What is Manga?

D

droid

Guest
There's no mystery. Manga are just popular comics. In Japan they are a mainstream entertainment format that has found its way into every sphere of life, from corporate and business manga to tentacle porn to wholeseme kids stuff. Makes sense as the combination of words and images have been proven to be the most effective way of transmitting information.

The ubiquity of manga at the moment is a reflection of its move to the mass market in the West, mainly as a result of cheaper publishing formats (unflipped etc...) and clever repackaging of Asian mega-hits. Most of the people who buy manga these days are normal teenage girls and boys, the sweaty fanboy archetype is going the way of the dodo.
 

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
Why did the Japanese invent Manga? Are there any good scholarly resources on this underlooked topic?
 

cobretti

[-] :: [-] ~ [-] :: [-]
Pretty drunk at the moment, but as far as I know, manga/japanese animation (& especially hentai) was a way to get round strict film censorship laws in Japan (that still stand today) in the 70s/80s/90s and grew to become a hyper-profitable industry both in the east and around the world. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
 

empty mirror

remember the jackalope
what are giant robots? any relation to regular-sized robots, or are they just overgrown miniature automatons?
 
D

droid

Guest
Why did the Japanese invent Manga? Are there any good scholarly resources on this underlooked topic?

It's not really that underlooked. Fredrick L. Schodt's 'Manga, Manga Manga' and 'dreamland japan' are probably the two big works, but there's quite a few tomes published in the past 20 years or so.

The origins of Manga - Emakimono - narrative scrolls from the 11th century, woodblock prints etc... first manga mag published in late 1800's, revival of 'street comics' Kamishibai along with US influences during the occupation had a huge effect on Osamu Tezuka (the god of manga), who popularised a new cinematic style of comics form the 50's drawing heavily on Disney aesthetics and defining the 'shojo' (girls comics) and 'shonen' (boys comics) with Princess Knight and Atom boy.

There's a million other factors that led to the development of the media. The question to ask is 'why did the medium of comics become so popular and accepted in Japan?'
 
D

droid

Guest
Pretty drunk at the moment, but as far as I know, manga/japanese animation (& especially hentai) was a way to get round strict film censorship laws in Japan (that still stand today) in the 70s/80s/90s and grew to become a hyper-profitable industry both in the east and around the world. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

You obviously haven't watched too many Japanese films. :D
 

you

Well-known member
Recently had the pleasure of seeing Kuniyoshi at the RA - in his lifetime the rulers band almost all creative imagery - pretty much every picture has to depict a party line and uphold royal values..... so no more painting of battle scenes and no more attractive women..... Cunning Kuniyoshi found an inventive way around this problem though - rather than paint a battle scene that would be frowned upon and censored or paint a picture of a brothel he painted squids fighting one another and a brothel full of cats! All the viewers of the time would unmistakably know the brothel scene WAS a brothel and that the fighting squids were actually a particular defeat of a certain clan of the time.... however he got them out there because - hey, there just cats. - Reminded me of manga a lot, for some reason im not entirely sure of. I find pornographic manga may be deeply rooted in this - japanese real porn is pretty much always censored but the graphic manga is not and pretty extreme by comparison.... Im going to take yet another assuming jump here and guess Modern manga is around today as much for its instant accessibility as it is for its capacity to circumnavigate censorship......
 
D

droid

Guest
Manga is censored too of course, with the rules regularly tightened and relaxed. No erect penises, no pubic hair...
 

empty mirror

remember the jackalope
i remember liking fist of the north star. it has been 15 years or so since i've seen it. and Vampire Hunter D, but again, been about 15 years.

akira is still fantastic.
i just watched ghost in the shell and that really does pass the time.
grave of the fireflies is good.
i like mahoromatic
battle of the planets
urotsokidoji - legend of the overfiend (only the first one)
all the miyazaki/studio ghibli stuff
wolf's rain was an entertaining series----benevolent lycanthropes vs. the world
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Paprika (Santoshi Kon) is amazing.

Steamboy for state of the art graphics.

For series, I like Death Note/Paranoia Agent/Bleach/Gurren Laggen/Gunbuster 1 & 2, though I have loads of unwatched episodes to catch up on with several of these.

and Miyazaki, obvs.
 
The likes of those cooking manga seem really strange to me, even with food programmes dominating british tv I can't imagine someone in the west ever coming up with that idea. It just goes to show how mainstream comics are in Japan. I think one of the reasons comics arent too popular in the english speaking world is down to cost and practicality. Graphic novels might be good value for money but to the average buyer £12 seems awful high when you can buy a 500 page book for 8. The only graphic novels you can read for free are the countless Asterix & Tin Tin ones down the library. monthly comics have limited appeal and it's the luck of the draw if you'll be in time for the first issue. Bar ordinary newsagents stocking them I can't see how monthly comics can become mainstream, and the likes of Waterstones could be pushing graphic novels a lot more than they do.

One of the things that interest me about Japan is those weekly phone book size comics. I'm sure that a lot of the strips inside are mediocre but how cool would that be, to casually read comics that were so cheap & plentiful it doesnt matter if they're shit. That would be a great development for the west if you could read one of those on the bus to work. Can't see it ever happening though. This American publication tried it but didnt have much success.

180px-Raijin_Comics_1_cover.jpg
 
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