The Manga Curmudgeon

Spending too much on comics, then talking too much about them

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Essay question

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According to the Times Online, Britain is making its A-Level examinations more challenging by adding an independent research project. Oh, man, I would love to read the second one cited here:

“Students will work on projects independently, but will be taught research skills by their teachers, who will supervise and mark the projects. Subjects chosen by the 1,700 students who have piloted the project include ‘Can science explain the nature of happiness?’ and ‘Cultural comparison of Japanese Manga and American super-hero comics’.”

Post it, college-bound Brit! Post it now!

Meritorious

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Over at Sporadic Sequential, John Jakala is hosting a conversation about what comics possess literary merit. There are some fine suggestions, some you’d expect and some that you wouldn’t. For my own purposes, I’m going to focus on the coming-of-age novel. I know there are a ton of coming-of-age stories in graphic and prose media, and not all of them are even remotely literary, but three did come to mind as bumping up from entertainment (nothing wrong with that) to literature.

  • Genshiken, by Kio Shimoku (Del Rey): The lives and loves of a group of college geeks in a club that celebrates manga, anime, games, collectibles, and cosplay.
  • Paradise Kiss, by Ai Yazawa (Tokyopop): An unhappy grind finds herself through association with a group of oddball student designers.
  • Ohikkoshi, by Hiroaki Samura (Dark Horse): College students steadfastly avoid facing the future in the ways that college students do.

    • I think the shared element that gives these books a literary quality, at least by my standards, is the almost melancholy way the characters are nostalgic for their present station in life. They’re moving on to the next stage, but they’ve reached that transition point where they appreciate the current moment, partly because it’s about to end. There’s something lovely and wistful and thoughtful about that.

    Because we all know that super-heroes don't really die

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    Writing for The New York Times, and serenely ignorant of the comics-and-movies key party underway on the other side of the country, A.O. Scott wonders if super-hero movies have said all they have to say:

    “Instead the disappointment comes from the way the picture spells out lofty, serious themes and then … spells them out again. What kind of hero do we need? Where is the line between justice and vengeance? How much autonomy should we sacrifice in the name of security? Is the taking of innocent life ever justified? These are all fascinating, even urgent questions, but stating them, as nearly every character in ‘The Dark Knight’ does, sooner [or] later, is not the same as exploring them.”

    I’m guessing he’ll make Manohla Dargis review Watchmen.

    In fairness, I don’t think a lack of novelty or gravitas has ever hampered a genre to the degree that it kills the thing entirely. Over-saturation is a likelier culprit when it comes to putting a genre in a persistent vegetative state, as it did in the ‘80s with slasher films, a genre that got revived via ironic self-awareness in Scream, which triggered a wave of ironic, self-aware slasher movies, which is now over for a while, but probably not forever.

    Choice cuts

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    I meant to mention it yesterday, but ICv2 has a thorough, three-part interview with Jason Hoffs, Amblin-Dreamworks-Sony veteran who’s taken the helm of Viz Productions, the manga publisher’s new film arm. There are some really good bits.

    From part one:

    “Where I think manga is truly extraordinary (and I’m a fan, but a newcomer to your world—I’m not quite an otaku) is the level of characterization, which I think is exceptional. It typically exceeds the level of characterization, and in a way, sophistication, of many American graphic novels. I suspect one of the reasons for that is that these properties are initially serialized in magazines like Shonen Jump and in order for them to continue their readership they need to have these heightened, addictive characterizations.”

    From part two:

    “What I’m also finding at the studio level is that the executives that are 35 and under, or maybe more 32 and under, are very familiar with manga. The really young executives that are just coming up, and some of the agents too, they’re growing up with manga to some degree with a level of comfort and familiarity that almost equals their experience with American comics and graphic novels. At the chairman and head of production level, those people still need to be educated somewhat. If someone’s in their mid-50s, they’re unlikely to be an otaku.”

    From part three:

    “There are thousands of different manga titles that our corporate parents have published. I’m sure this is one of the largest pools of largely untapped—at least in the U.S.—international properties that exists in the world.”

    Cold, Vulcan logic

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    Tom Spurgeon, for the win:

    “I’m baffled why it should take anything more than prominent people in the comics industry declaring they’re uncomfortable with a business this year to make folks consider with seriousness and respect the courtesy of a bare-minimum effort to patronize another place until the situation shakes out. Instead, the response from many people seems to be finding ways to justify continued patronage as if this were a very, very precious thing. In fact, most of the rationalizing being done on behalf of continued patronage not only invests it with importance, it seems to presume one’s decision to hang out and drink in a certain location comes as the fulfillment of an expectation for received business that no entity on earth should get to claim or have claimed on its behalf. The end result: no one simply disagrees. Rather, there seems to be a compulsion that one agree with the spirit of the objection being made and explain why they can’t do anything about it.”

