Same thoughts as here, but differently presented. First time around I tried being sprightly and provocative, like a British op-ed columnist fussing about how actually the French can’t cook or TV game shows teach you about life or some other bogus, dumbass lifestyle issue. This time I’ll be straightforward.
So here we go:
I don’t get manga. I look at a page and want to look away. Reason: the stylization of figures appears to me to be highly uniform, and it’s not a particular stylization I like. Solid black hair, googly eyes, the kids who look like adults, the adults who look like kids, etc. The look turns me off. Further, its kindergarten feel makes it hard for me to believe worthwhile stories could be told using this stylization, or at least told to their advantage.
Because my aversion to manga is so sharp and immediate, I have never given the comics a chance. If you ask me about pistachio ice cream, all I can say is I don’t like the taste. But manga ain’t just an ice cream flavor (title of my forthcoming Young Adult novel). Manga’s look is what I react to, but there’s more to manga than its look.
Which is the missing piece from this post’s old version. I should have asked straight out: What am I missing?
Noah has already started to answer the unasked question. Point one: the googly eyes, etc., belong to just one style of manga. The girls’ stuff, apparently. There are lots more out there. Other looks.
One observation I’ll stand by: manga emphasizes high-speed, all-out forward movement of the reader’s eye. US superhero comics have also started to do so, but manga does it more and seems to lack any other approach to word-picture combination. Pleasant as the effect can be, having just one item on the menu seems like a drag. Noah says US superhero stuff is wordy — well, sometimes, because every flaw on earth can be found there except overerudition. But at least a few different verbal-visual gears are available. In manga it seems like there’s just the one.
But hey, maybe not. The fellows will tell me.
All right, I guess that’s it. Xavier, thanks for the links and info. You too, Anonymous — you’re ok. Richard, thanks for the joke. Bill, thanks very much for laughing at my jokes, because somebody’s got to. Blackasthenight, thanks just for being you.
Darn, I was just coming back to eat my promise to ignore the rest of your post (by commenting on your pacing (?) issue), and here you come off all apolygaletical.
The main point of the prelude to my earlier comment (in the earlier post) was trying to be this (and only this): someday maybe there will be a manga critic for the people, who will rabidly hate manga yet paradoxically have read tons of it. He will have a handful of lapsed manga-nerd-fan/readers, myself included. Hense the recomendations: if you read more manga, someday you could be that critic!
(hard sell, but that’s the best I can come up with for a positive spin on my previous comment, and that’s all you’ll get).
Sorry, I’m retarded.
Oh yeah, re: pacing. I used to be in the manga is all fast-and-furious camp. I don’t know quite where I stand on this. Most of what’s available in english would benefit from being a LOT shorter and could lose a lot of exposition. That might make it seem even faster and lighter though. Stuff like Naruto and One Piece could probably lose have the pages and dialog (all the stuff talking about how cool the stuff they’re about to do is going to be when they eventually stop talking and DO IT). To me this is pretty much the same as superfluous captions and explanatory dialog in old Marvel. It has the same effect, even if you get through many more pages of Naruto having spent the same amount of time reading. I devised a scheme to read Hajime Ippo (a bad boxing manga) faster, when sadly I was to be found reading that comic: just ignore all dialog during the boxing scenes, as if you read any of it you will inevitably be tricked into reading a lot of pointless hype about how Hajime is the underdog who might (or might not!) have a chance — half-assed tension building stuff. Fortunately I quickly lost all interest in the story after I realized the visual continuity was really blunt when it wasn’t busy being incoherent, I couldn’t follow the fights without the filler, so that comic had to go!
In true ADD manga reader of the 21st century – fashion, I’m going to leave this post to the ages now hoping it makes some small bit of sense. Sorry if it sucks, it might be at least slightly better but I had to rush because I’m at work and leaving in 10 minutes.
Keep posting. I think you’re funny too.
-David Alex
David Alex, you’re ok in my book. Keep using that company bandwidth!
The thing is … if someone can read manga, I don’t see why they should hate it all. A lot of it, sure, on time-tested Sturgeon’s Law principles. But I don’t see why all of a country’s comic book output should suck. Of course you’d know better than me, having read manga and turned against it. So, if you’re up to the job, go ahead and give us a comment on what turned you against your old reading material.
On the pacing issue … to me the problem isn’t so much fast pace, since I like speed in comics, just the idea that on any page of manga all you’ll get is picture-word balloon-sound effect, with the word balloon constrained to hold not much at all. For example, I like the caption-picture juxtapositions Moore and Gaiman used to do in the 80s. I gather that in manga such tricks are impossible and so are any other word-picture gimmicks/innovations a clever writer or artist might come up with. Yikes.
But, my new mantra, I might be wrong. Others can tell me.
Tom, if you’re looking for a manga you might be able to sink your teeth into, you should consider reading Del Rey Manga’s release of “Me and the Devil Blues,” by Akira Hiramoto. It doesn’t look ANYTHING like what most people would think of as “manga” and is a fascinating story set in 1930s America– about a skilled blues guitarist, no less.
Hi, first time poster here, so I’ll try my best.
I understand the stylization of the art can be a turn off, so why not look into alternatives such OEL manga which doesn’t quite look like manga, and it’s very Western in feel.
I can also suggest some manga where the style differs from the googly-eyed norm like: Nodame Cantabile (Del Rey) which offers a very intriguing (but admittedly quirky) tale of music school students set at a Music University where the characters aspire to be accomplished musicians. The art style originally turned me, a traditional manga reader, off, but I discovered that the style works well in conveying expressions, and the eyes are actually proportionately correct to the face. The story is worthwhile because it’s not about typical battle stages and announcing battle moves for 100 pages, it’s rather about musical contests and concerts (which are not as boring as they sound, believe me).
