When I look at certain cheesecake-oriented American comics such as Lady Death, Vampirella, and Taboo, I find that they bother me in a way that fanservicey manga, anime, etc. do not. It’s something I haven’t entirely figured out why, but there’s an inkling somewhere in my mind that tells me to head a certain direction. This post is the exploration of that feeling.
Before I start though, I’m going to have to point out that the images used in this post may be considered not work-safe. Careful!
I’ve been keeping up with Suite Precure since it began last February, and while it isn’t quite the masterpiece that Heartcatch Precure! is, it’s still enjoyable enough. We’ve hit roughly the middle point of Suite Precure, and quite a few things have happened along the way, including the reveal of a new Cure or two.
I’m going to discuss some of my feelings on these current episodes (as well as previous Precure series), so if you don’t want to be spoiled, turn away.
Today marks the end of my brief return to daily blogging. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be going back to posting (at least) twice a week. It was fun, really.
I feel like I should use this time to reflect on what it’s been like to go back and forth between posting rates.
At some point this past year I realized how valuable each post could be when writing only twice a week. A post that could have been timely quickly becomes anything but just after a few posts. I’m not running a news site here which depends on how quickly I can get information out here or anything like that, but on more than one occasion I’ve felt my posts have less impact simply because I fired them too late. Not only that, but more frivolous entries were technically taking up the “space” of possibly better ones. The Fujoshi Files posts, for instance, sometimes felt like they were not worth being one of the two main posts during a week. This is why in some instances I had it be a “third post.”
Then again, I am well aware that this is a self-imposed limitation and that if I really wanted to I could still try to post daily. It’s just a preemptive measure I’ve set into place for when my workload gets heavier.
So over the past six weeks I’ve made 42 posts, including this one. I have to say, daily posting doesn’t feel as easy as it used to be, but I think it’s because 1) I haven’t done it in a while, 2) this being my vacation time meant I had to also juggle a lot of other activities, and 3) months of operating under a reduced schedule has changed my writing somewhat. With two posts a week, I could sit on a topic for much longer and massage the words out. I don’t have any conclusive evidence, but I think my posts had gotten longer and more elaborate as a result. Trying to combine that mindset with seven posts a week has been something of a challenge.
Another thing I’ve thought about is that idea of writing every day to get better and how this differs from writing enough for multiple days in advance. Writing one hour a day every day is probably better than writing 7 hours in one day for the entire week. Still, we’re all busy people and sometimes that’s just necessary. I myself had to build up a reserve because I was spending weekends in situations where I wouldn’t be able to post. All in all, it sometimes felt like too much and yet also not enough.
Maybe I just needed more hours in a single day. Wouldn’t have it any other way though.
I’ve been reading the manga Coppelion lately, about three teenage girls who are genetically engineered to be immune to radiation in a post-nuclear apocalyptic Tokyo. One of those girls is Fukasaku Aoi, whose most prominent feature is that she has an incredibly expressive face compared to the other characters around her. It kind of makes her an endearing character even when she complains (which she does often), and I feel like she can really liven up scenes as a result. She shares this trait with Kurumi Erika from Heartcatch Precure!, and as is evident from previous posts, I like Erika quite a bit as well.
I find myself wondering about the candidness of such characters and why they can be so appealing, particularly when they’re grouped with characters who, while not necessarily reticent, still don’t have quite the range of expressions that someone like Aoi or Erika does. In thinking this through, possibly the best explanation I can find is not from manga or anime but from bande dessinée, Franco-Belgian comics. Though all sorts of things have been written about the expressive nature of eyes in manga, I think I might be best served by The Adventures of Tintin.
At the Belgian Comic Strip Center museum in Brussels, there is a Tintin exhibit which features profiles on all of the major characters. Among them is Haddock, a ship captain and friend of Tintin. Like Erika and Aoi, one of his most distinguishing features is his capacity for making wild facial gestures, and a display in the museum talks about the relationship between Captain Haddock and Tintin, who is usually much more calm in his demeanor. I don’t quite remember everything it said, but it mentioned something about how the visual contrast between the two makes for an ideal scenario where both characters complement each other with their respective approaches and make the comic better as a result.
