Forum - View topicAnime fans who aren't into manga?
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4854 |
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This thread has been stewing in my head for a little while now. I sometimes feel like part of a very small minority in that I'm a big anime fan who doesn't read any manga and has no real interest in doing so. There are a number of reasons I could point to, but I think the primary one is that I got into anime as a fan of animation in general. I've loved it ever since I was a little kid, and fortunately I never grew out of it, so when I found my way to anime it was a natural fit. In contrast I don't have any history with reading comics, other than still following a handful of webcomics from the old days. I find the act of reading through manga pages...I guess "tiresome" would be the right word for it? Having to constantly jump around each page to follow the irregularly-spaced text wears on me. And it's not an aversion to reading in general, I love actual novels (though have sadly done precious little reading in recent years), but I'd infinitely rather consume a story in that medium. It's true that many manga authors can create fantastic art (or even otherworldly, in the case of someone like Miura), but the artwork alone doesn't really do it for me. At the risk of sounding more dismissive than I mean, it feels like I'm looking through storyboards for a project which may not even exist.
The reason I bring this up is because I can't count how many times I've heard the line "Just read the manga!" when an anime adaptation stops before covering all of the original content, or if there are other significant issues with it. And my response to that is always "...um, no?" The two media are completely different experiences, and I hate that there's an assumption that fans should be able to jump seamlessly from one to the other. Last time I checked, manga don't have motion...or music...or vocal performances...or (usually) color...or any number of other things that attract me to animated works. No disrespect at all to people who enjoy manga, but looking at a bunch of still black-and-white images with text boxes on a page isn't any sort of real substitute for me. At the risk of sounding dismissive, if it's just a matter of seeing what happens next, at that point I'd almost rather just read a decent wiki summary. A carry-on effect from this is that I almost dread getting into adaptations based on ongoing manga, because more often than not I know they'll never reach the end and I'll be left with another dangling story. (Granted sometimes that's a blessing in disguise...I mean imagine if they'd made a second season of The Promised Neverland that turned out to be abysmal, right?) Every time Orange announces another production, I feel a little sadder that no one's ever paid them to make more Land of the Lustrous. And more recently some friends and I fell in love with Shadows House, but unless something completely unexpected happens that'll probably be stuck with its existing two seasons forever. I could come up with plenty of other examples too. At least sometimes there are wins, like Made in Abyss's production staff assuring everyone that there will be more made as soon as there's enough material to cover, but they're more the exception than the rule. So what do you think? Anyone else in this same boat, or am I the weird one? Last edited by Top Gun on Mon Oct 07, 2024 10:52 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 10062 Location: Virginia |
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You are not the weird one. Judging from reactions I've seen here on ANN's forums, you are probably in the majority. The main difference between you and your fellows is that you seem to have some insight into your preferences. Most anime fans that are not into manga simply will not even entertain the idea of reading the manga much less reading a light novel if that is the source material. It doesn't really matter, anime, manga or light novels, it is all entertainment. Life is too short to worry about reading or watching entertainment that doesn't entertain you.
Me, I'm a reader first and foremost. I don't watch a lot of anime simply because if I have something to read it takes precedence. When I do make time to watch an anime, it is usually because I read the source material and want to see it animated with all the additions you noted above. I will not try to tell you that my way is superior, if it doesn't work for you it doesn't As far as people telling you to "read the manga" when the anime ends before the source material does, it does come across a bit snide, but realistically it is your only choice in most cases. It does appear that things are swinging your way though. We are seeing more two cour series (some with announced additional seasons) than we have for a long time. I will let you into a dirty little secret. If the source material is a light novel, the manga readers are often in the same boat. The manga adaption seldom goes much further than the anime adaption, sometimes not as far. They get hit with an implied "read the novel". Since you state you don't have a problem with reading as such, if the source material is a novel and you get invested in the characters you could do worse than try the novel version if it is available. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24403 |
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I'm definitely an anime fan first and manga fan a distant second. However, if I really like an anime that's adapted from a manga, it has inspired me to start collecting volumes of that title. I enjoy noting the differences and getting deeper insight into the material. My biggest frustration with reading manga is that sometimes, especially during an action scene, I look at the scribbles on the page and I have absolutely no idea what the artist is trying to convey. But yeah, they are obviously two separate mediums, apples and oranges.
