Category Archives: manga

Heel is Showing

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Shounen, particularly Shounen battle manga, is probably the most well-known type of manga today. In it you have your Dragon Ball‘s, your Naruto‘s, your Kenichi‘s. You have good shounen fighting series, you have bad or mediocre shounen fighting series, and you have ones that start off as one but gradually turn into the other.  I won’t say which is which, and the above titles are not respective examples of each category.

The odd thing about the descent in quality in a lot of shounen series (or even titles which are already poor from the start) is that the same mistakes seem to happen over and over again. The most prominent mistake is that long stretch where the series just drags on and the series appears to have lost all direction. Why does this happen? That’s the thought I want to get at today.

There are certain essential characteristics for a modern shounen battle manga. You need a main character to whom the young boy readers can relate but whom they can also idolize. You need a rival or at least a series of antagonists to continually provide challenges to the hero and to act as measuring sticks for the hero’s progress. And of course you need fighting and lots of it, or at least the story’s concept of “fighting,” even if it’s throwing chickens off of rooftops to see which one flies the furthest. And then you need that extra X-factor, the thing which makes a series different (but not too different). With few exceptions, I think that shounen fighting series have to capture a feeling of action, excitement, and change, and it starts from essentials such as these.

However, I think these same ingredients for success are also what potentially drag titles down to the depths, acting as the hand which dipped Achilles into the River Styx, simultaneously giving a series its strengths but also establishing its weaknesses. As a series continues, it becomes more difficult to maintain those qualities in the right proportions and to also incorporate all of the elements which exist between those essentials. After a while, because the people behind these manga and anime are well aware that their readers look to them for certain specific things, the series start to run on auto-pilot, and that is where the seams start to really show.

For example, I think this is why the most painful filler tends to be the fight which lasts for seemingly an eternity. The manga’s staff know that they need a hefty amount of combat in their series, but they don’t quite have the vision at that point to guide the battles, to have them work towards a definite direction which inspires the readers. As a result, they stall. Battles which should have lasted two volumes last ten. Here, a quick breather chapter or two might solve the problem, but that small break might be unacceptable for a series which relies so much on continuous battles which mark the characters’ progress.

You sometimes  get people who criticize shounen fighting manga for being shounen fighting manga, hating these series for the very same reason people love them. But to some extent they have a very valid opinion, as even those things that the people who follow shounen series list as positives can eventually lead to the negatives.

Break Through the 2nd Floor Window: Ogiue Maniax

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Ogiue Maniax managed to overcome its opposition in the third round of the Aniblog Tourney, in a match so close that a mere image macro could have swung the vote either way. I thank chaostangent for a fine match, and I really enjoyed seeing people talk about how they preferred one person’s style over the other. Voting for content, that’s what I want to see.

My fourth round match is against Tenka Seiha, a popular episodic-style blog which also has a doujin game translation arm attached to it. Or maybe the blog is attached to the translation. One likely event is that the match will come down to the pseudo-dichotomy of “episodic” vs “editorial.” I hope that doesn’t happen, and again, that you read at least some of the content before you vote. I already have primers for the Ogiue Maniax style here and here. I’ve also included a couple of my favorite posts below.

The Aniblog Tourney has seen many of the criticisms that other popularity-based tournaments have had. First, similar to Saimoe, vote results are considered “irrelevant” by some because the number of people voting is far less than the number of blog readers out there, let alone anime fans. Second, like the GameFAQs Character Battle, accusations of snobbery run against cries of appealing to the lowest common denominator, resulting in overwhelming indictments of the personalities of both the writers and the readers.

The first issue revolves around a simple question: What would it take to get the people who read anime blogs to vote in a tournament about anime blogs?

If it were a contest of favorite anime characters or series, then I think people would be more willing to participate. The act of discussing anime is one step removed from actually experiencing it, and to be reading the thoughts of someone who is watching anime creates even further distance. And the more you go along this path, the less likely people are going to care. In order for more blog readers to vote, the competition has to be somehow relevant to them; they have to want to be involved.

