Category Archives: trends

Different Aims, Different Misses: “Traveler,” Manga, and OEL Manga

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Back when I was buying issues of Monthly Afternoon to get my Genshiken fix, the magazines would occasionally come with packaged mini-manga. Each small book has one or two self-contained stories and it seemed like a pretty good extra. It wasn’t until kransom’s post about the Afternoon Four Seasons Award that I realized that these manga were exactly that: winning entries from the competitions.

Though anyone is allowed to enter, amateurs can still manage to win, as was the case with Winter 2005 when then-rookie manga artist Imai Tetsuya won the Winter 2005 Grand Prize for his entry, entitled Traveler.

Portable Four Seasons Winter 2005. Traveler is the one on top.

Looking at Traveler, it most definitely deserved to win. The basic premise is that a boy wakes up one day to find that he’s four months in the future and that apparently in those four months he’s turned into a complete jerk who left his band and broke up with his girlfriend. The story is less about returning back to the proper time and more about dealing with responsibility even when it shouldn’t have anything to do with you. It’s pretty intriguing, and everyone loves to say, “Fuzakenna!”

Imai makes mistakes. Some of the characters and plot development seemed tacked on and unnecessary. But what I find really interesting about this is that the faults of Traveler feel different from the mistakes that tend to happen in OEL manga.

When we look at criticism of OEL manga and the whole movement behind it, one of the factors is how much it just doesn’t “look” like manga. Artists try their best to live up to the series they love, but something typically feels off. In the past I’ve talked about some of the reasons why I think this happens, and Narutaki over at the Reverse Thieves pointed out the abuse of screentone in a lot of OEL titles. But I think there’s a more inherent cultural difference, one that’s not really a matter of talent or experience.

The art in Traveler hits bouts of inconsistency, particularly with the characters, as they sometimes suddenly look like they have no bones underneath their skin and muscles. I think you can see this in the image from earlier. Faces go out of proportion, too. A lot of western artists probably even have a better grasp of anatomy and motion than Imai, but the way in which the artwork turns out inconsistent is different from the way it happens in most OEL titles.

The story’s faults are also different from the issues that occur in OEL manga. In Traveler, some characters and plot threads sometimes seem unnecessary or perhaps given too much time, a problem when it’s just a 32-page one-shot, which are problems which occur in OEL titles too, but the plot issues with Traveler seem very much like the kind of mistakes that would happen in manga. There’s a sense that Imai and other manga-aspiring artists in Japan, when compared to their counterparts across the ocean, are simply aiming for separate goals; whether they reach them or not is another matter entirely.

I think the lesson here might be that when you judge two things, comparing the very best of one to the very worst of another doesn’t really get you anywhere. It’s far more interesting and fruitful to look at the middle ground; avoid the absolute greats for a little bit so you can see what most people are doing. There, you’ll find a good snapshot of the state of manga, or whatever it is you’re looking at.

I also know that “across the ocean” leaves out countries and products like Korean manhwa. I’ll leave that for another day though.

The Giant Killing Blogging Phenomenon

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All across the Aniblogospheriversemension, an amazing thing is happening.

Episodic bloggers are making really good posts full of interesting content, sometimes even better than anything they’ve written in the past. And they’re all posts about the soccer anime Giant Killing.

I’m not sure why this is happening. Perhaps it’s because Giant Killing is a show with a lot of meat to chew on, or maybe it’s being held up by World Cup fever. For whatever reason though, anime bloggers are producing high-quality Giant Killing posts. They’re analyzing character motives, they’re breaking down the pace of the episodes and the strategies used by each of the teams, and they’re sometimes even eschewing summarizing episodes in favor of transmitting their feel and excitement and discussing the way they themselves relate to the show.

Examples:

The payoff for all of this suffering comes in being able to feel the rush of adrenalin when a play comes together. When that happens, you know the makers of the show did something right, because you believe it.