If that’s the case, then taking that idea and applying it to the three-character structure of Coppelion‘s central cast, I have to ask myself what purpose does that middle character serve, the one who is less expressive than the Haddock but more expressive than the Tintin. My initial thoughts towards this is that the middle character, who in the case of Coppelion is its protagonist Naruse Ibara, is that if you think of the three characters as a spectrum to gauge the direness or excitement of a situation, the point at which Ibara starts to get facial reactions close to par with Aoi’s is when you know things are really getting serious. If it gets to the point where the third girl Taeko is freaking out, then it’s doubly so. Proper use of characters with different capacities for strong facial expressions can potentially control the level of excitement in a comic while also distinguishing the characters for variety.
I get the feeling that much of what I said was pretty obvious, but I still wanted to write it all down.
I think it’s common when discussing anime and manga with people who are perhaps only barely acquainted with those subjects to hear from them that “anime all looks the same.” You can point to plenty of titles with variation in theme, art style, writing, you name it, but there is still that sense that all anime has a similar feel. Usually I’m the one trying to explain how diverse those comics can be, but in a recent visit to a comic shop, I found myself somewhat on the receiving end.
In this case, it wasn’t manga but rather American comics that gave me pause to consider. Not really keeping up with those comics as I had in the past, I was looking at the rack where they have the weekly 32-page (or so) issues, your Avengers and Batman and what-not mixed with titles from smaller publishers, seeing what might be interesting. Then it hit me. Everything kind of looked the same. I could obviously see that there were many different artists working on each comic, but there were just certain shared elements that made it feel like one big monolith of a wall.
I’m not sure exactly what it is, but I feel like it might just be the sheer emphasis on Olympian physiques which exists in not only superhero comics but other action-type works as well. Be it male characters or female ones, what I can mainly remember from those covers is just how prominent the toned bodies on them are. It could also be something about the characters’ facial expressions.
I know better, and I can point to this or that indie title or graphic novel to show that’s why it isn’t the case, but I think that my reaction might not be that far from the person, let’s say an anime fan, who takes one look at the American comics section and finds little variety in it. At the same time, I’m also aware of how easily something like manga can be perhaps unfairly summarized by just a glance.
In my childhood I read a fair amount of mystery novels, but it wasn’t until I listened to the Speakeasy podcast that I became acquainted Knox’s Rules, a 10-point guide designed to make sure that a detective story does not violate the mystery’s logical structure and thus remove the reader’s desire to solve the case as well. That said, at least one or more rules are broken in every detective story, but the idea is that they should be kept in mind. More important though is the fact that adhering to those ten rules does not guarantee a good story.
The reason I bring this up is that the more I read about and examine the structure of comics, particularly manga, the more I find myself having to make sure that my reading of comics theory does not then overwhelm my reading of manga as I am looking at each page. The potential pitfalls here aren’t limited to just “overthinking” things or being too distanced from the work at hand, but that it risks making my viewing of comics, manga or otherwise, an exercise in dissection for the sake of dissection, and also can possibly lead me to believe that a comic is “better” if it follows those rules. That’s not to say you should just turn a blind eye to the things you learn, but in my experience, it can poison both the well of analysis and the well of enjoyment if mishandled. For example, in being more aware of the Ki-Shou-Ten-Ketsu (Introduction-Development-Twist-Conclusion) 4-part structure commonly used in manga (especially 4-panel manga), I have found myself looking for it everywhere in manga, and I have to make sure I don’t force it to appear in places where it does not necessarily exist just because I want it to be there.
Perhaps letting my own emotions towards a story mix in with the more distanced viewing is key to mitigating these situations.
Sometimes the really hardcore otaku manga out there are criticized for holding back anime and manga, for catering mainly towards maniacs who want their series to look and feel a certain way, and in doing so restrict the respectability that comes with artistic variety. But as much as topics like fanservice and moe exist prominently in these sorts of criticisms, and as much as there’s the image of the anime fan with seasonal short term memory, I feel that having hardcore devotees of anime and manga allows certain drawing styles to exist in comics even well after their heyday has passed.