That leads to the second issue, that of elitism vs mob mentality. Here, there seems to be trouble relating to the other side, perhaps even a strong desire to not want to relate to the other side. I want to bridge that gap, and I will do so with an extended metaphor.

Imagine you’re at a restaurant eating a cheeseburger. Every bite makes you want to take another. What are your thoughts at this time? Perhaps you’re thinking that it’s simply “delicious.” How delicious? You might compare it to cheeseburgers you’ve had in the past that stick out in your memory. You might begin to wonder why you find this burger delicious, or why the people who hate cheeseburgers do so. Or maybe you’re wondering if you’d eat it over an expensive filet mignon. Why do we eat the things we do? How has the act of enjoying food affected commercialism and vice versa? What of the cattle that went into the beef? Or maybe you’re not even “thinking” at all, and you’re just savoring the flavor, the wanderings of your brain temporarily shut down so that you can fully engage the beef and the cheese which lies melted on top.

Are there any thoughts from your burger experience that you want to share with others? If so, which thoughts? What is your purpose behind making people aware of cheeseburger and cheeseburger-related topics? Do you want to recommend the place to others? If you’re going to compare it, do you compare it with other items on the menu or with other cheeseburgers? Or do you want to talk about the concept of the cheeseburger and how ubiquitous an icon it’s become?

Clearly there are some topics in my cheeseburger metaphor that when translated into anime blogging clearly lean towards the side of the “episodic” blogging, while there are others that would clearly be considered “editorial.” But there’s also this gigantic middle area where the division becomes increasingly tenuous. Some can easily exist in both types of blogs, and it all just comes down to what it is about anime that interests you, what you want to say about it, and what kind of discussion you expect from it, if any at all.

Anime can be emotional. It can be intellectual. It can be sophisticated and it can be visceral. It can be all of those things and none of them, and there’s no clear definition of which is which or how things “should” be enjoyed. Irrespective of any notions of quality in either the anime being watched or the blogs being written, people have real reasons for liking the things they do, even if it’s as simple as “killing time,” that’s still a valid reason. Similarly, someone who has gotten to the point of analyzing the cultural effects of anime and not the anime itself may risk being too far-removed from the anime itself, but it’s still a decided direction. You may not like either reason, but that doesn’t mean that the first person is a mindless sack of waste, nor is the second necessarily incapable of talking “normally.” And just as you can respect someone else’s approach to anime, someone can respect yours, even if you disagree entirely.

It’s easier to understand each other when we’re not being so aggressively defensive.

THE WORLD! IS! MAHJONG!

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Mahjong manga has its fair share of devoted followers, especially in Japan itself, but I feel that the genre has a direction it has yet to explore that could, if done well, be one of the best mahjong titles ever.

The mahjong portrayed in manga is almost invariably Japanese-style mahjong, but of course mahjong is a game of Chinese origins, and has found homes in other parts of Asia and even in the United States. There are some rules we kind of take for granted with  Japanese-style mahjong. For example, declaring riichi, or the act of declaring to your opponents that you’re a hair’s breadth away from winning in order to gain the opportunity to earn additional bonus points, and furiten, or the rule that trying to win off of a tile you’ve already discarded previously is significantly more difficult, are exclusive to Japanese mahjong.

Now, wouldn’t it be great to see a series about a guy (or possibly a girl) who has to master multiple forms of mahjong?

Korean-style mahjong forbids stealing tiles to complete straights unless it is to win a round.

In Hong Kong’s version of mahjong, you can actually win with a 0-point hand, ending the round but achieving nothing in return.

Taiwanese mahjong has 16-tile hands, as opposed to the standard 13-tile hand found in most other forms of mahjong.

American mahjong actually has “jokers” and the ability to exchange tiles at the start of the match.

And Japanese tiles are smaller than the tiles used in other parts of the world, so even the methods of cheating change somewhat as you go from one style to the next.

Some of the rule differences seem small, but they can have a profound impact on how the game is played, and this is exactly the sort of thing that could be exaggerated to great effect in manga format. The hero would have to adapt to every style and figure out the feel and the flow of each type of mahjong. I see it as being similar to Swan, where a young ballerina travels the world to learn different philosophies on ballet.