—Abandoned Factory Anime Review

I always thought of Kuro as simply a strong hard player with no particular strengths mentally (other than screaming his guts out and be a total idiot). Hence, it is a huge surprise for me to see that he actually has the ability to read the game more effectively than anything that I expected. A high line will always have a huge danger in the offside trap, and someone who can read the game can reduce the chances of the offside trap being broken.

—THAT Anime Blog

The 8th episode of Giant Killing sees the likely conclusion of Tatsumi’s engineering of the squad and probably finding a settled lineup. It also reveals a real method to his madness in the process. However, football is a results business, and Tatsumi will eventually have to get some results out of his vision.

—Lower Mid-Table

We despair when an athlete retires at the height of his powers; we want to watch greatness as long as possible. But we also lament when an athlete sticks around past his expiration date. It’s a horrible double standard. I respect a guy who knows the right time to walk away, but I know it’s a difficult choice. How many of us could suddenly abandon our jobs at such a young age?

—Unmei Kaihen

And that’s just a handful. The more you explore, the more you’ll find that Giant Killing might be the best thing to happen to episode blogging in a long time.

Oh, and this goes a long way in fighting the image that anime fans are a bunch of sports-hating nerds who look upon the athletically fit with disdain, and it’s done fairly naturally. It’s not like anyone is actively writing these posts to not seem like a geek. We’re anime fans after all.

ETU!

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.

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.

What Does “Accessibility” Really Mean?

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It’s the final day in my matchup at the Aniblog Tourney, and compared to when the voting began, both featured matches have had a surprising turn of events, leading to extremely close vote counts. It’s been a lot more thrilling than anyone anticipated, and this unpredictability has me asking a simple question: What do fans want in a blog?

Writing Ogiue Maniax, I’ve gained a reputation for having an intelligent, yet accessible writing style that has given me a unique voice online. I am constantly working on improving all aspects of that voice, and I work towards having my posts be fairly easy to digest while also encouraging further thinking. But the Aniblog Tourney has made me well-aware that there’s always room for improvement and change, particularly in the area of accessibility.

Looking at anime blogs, the most popular ones tend to be “episodic blogs,” or ones that review shows episode by episode, laying down summaries and opinions on a (mostly) weekly basis. Most commonly, the latest shows are the ones that get episode blogged the most, though there’s nothing stopping people from doing the same with older shows. Not only do the more well-known episode blogs get more hits, but they also garner more comments, and as the tournament has showed us, have their fair share of staunch defenders and loyal supporters. In these, the most prominent of episodic blogs, their voices and content have reached a great number of people.

So I wonder, is the fact that I write in what’s often categorized as an “editorial” style holding me back from improving my accessibility?

I know that this sounds suspiciously similar to “Why isn’t my blog more popular?” but that isn’t really what I’m saying. Instead, it’s that anime fans appear to feel more comfortable with the episodic mode of anime blogging that has me thinking hard about the way I write. How can I reach more fans without scaring them off with meta-posts such as this? Would I be able to encourage more people to examine anime and their own fandom by adopting an episode blogging format?

Don’t get me wrong though, I like the way I write, and the basic format of Ogiue Maniax isn’t going to change any time soon. I’m not even sure if I would be able to even pull off Ogiue Maniax-style episode blogging all that well. It’s just something I wanted to contemplate. Though, if any of you are up for the challenge, be my guest. Out of what’s currently there, I think Unmei Kaihen‘s style is roughly where I’d be aiming for, as I always feel like I learn something from reading his Giant Killing posts.

Any 5-Year-Old Can Tell You Why Summer Wars is Great

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As of late, it seems like podcast after podcast is discussing Summer Wars. Speakeasy podcasters Hisui and Narutaki use the movie as an impetus to talk about how getting taken out of a movie causes you to more readily notice its faults. Andrew on the Veef Show talks about how the hype for Summer Wars is met by backlash, while also stating that he finds the movie to be good but not great. Anime World Order’s Daryl and Gerald also disagree on the merits of the movie. Overall, the two big questions seem to be 1) Why do the people who love Summer Wars love it and 2) Why do the people who hate it do so?

