge popularity in the US/the west has caused a bit of a panic in Japan's manga industry. Just to be fair, I've read like 58 different manga and webtoons/manhwa as of this post. Majority of them I read (60% to be exact) are Japanese, while the 40% being Korean titles. Beside manga and manhwa/webtoons, I've read other graphic novels like for example I got chance recently to read EC Comic archive reprints from Dark Horse like Shock SuspenStories, Tales from the Crypt, and I've read Eerie and Creepy comic reprint (go look up Eerie (magazine) and Creepy (magazine) on Wikipedia since I can't link it here). I've gotten chance to access and read Golden age and Silver age DC Comics reprint collection like I've got chance to read Golden age Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman. I was able to read the Silver age Justice League of America. I was able to read other reprint of past comic book from another decade, so it was kind of cool to see given that I grew up loving DC superheroes and I'm a history nerd by heart. But I'm getting off topic. Yes, I've started to branch out outside of manga and manhwa/webtoons and read comic book reprint and graphic novels. And yes, I do read books if you're wondering. So yeah, like you I do have a lot of literature to read. |
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Cardcaptor Takato
Posts: 5086 |
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All this debate could be solved if we just called it all comics as manga is just the Japanese word for comic books and sometimes they just straight up use the English word comic to describe it.
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thecowardlyantoine
Posts: 24 |
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To be fair there's people in Japan that refer to American comics as Amecomi アメコミ so it's not like they don't make a distinction or use loanwords either especially in publication or storefronts. DC even stole that loanword to make an imprint line of figures and books back in the day called Ame-Comi. |
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Cardcaptor Takato
Posts: 5086 |
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I think though there’s a difference between using the term just to classify something’s origin source versus the weird orientalist way Americans use the word manga.
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TarsTarkas
Posts: 5913 Location: Virginia, United States |
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I grew up on comic books (Marvel, DC, and many of the independents). But manga is significantly different in style than American comics. I remember being excited for the next issue of Outlanders, Caravan Kidd, Drakkun, Grey Digital Target, and a few others. Just like we don't want every restaurant to be Taco Bell (like that one movie). Manga is just a different flavor of comic. And that makes Manga a good descriptor of what you are going to get and receive. And of course Manhwa is also a good descriptor. You are always going to have purists, gatekeepers, and labelers, but that doesn't mean everything has to be vanilla either. |
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