And if they start running out, then I don’t see why they couldn’t just start making new ones up. There’s Washizu mahjong, why can’t there be Canadian mahjong?

What’s In: Fujoshi, What’s Out: Fujoshi

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So in adapting the manga series Mousou Shoujo Otakukei for English-speaking audiences, the title was changed to Fujoshi Rumi, with Rumi being the main character and fujoshi being what she is.

But now with Fujoshi Kanojo, the title has been changed to My Girlfriend is a Geek.

Two different US distributors are behind each title, but I find it interesting that one would go as far as to insert this very otaku word, fujoshi, into the title when not even the Japanese version used it, while the series that prominently displays the term in its name is presented as being more of a general “geek” type of significant other.

Ogiue Maniax is Going on a Journey

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A never-ending journey. A journey to the stars.

Well, almost.

Big news in the land of Ogiue Maniax. As anyone who’s read this blog for any length of time knows, I love to write about anime and manga to analyze and explore various facets of them, from genres to the industry to the fans to the art. It is a passion that has been with me for a long time, but which only really began to manifest itself once I started writing Ogiue Maniax back in November of 2007. Now I’m entering another stage.

I have been accepted to a PhD program in Europe to study manga for four years. Being a PhD program, it is a paid position.

One of the things I look forward to is opening my mind to another part of the world. As much as I try to view situations from as many angles as I can, I am constantly aware of how America-centric my thoughts and writings can be, and if I can just challenge that part of my psyche a little bit over the next few years then I will come out of the situation a little better. And once I’m back, who knows? Maybe I’ll go on a road trip.

I don’t have to leave for a while, but given the rigor of a doctoral program, I may not have the time to update as much as I have in the past once I get there. I have no intentions of abandoning the blog though; it means too much to me.

I want to thank everyone who’s read Ogiue Maniax over these past few years. Your interest, support, and feedback helped me to shape my online voice, and to get me in a position to be confident enough in my own writing and passion to even apply for a PhD program, let alone get accepted by one in another continent.

These next four years are dedicated to you.

For a Truly Unified Front, You Need to Create a Unified Front

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Let’s talk about the biggest news this past week: manga companies both in the Japan and the US have formed a coalition (literally the word they use) to combat rampant piracy of manga. Their targets are not scanlators, but specifically those for-profit megasites which house thousands of titles for easy reading online, such as Onemanga.

The issue of scanlation sites profiting off of the manga they house is not very new to the scanlation scene, with Narutofan.com and its owner Tazmo getting accused of duping people into paying for a subscription service for something which was available for free elsewhere, albeit still illegally. This newer, ad-driven model exemplified by Onemanga however is something else entirely, and it preys upon its readers by feeding in to their desire for “more” in as convenient a way as possible.

I’ll admit it: I’ve used sites like Onemanga and Mangafox before. They’re absurdly convenient, and I don’t even have to use up space on my hard drive to take a look at a series. So while I wouldn’t mind seeing these sites go, I think there are lessons to learn from their successes.

1) There has to be a way to profit off of online manga.

The issue here is that these sites are “for-profit.” It’s clear that they’re able to generate revenue, so there must be something that companies can take away from them, even if it’s just the method of displaying advertisements.

2) Companies should work together to create a single portal for legal online manga

One of the strengths attributed to the giant manga aggregators is that they have practically everything, or at least significantly more than any individual manga company’s website. They have scanlations, they have just straight-up ripped copies from official English releases, and they have a ton of each.

To compete with this model, I think all the manga companies, like Viz, Yen Press, Del Rey, the Japanese companies backing them, and even this new Open Manga thing, need to pool together their resources and create their own, legitimate manga aggregator. Even if it’s just a link to their respective sites, I think it’d be a very good idea to just have a single place curious readers can go to in order to see what’s out there.