Now I am on the side of thinking the movie was fantastic, so the best I can tell you about why critics deride it is hearsay and conjecture, but I can tell you about why I think Summer Wars is a very strong movie on par with Hosoda’s previous work, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

Summer Wars‘ greatest strength comes from its overarching theme, centering around the idea of closing gaps, be they generational, technological, or even familial. A super advanced online world is contrasted with old-fashioned ways, the celebration of family is contrasted with the desire to move beyond the home, and young is contrasted with old. But in every case, Summer Wars doesn’t say that one is better than the other, instead giving a message that each is equally useful and that everyone can work together for the common good. It’s a very optimistic view of where we’re going as a society and as a planet, and I think that optimism is what keeps people cheering and praising the movie.

A lot of reviewers seem to neglect mentioning these themes, and I find that to be quite odd. It’s pretty much the heart of Summer Wars and for all of the praise and the criticism, how is it not mentioned more often? And it’s not like the themes are particularly subtle to the point of invisibility either. When I went to the New York Children’s International Film Festival showing of Summer Wars, there was a Q&A session with director Hosoda. In every case, it was the kids who nailed the most important theme of the movie, as well as a lot of the lesser themes. Now, these kids had to be fairly smart, being able to keep up with the subtitles on-screen, but they were still about eight years old on average. Surely the great minds of the anime internet can’t be outdone by a bunch of elementary school kids, right?

Re-reading my glowing review of the film, I am forced to realize that I too forgot to mention the overarching theme of Summer Wars and so am just as guilty of obfuscating the discussion as anyone else. Looking at my own words, I get the feeling that I was so caught up in trying to describe the enormous amounts of effort clearly put into the film and its potential for wide appeal through juggling many different elements that I simply forgot to actually say why I think the film is great. Perhaps everyone else experienced the same problem, like a collective mind fart from thinking too much about anime without actually thinking about it.

And so in the end, we were bested by third graders.

Fanseverance

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The topic of fanservice can be a touchy one among anime fans. Providing some blatant eye candy is nothing new for anime, as Space Battleship Yamato regularly featured skirt flips and a brief glimpse of pure white cloth, but it seems to be especially controversial these days as the nature of fanservice itself changes and anime is increasingly seen as catering to a fanbase which actively sexualizes characters.

But there are many different approaches to fanservice, and I wonder, what do anime fans consider to be the “best” (or in a sense “worst”) form of fanservice?

Let’s say there’s a fairly serious show, and the show contains fanservice. Which of the following do you consider the lesser of two evils/the better of two worlds?

1) Fanservice that occurs during a dramatic and emotional scene that is possibly the climax of a show.

2) A fanservice moment or possibly even episode which occurs between important and emotional plot points.

Essentially, when is fanservice more welcome or considered more egregious, when it exists within a “dramatic” moment or when it happens as a “break” of sorts?

I can see arguments for either side. Someone who says example 1 is worse would probably argue that fanservice can trivialize or harm what could have been a truly great moment. However, it reminds me of Tezuka’s work, where he would stick comedic moments right in the middle of serious ones, only here we’re replacing comedy with sex appeal (and also possibly comedy).

Example 2 meanwhile can be seen as the greater menace because it can detract from characterization. But then it can be seen as a form of relief, a break in between emotionally involving moments in a series.

So, which is the path you’d choose?

Well My Parents Don’t Drive Awesome Flying Cars

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For the most part, video games have advanced in a positive direction in terms of artistic progression. Though I don’t agree entirely on how our newfangled advanced realistic graphics are being used or certain trends in storytelling or interaction, I can say that we’re doing okay. At the same time though, I’ve come to realize that when video games look this good and have fully elaborated stories and such, it often leaves less room for creative, off-the-wall adaptations in fiction.