70s-style shoujo manga is called such for a reason, and unless you’re Miuchi Suzue drawing Glass Mask and you’re literally a 70s shoujo manga artist still drawing to this day, it’s hard for an artist to draw in that manner and succeed on a mainstream level, especially if they’re a younger artist. Sure, you could put some blame on otaku liking more modern styles, but it stretches well beyond that demographic to the average reader, and the otaku magazines also seem like the only places left where someone can draw 70s shoujo-inspired comics and be appreciated for it.
One example I can think of is the title Christie High Tension, a detective series centering around the niece of Sherlock Holmes. She learned the game from her Uncle Holmes, and now she’s heir to the name Jaaaames B- uh, in any case it has an art style straight out of that Candy Candy/Rose of Versailles vein, and it runs in the same magazine as Dance in the Vampire Bund of all things.
Certainly you couldn’t call it “progress,” as it’s more a kind of preservation of the past, but I know that I always feel a little sadness when I look back to older manga art, and ask where this all went. It’s not really about lamenting the changes that have happened to manga, so much as it is wishing that as trends develop, the old ones still don’t end up being forgotten, that manga continues to increase its variety.
With its German-sounding location (Sternbild City), prominent use of English, and decidedly American superhero motif, Tiger & Bunny resembles something closer to the comics of Marvel and DC than it does Japanese-style costumed heroes, your Kamen Riders and Gatchamans and the like. At the same time, it’s not just a direct imitation of the superhero genre, and puts an interesting twist on the whole thing by making the heroes both celebrities and walking billboards for corporations, like if the fame and fortune-seeking Booster Gold (I know, he’s changed now but bear with me) was doing those old Hostess snack cakes advertisements.
Because of how Western Tiger & Bunny is in concept, though not necessarily execution, I’ve been wondering whether or not the show would be capable of reaching that English-speaking superhero comics fan community in any form, be it through the current Hulu stream or dubbed and put on cable television. In considering how I would sell the series to superhero enthusiasts, I’ve pictured myself describing it as a somewhat more light-hearted Watchmen because of how it takes a critical, yet relatively optimistic view of heroes, but when I consider how many factors might make that comparison feel off for readers. They might find that the writing isn’t as airtight as Alan Moore’s and that I’m insolent enough to compare the two. They might feel unsure about the title itself (“‘Bunny?’ Do you really expect me to take that seriously?”), or that it’s still too anime for their tastes, or that the popularity of the show among fujoshi sours its reputation. They might not even like Watchmen and the comparison would have them want to check it out even less.
So I’d like to ask both superhero comics fans, anime fans, and fans of both to tell me what you think about selling Tiger & Bunny to the Marvel/DC crowd. From your experience, how do you think it would fare? If you’re a comics fan and you’ve never heard of Tiger & Bunny, what do you think of my basic Watchmen/celebrity comparison? If you have heard of it but chose not to check it out, what about it turned you away?
Fans would pay through the nose to own AUTHENTIC REPLICAS OF REAL ROCKS AND PEBBLES that the characters collect.
Don’t you want to feel a little closer to Wakana? I’m sure you do. I’ve got a couple of things in my pocket to help you out.
At some point after the term “hipster” became a popular put-down among nerds, the phrase “I enjoyed this…ironically” became a running gag designed to emphasize everything that is perceived to be wrong with hipsters, highlighting that, at least for the stereotypical image of the hipster, that the enjoyment of kitsch is all an act. Because of this, I now sometimes see nerds who are afraid to enjoy things ironically for fear of being associated with that crowd.
To you, I want to say, it is okay to enjoy things “ironically.” The idea that something is “so bad it’s good” is a valid one, and being entertained on that level does not necessarily have anything to do with being “hipster.” There is a caveat though.
The key to enjoying something in an ironic fashion and not having it make you seem like less pleasant of an individual is that enjoyment of the product at hand, t-shirts, beer, anime, should be top priority or close to it. If the “ironic” products are consumed in service of enhancing or giving flourish to your image in the eyes of others, that’s when it starts to cross over into “hipster” territory. It is pretty unappealing when someone looks like they’re doing something just to make themselves seem better than others.
Certainly, some things will inevitably be part of personal presentation, such as clothes. Wearing clothes that make you look good is not a “hipster” thing. If you’re not sure about the distinction, here’s a simple test: If no one was around to see you, would you still be enjoying things ironically?
OGIUE MANIAX 