3) Increase awareness, make people know that resources exist

The for-profit aggregators reach well beyond the  “manga fandom.” The first time I heard of Onemanga, it wasn’t from people who were knee deep in anime and manga, but from people who kind of read it on the side. Conversely, when scans of Vertical Inc.’s release of Black Jack appeared, some fans stated that they wished the series was licensed, despite the fact that copyright pages were scanned, and that the covers prominently display Vertical logos and the like.

A lot of fans aren’t even aware of what’s out there, or even that a lot of manga series are online through their licensed distributors. So going along with the idea of a single and legitimate manga aggregator, the existence of such a site needs to get pushed and pushed hard, to the point that word of mouth happens not just in anime communities but on facebook or wherever.

I don’t even think the word  “legal” should necessarily be used either. That doesn’t really factor into anyone’s enjoyment of media, anime or otherwise.

4) Get a better manga-viewing platform

One of the big advantages of a site like Onemanga is that it encourages both rapid and rabid consumption of manga. Their simple linked jpeg viewer makes it easy to just click page after page; you can even use the arrows on your keyboard to move through a manga.

Official manga viewers however, such as Viz’s flash-based viewer on sites like Sigikki have a lot of little things which require more effort to navigate, in contrast with the near-brainlessness of Onemanga. Yes, it can be chalked up to the laziness of fans, but it shouldn’t be about admonishing the readership. Once again, lessons can be learned.

Taking the Viz manga reader again as an example, there are a number of small difficulties which add up and make the experience less enjoyable. I have a small resolution on my monitor and I know that, while this is getting less and less common, it is a problem for a good number of people. When the pages are zoomed out, the text is impossible to read. When it’s zoomed in, I have to use my mouse to pull the pages around, and can’t even use the scroll wheel on my mouse to navigate.

Then there’s the matter of moving to the next page. In zoomed-out mode you can go to the sides of the page and an arrow conveniently appears, but when zoomed in this no longer becomes an option, and you need to use the buttons at the bottom to move on. Not only that, but chapters don’t link to each other. You have to go back to the previous page, find the link to the next chapter, and then wait for that to open up in a new window. Compare this with being able to use the arrow keys to navigate, and being able to click the last page of chapter 1 to move onto the first page of chapter 2.

Conclusion

I understand that it would be difficult for companies to negotiate with each other to create unified website, but I think it’s better than going things alone. A “coalition” is one thing, but I want to really see manga companies working together.

100 Million-Card Pickup

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A friend of mine attended this week’s Vertical Vednesday and enjoyed it a good deal. He’d been wanting to to one for a while, but his schedule simply did not permit it. Later, we spoke online, and having seen the sheer scope of just the pet manga genre he said to me, “I absolutely cannot imagine keeping up with the manga scene any more.”

I responded, “What you realize eventually is that the “scene” was always that big. We just saw the pond for the ocean.” And every day, I feel like that more and more, whether it’s about the fandom or the works themselves.

When I was younger, I found the Anime Web Turnpike. Seeing all of those websites, I came up with a goal: even if I couldn’t see every anime and manga out there, I could at least know about every single one.

I’ll start with these.

And so I read as many fansites as I could, and in the end I “knew” I couldn’t have possibly covered everything, but that I must have at least learned about “most of them.”

Hahahahahahahaha.

Memorizing the statistics of every Pokemon gets more difficult every few years, but at least that’s an obtainable goal. Total knowledge of anime and manga is another realm entirely. Even Japan Thompson, one of the men in America closest to achieving that goal, restricted himself to manga released in English when he was researching for Manga: The Complete Guide.

I think about half of the sheer hubris of thinking that one can know even “most”  manga or anime comes from believing in the back of your mind that manga is a fairly “small” thing. Few would be brave enough to say that they know about every kind of tea there is, or every book written about World War II, but so many of us think that knowing every anime or manga is a realistic goal.

The other half comes from determination, so in a way I look forward to a lot more people making this mistake. It’s almost like otaku growing pains.

Behold, the Greener Grass Saga!

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While I love anime and manga, I also like cartoons and comics the world over. I grew up with superhero comics, so even though I don’t keep up with them terribly much these days, I still like to know what’s going in them. In reading American comics blogs, it makes me aware that certain topics which garner extensive discussion and debate are hardly blips on the radar for anime and manga discussion. One topic in particular is character interpretation.