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RupanSansei
 Posts: 162 |
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This describes my mother who's in her early 60s used to think of anime as cult classic cartoons from her childhood or some random foreign show that some station bought only to use as filler for a time slot until she had seen SGT Frog which she found to be extremely funny & now she is more understanding to those who like anime. I plan to soon show her Detective Conan a.k.a. Case Closed she will be as she loves solving murder mysteries.
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Top Gun
Posts: 4854 |
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Whoops, forgot I never got back to this. Thanks for the replies!
I know it's probably not as one-sided in reality, but I've seen so many "read the manga" responses, and yet almost no one speaking to the contrary. If there are more of us out there, they're very quiet.  You're right about source novels being an option, and I've actually bought a few of those (albeit for shows I've already seen), things like Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Crest/Banner of the Stars. The one problem I have there is that a lot of these things are based on light novels that have a bajillion volumes, and I'm even worse at my reading backlog than I am my watching/gaming ones.
Yeah, there are many series I've watched where I can't even imagine trying to follow the action scenes as individual freeze-frame panels. Watching a talented team of animators go to town on a scene like that is one of the best parts of watching anime as far as I'm concerned.
I'm sorry, but this isn't really what I meant. I've been a big anime fan for a long time now. It's manga specifically where I have little to no interest. |
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RupanSansei
Posts: 162 |
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English is not my first language so misinterpreted what you had said |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 10062 Location: Virginia |
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@Top Gun
I think a lot of the anime only people are quiet because they are watching the shows as they come out. In their quest to keep up with ten or twenty shows each season they don't get as invested in any given show. You have stated that you wait for the home release primarily. As a result you are more likely to be invested in story being told. Unfortunately, I don't have a solution for you. As long as the primary purpose of the anime is to act as an advertisment for the source material the current situation will not change. And yeah, some of the light novel series run on forever. They also tend to run on like one continuous story. Basically, I keep reading the series until I find I'm no longer enjoying it. Like I said, this is entertainment. There is no duty to complete a series just because you started it. |
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Tony K.
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 11466 Location: Frisco, TX |
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I prefer anime over manga and only ever read the source material if the anime is full of filler or goes egregiously off the original story, which, thankfully, hasn't happened a whole lot for most of the anime I've watched. The extra elements of color, animation, music and voice acting are also very engrossing. I feel it's way more impressive the way film (not just in the sense of anime, but any kind movie, show, etc. live-action or animated) is put together, because there are so many pieces and thousands of hours that go into the final product to make it look and sound good.
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Top Gun
Posts: 4854 |
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I've been incredibly frustrated by the historical treatment of anime adaptations as a mere advertisement for the source material ever since I learned enough about the industry to be aware of it. For one, it inherently devalues the anime version as its own piece of art, instead mostly relegating it to a commercial product. For another, even as a purely commercial strategy, this just...doesn't make any sense to me. In the Western entertainment industry, when a novel or comic book is adapted into a film or TV series, there isn't much concern given as to how it'll boost the sales of said source. Sure, there usually is a boost (unless you're Marvel comics, in which case lol), and they might do a new print run of the books with movie-specific cover art in response, but that's about it. The adaptation itself is seen as a money-making product, whether it's generating box office take or subscription renewals to a streaming service, and that makes perfect sense given how much money is typically laid out to create it. Then on the anime side you spend all of that money producing a series, only to have it serve as a commercial for some other product (sometimes even just its own exorbitantly-priced home video release)? It's crazy town to me. My consolation is that there seems to have been at least a small shift in the other direction in recent years, with the explosion in international viewership and investments by huge streaming companies. We've been seeing more adaptations that seem to be made for their own sake, and are planned to have multiple seasons from the start. I hope it's a trend that continues to grow. To your other points, I'll agree that I place a high priority on being invested in the story of a series. I think that's a big reason why I do something that I know sets me apart from most anime fans: I don't drop series. If I'm going to invest time (and especially money) in a series, then I intend to be there for the long haul. I've talked about it before elsewhere, but this is also why I don't watch currently-airing series as a rule. I wait until they've finished their run (or at least have a good chunk of episodes under their belt) and have had enough time to establish a critical consensus. Then I can find ones that I'm almost certain I'll like and feel safe starting them. |
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1802 Location: South America |
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While I am a big fan of both mediums, I would say I have a slight preference for anime because the combination of manga art with music, voice acting and movement makes it a higher art form in my opinion.