I don’t quite understand what you mean about high-speed forward movement of the reader’s eye. If it’s about the length of dialogue, manga tends to rely more on character expressions and movement to tell the story. However, Nodame Cantabile reserves only the most dramatic scenes to be without dialogue, but there’s almost more dialogue in it than most manga anyways.
In terms of art style, it IS the girls comics that have the characteristics you name, so let’s look at the boys and mens manga, shall we? Boys manga (which can really be for all ages, it’s just a label) rely less on big eyes and prettiness and more for action, action, action.
However, the artwork in mens manga tends to be more gritty, sometimes gory, but also delve deep into the emotions boys manga just don’t touch. These titles definitely stray away from the manga stereotype, but are still Japanese in flavour. Dark Horse has many of the mens manga titles, and they also have preview pages of every single one you should check out. MPD Psycho is a popular mens manga, but definitely not for lighter tastes.
Sorry to take up so much space, but I still want to know what you think after reading this, if it has been a lost cause, or perhaps you can tell me anything else I might be able to ponder.
“I don’t quite understand what you mean about high-speed forward movement of the reader’s eye. If it’s about the length of dialogue, manga tends to rely more on character expressions and movement to tell the story.”
Seems pretty clear to me. 200 pages of manga reads faster than 64 of Western comics. You kind of explain it yourself in the second half of your quote.
I was going to make the point about manga being designed for quick/commuter reading, but somebody got there first. It’s a cultural thing, I guess, and just something you have to get used to when reading it. I always find myself lingering over good artwork anyway, even if it’s intended to push your eyes across the page, but I do like that the stories can be so involving that the art itself is designed to propel you forward. Some of the best shonen manga does an excellent job at this sort of thing.
I would agree with Noah and others that the “big eyes/speed lines” style of manga is a very limited view of the form, and there are tons of other styles that might be more appealing. To add to those that Noah mentioned (and shamelessly link to my blog), I would also recommend Takehiko Inoue (creator of Real and Vagabond), Taiyo Matsumoto, and Naoki Urasawa.
I would also recommend Osamu Tezuka, if only because he’s the originator of much of the stylistic devices that manga uses. He did draw characters in kind of a big-eyed style, but he mixes in other realistic art and uses a flurry of exciting stylistic techniques, including some real formal invention and a sense of anything-goes whimsy. I can’t get enough of his stuff.
So will any of that change anybody’s mind? Probably not, but it’s worth noting that there’s a wealth of great material in the manga world, especially if you dig below the surface of what’s most popular. Don’t let the googly eyes ruin the experience for you.
I know this isn’t helping, but to provide a metaphor on what the previous poster said: American mainstream comics are the large, detailed paintings you would view at an art gallery for several minutes, while Manga is like the advertisements on trains you view for a brief minute before moving on to the next.
One of the tragedies of Manga is that so much time is spent on drawing the beautiful art while it’s purpose is to be looked at for only a second. With the technological advancements in computer art, more time can be spent admiring the art in American comics.
If you still don’t get Manga, I say let sleeping dogs lie and don’t force yourself. But if you’re still trying, all the above poster’s recs are pretty good, in my opinion.
Tom- Jiro Taniguchi is the antithesis to your statement about speed and pacing. I recommend The Walking Man.
I can’t really engage any of your other points, they seem really ill-informed and I think it’s kind of disingenuous to ask “What am I missing?” when it’s pretty clear what you’re missing is actually reading the different kind of work that’s out there.
Christopher — Taniguchi’s stated influences are Jean Giraud and Francois Schuiten. He’s hardly a representative example.
I think Tom’s description of manga pacing is pretty spot-on for a guy who can’t look at it. Oliver’s too.
Chris, it’s not clear to me why asking for recommendations is disingenuous.
Bill – I’d say Taniguchi is a perfectly legitimate example. Tom’s post flat-out talks about manga, not the majority of it or the most popular examples of it.
“[M]anga emphasizes high-speed, all-out forward movement of the reader’s eye.”
“In manga it seems like there’s just the one [verbal-visual gear].”
The point of several of the comments here is that, yes, a lot of the manga being read by those lumps on the floor of your local Borders can be described in those terms, but that’s doing a disservice to the medium, which is expansive and varied and weird. I’m personally not interested in 200 pages of dudes punching each other or pedo-tastic fantasy, but I’ve found series (Planetes, Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service) that have almost nothing in common with Naruto or whatever the hell kids are into these days. Even a big series like Death Note is almost entirely comprised of dialogue – there’s almost no traditional “manga action” in there.
Yes, I would agree with the previous poster about Death Note. It takes a longer time to read it than most manga, and the art features a lot of bold blacks rather than thin lines.
PS. It was rather “disingenuous” of Chris to say that, wasn’t it?
Yeah, I don’t think “disingenuous” applies to my post. “Useless,” maybe, if one knows a lot about manga and has no time for the misconceptions of the ignorant.
But for me the post was useful because a lot of people gave me pointers. Including Chris, come to think of it.
Jeffk, I don’t buy it, sorry. If somebody complains that French movies have too many people lying in bed talking, Luc Besson can swing in with a swat team but there’s still a bunch of people in bed talking.
And it’s about more than action. I’ve more to say about page-level storytelling in manga, mostly cribbed from the manga crit book ??????????? (Why’s Manga Interesting?). I’ll post about whenever I get my camera back so I can upload some images.