Spandex-and-cape comics, particularly the big mainstream ones from Marvel and DC, have a long history of changing writers, and so too with them comes different ideas of how the same characters should act. In time, you have notions of things like “definitive runs,” or the story or series of stories where the portrayal of a particular character ends up carrying through well after that writer has left. Examples include Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, where a B-level character whose power was basically vegetation-based was revealed to have been an “Earth Elemental” all along, or Frank Miller’s Daredevil, which gave the blind superhero’s stories more gritty realism as he fought the mobster dregs of New York City. As time goes on, a character’s chances of getting more definitive portrayals increases. With a longstanding character like the Joker, the wild variation from comic slapstick villain to utterly mad mass murder can seem almost schizophrenic. Appropriate in a way for someone like the Joker, but perhaps less so for others.

Fans can discuss which is the best, most true face for the character. Others can argue that all of the portrayals are authentic, and that the character is an iconic concept to be interpreted by the creators. It’s just the kind of talk that doesn’t have very much opportunity to occur in manga given the difference in history between it and superhero comics. The closest thing anime and manga have to discussions of continuity and portrayal is probably Mobile Suit Gundam. Granted, it’s pretty close, especially with something like Turn A Gundam, a series which takes the idea of all portrayals of Gundam being “true” Gundams and turns it into a cohesive story. But sometimes I look over and think, “I wonder what manga discussion would be like with more of that.”

Then I look at all the downsides of continuity and retcons and the arguments that come with it, and I’m pretty okay with where anime and manga are. It’s a fair trade-off, I think, and I’d rather have the comics of the world be more different than the same.

Talk About Kitty Cats: Vertical Vednesday

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In about 12 hours there is going to be a Vertical Vednesday. It’s been a while since I’ve actually had the opportunity to go to a Vertical Vednesday, but today I will correct that mistake. I also apologize for telling people about this at the last second.

A Vertical Vednesday is a roughly monthly or bi-monthly meeting in Manhattan with Ed Chavez, the marketing director of manga and Japanese popular culture book publisher Vertical Inc. In terms of manga, their releases include Black Jack and To Terra. This latest VV is going to focus mainly on the English adaptation of Chi’s Sweet Home, the comic about an adorable kitten, but also other recently licensed stuff. If you are able to go, I highly recommend it, as Ed is literally the most knowledgeable person in regards to manga that I know. You’re bound to learn something.

The plan is to meet in front of Kinokuniya NYC (6th Ave between 40th and 41st streets) and then move to a location that can fit the size of the crowd. See you there!

Part 1: PG-13, Part 2: NC-17?

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Warning! Spoilers for Houkago Play Volume 1 . Also slightly NSFW.

The 4-koma manga series Houkago Play had its second volume released recently. Having enjoyed the first volume, I decided to place an order for Houkago Play 2 at Kinokuniya NYC. However, I received a call telling me that the book could not be ordered due to “content.”

Wait, what?

A call back had them explain that Kinokuniya has a policy about sexual content, which is perfectly understandable, but I didn’t even realize that Houkago Play fell into this category. The first volume is certainly sexually charged, as the story features a sadistic tsundere character frustrated at not getting any alone time with her guy friend, and there’s even a brief portrayal of sex at the end of the book, but there is zero nudity in the book, and the sex takes up only three pages out of an almost 200-page book. Next to some of the stuff that Kinokuniya sells already, such as josei manga, certain seinen titles, and even harem or shoujo romance stuff, this seems like small potatoes. So what gives?


This is literally as far as Houkago Play goes.

One possibility is that the second volume of Houkago Play may be significantly more graphic than the first, which is in itself odd. If that’s the case, where is the line of “content” that Volume 1 manages to keep clear of, but Volume 2 tramples over on its way to the other side? Or is it that the constant sexually charged nature of the comic itself is what takes it over the edge?

If anyone can tell if there’s a significant difference between Volumes 1 and 2 of Houkago Play, that would be very helpful.