As anime stimulates more the senses, that might be perhaps the reason why I love my favorite anime of all time slightly more than my favorite manga. Although I would say that I love very much both my favorite anime and manga. However, one thing I keep in mind is that there exists much more manga than anime, so there exists much more great manga than great anime. I have a feeling that I have watched about 90% of all the great anime according to my tastes (a feeling that was confirmed when I looked at Anime Reddit's' top 100 anime and I noticed I had watched 93, and the ones I didn't watch were of genres that I usually don't care much about), but I am still beginning to explore the possibilities of manga. Overall, I think people should be open minded in the sense of being open to "reading the manga" even if one is mostly used to "watching the anime." It is true that manga is a visual language and that it takes a bit of practice for a person to get fluent in it, while anime borrows heavily from manga's visual language it also is more accessible for a westerner who has not grown reading manga. |
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mdo7
 Posts: 6679 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Well Top Gun, you're not alone, and I don't think it's that weird for a person to watch anime, but don't read manga. As someone who has both a MAL and Anilist accounts/profiles, I have seen my cases of MAL and Anilist users that have anime on their list, but not manga (I have met some MAL users that kept their manga list private/restricted from other MAL users including those that are on their friend list, don't ask me why). I mean if you want more evidence that you're not weird Top Gun, look what I found on the internet just by searching:
From Reddit: Why do YOU watch anime instead of reading manga? People who only watch the anime. Why don't you read the manga? Anime watchers only, why don't you read manga? And what if an anime ended without being concluded? How many anime fans actually read manga? Anime-only watchers, why don’t you read the manga? Manga-only readers, why don’t you watch the anime? Fans of both, which do you prefer? Bonus: here's a MAL forum thread for you: Why do you think MAL users don't read manga? Why would an anime fan not bother to read the manga that the anime was based on, well I can think of a few reasons:
So yeah, it's not weird (or one of the reason could be weird, but it depend on how they were raised/upbringing), it's just that well that small demographic of anime fans that don't read manga could fall under the 3 categories I just mentioned above. For me, I credit animation (both Japanese anime, and animation in general) for helping me to read comic/graphic novels and also manga. That also extend to manhwa/webtoons. I credit the Fleischer Superman cartoon along with the DCAU animation (ie: Batman: TAS, Superman: TAS, Justice League, etc...) for making me into the fan of DC characters and comic I am today. I do credit Hanna Barbera's Fantastic Four from 1967, X-Men: TAS, and Spider-man: TAS back in the 90's along with other Spiderman animated (particularly the 1981 series, and it's companion series, Spider-man and His Amazing Friends) for me to dive into the Marvel Comic rabbit-hole. Wikipedia, and Wiki Fandom kind of help made it easier to get into that rabbit-hole, and combined that with the mainstream popularity of Marvel Cinematic Universe, and social media. Voila, you have superheroes in the mainstream. So yes, I learned to be not only open-minded, but also learned to dive into that rabbit-hole of that nerd/geek fandom. |
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