At this point with games looking and feeling closer to the realm of film and animation and other storytelling mediums with characters having concrete personalities, there  are fewer opportunities to make great leaps in interpretation. Yes, I understand that products like the Super Mario Bros. movie are exactly the kinds of disaster that comes from being too “loose” an interpretations, but I believe there is a definite charm.

This applies not just to storytelling but also visuals as well. Although the Tekken OVA of the 90s was awful, could you imagine a Tekken anime today, given the fact that it would be 2-D interpretations of such detailed 3-D characters? Good looking or not, you could see the move from blocky polygons anime designs to make some sort of sense.

Basically, I’d like to still be in a world where a racing game with a normal setting could be interpreted as a futuristic setting with talking computers inside my motor vehicles.

Is that too much to ask, I wonder?

Praying Towards Castle Grayskull

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When it comes to the international phenomenon that is Pokemon, producer Ishihara Tsunekazu had the following to say:

石原： 北米ではけっこうクラシカルに伝説系のポケモンの人気があるんですけど、リザードンのような見た目か ら強そうなタイプのポケモンが好まれています。それとミュウツーでしょうか。

Ishihara: In North America, classical-style Legendary Pokemon are popular, but Pokemon who look strong like Charizard are also preferred. Mewtwo as well.


Charizard and Mewtwo

While Ishihara then goes on to say that  universally speaking, Pokemon like Pikachu are popular everywhere, I want to to focus mainly on this unique bit of difference North America has.

While I can’t speak for Canada, Mexico, or Central America, I think it’s very well-known that America likes powerful characters. More broadly, America likes the hero who rises above all, the larger-than-life figure. He may have a humble background, but the end result is still strong. It speaks to our culture of individualism, and it is reflected in the popularity of action movies as well as in the existence of iconic heroic figures in cartoons and comics such as Superman, Captain America, He-Man and Flash Gordon. When the US encounters the creative output of another nation such as Japan, it very profoundly reflects this ideal.

This is also partly why I think many of the anime that have been popular in the US are or were popular. Compared to the less popular One Piece, Naruto and Bleach exude seriousness and power in their aesthetics, doubly so for something like Dragon Ball Z. The hyper violence of MD Geist and its contemporaries in the 80s and 90s felt new and fresh to some extent, but that level of violence is I think something comfortably American, animated cousins of action movies.

I think it’s very easy to take one’s own cultural upbringing for granted, to think that the ideals of your own culture are the ideals of everyone else’s. It’s not small-minded or biggoted so much as it is a fairly natural progression if there is nothing to jar you out of it. In an article from 1987, Frederik Schodt, author of Manga! Manga!, points out that American superhero comics do not do well in Japan. Back then, they were considered too plain and too wordy, and today I can tell you that superheroes are better known through their movies than anything else. When I was studying in Japan, I had a conversation with a Japanese classmate, where I tried to explain the Flash to him. I told him he was “red and very fast,” to which he responded, “Daredevil?”

That said, there are a number of manga artists influenced by Americann superhero comics, such as Nightow Yasuhiro (Trigun) and Takahashi Kazuki (Yu-Gi-Oh!). In anime, it goes at least as far back as Gatchaman. Still, you will find that just as we have taken anime and said, “This is what we like in our anime,” they have said, “This is what we like in superheroes” and transformed it into something more in-line with their culture.

Cultural exchange, as they call it.

One last thing to dwell on is the way Europe has approached anime and manga. Taniguchi Jiro, who is influenced by the French comic artist Moebius, is much more popular in Moebius’s home country than he is in the US. His style is very European, incorporating complex and detailed backgrounds and placing a great visual emphasis on environment (not to be confused with “the environment”). But as I said before, I’m no expert on European comics, so I’ll leave someone else to fill in that blank until I catch up.