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This Week in Anime - Is OEL Manga Really Manga?

It makes me wonder why did IDW's Sonic did so well in Japan when other comic book didn't managed to break into the Japanese mainstream market. IDW's Sonic is not the only American comic book that got a Japanese translation, I found out that IDW's Transformers comic have received Japanese translation too. I'm not sure about IDW's Godzilla. I wonder if any of the American/western comic book based on Japanese IPs/properties ever got translated into Japanese I mean did any of Udon's Street Fighter comic receive a Japanese translation & release over there. Does that include Udon's Darkstalkers comic series?

I really like to know if any western comic based on Japanese properties/IPs ever got translated into Japanese other then IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog.

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

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.

In my experience this topic only seems to happen when people want validation for liking something that isn't Japanese because they view comics as lesser than manga. Or they want the ability to label a comic as a manga for some other reason like that one guy who keeps advertising his comic as the first black lead in a shonen manga since there's been plenty of black lead characters in American comic books already.

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.

This feels like the kind of topic that would have caused heated arguments 20-25 years ago, back in the earlier days of anime/manga. But these days people are fall less likely to care about the difference, if any really exists.

Latest ep also has Kara Zor-El / Supergirl looking like Android 18

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.

enurtsol wrote:

Latest ep also has Kara Zor-El / Supergirl looking like Android 18

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.

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:

So if there's anything that can rival manga, it's manhwa/webtoons from South Korea.

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.

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.

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.