    No birds were harmed in the writing of this post

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    Chris Butcher offers some excellent advice on nurturing the next phase of the manga industry:

    “If you’ve got a store that believes in the material, and that keeps it in stock, not just makes it available for pre-order, then you can sell the material. In short, we have to invest in the industry we want, not just as retailers, but as journalists and pundits by covering the material we like, and as consumers by supporting the books we like with our dollars.

    “That’s my prescription for the manga industry: let’s make the industry we want, do our best to convert fashion into function, and celebrate our successes where we find them rather than complain that we’re not quite successful enough.”

    I’m all about combining errands, so here’s a possible way to kill two birds with one stone. (Sorry about the inherent animal cruelty of that phrase, but I haven’t had enough caffeine to recall a more benevolent alternative.) If you’re attending Comic-Con International and find some extra spending money in your pocket because you don’t feel like giving any to the Manchester Grand Hyatt, you could swing by the Fanfare/Ponent Mon booth (C04) and buy some of their lovely, lovely books. As Deb Aoki noted, Fanfare’s distribution system with Atlas isn’t quite 100% yet, so SDCC is probably your best chance to browse the publisher’s catalogue, gape in wonder at books like The Walking Man, Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators, and Kinderbook, and to pick up a copy of Hideo Azuma’s nothing-else-like-it Disappearance Diary (which I reviewed here).

    Now, as for “supporting the books we like with our dollars,” Brigid Alverson works in an excellent way to do that in a recent post at MangaBlog: ordering titles via your local bookstore, especially if they’re books that might not otherwise get shelved. This strikes me as a great way to put offbeat titles on a store’s radar, and I’ve heard from various people that many stores will order a couple of shelf copies of a title when they get a special order. Also, you don’t have to worry about potentially climbing shipping costs from online retailers, though you still have to pay for gas to get to the local big box.

    At Comics Should Be Good, Danielle Leigh gives a fine example of “covering the material we like” with her latest Manga Before Flowers column on CMX, DC’s stealth manga division:

    “But CMX made me a fan for life by bringing over really extraordinary titles that no one else ever has and published them on a very consistent schedule over the past few years (Even though three of four volumes of Eroica a year isn’t a lot, it is enough to make me happy).”

    Reservations confirmation

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    Chris Butcher points out that the owner of San Diego’s Manchester Grand Hyatt made a substantial donation to efforts to pass Proposition 8, which would confine marriage in California to heterosexual couples. I guess that Hyatt property won’t be offering any honeymoon packages to same-sex couples either.

    “The group’s message Thursday was to urge residents and tourists to stay at other hotels. The boycott call comes at the height of the summer and just one week before the start of the 2008 Gay Pride festivities in San Diego, during which 200,000 attendees are expected to attend, according to festival organizers.”

    July is a good month for gay nerds in San Diego.

    I’m not sure what I would do if I were going to the comic convention and had made a reservation at the Hyatt. I like to think I’d cancel my reservation and try to find other lodgings, but who knows if that’s even possible at this point? If at all possible, I try to do research in advance so I know that I’m not giving my money to a narrow-minded bigot. In this case, given the timing of the donation and the scarcity of lodging, I think I’d probably have to lump it. I know the climate in San Deigeo is supposed to be lovely, but I’m just not a camper.

    Just out of curiosity, and knowing that the hospitality industry tends to be one of the gay-friendlier segments of the economy, I thought I’d see if I could dig up Hyatt’s non-discrimination policy:

    “In addition, Hyatt abides by local equal employment opportunity policy to assure that all personnel related actions are administered without regard to race, color, creed, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, age, religion, mental or physical disability or any other group protected by law.”

    And I looked into their domestic partner benefits policy, which is quite inclusive.

    I wonder what corporate policy is in regards to franchisees and their business practices, and how stringently they expect individual hotel owners to adhere to corporate policy? I doubt it would apply to a private donation made by someone who just happens to be a franchise owner, but I can’t imagine Hyatt is happy with the publicity.

    Pulitzer winner hearts Shogakukan winner

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    I spotted this via Christopher Butcher, and I wanted to mention it for a couple of reasons. One, it’s nice to see a Pulitzer Prize winner, Junot Diaz, speak so highly about a comic I really like, Naoki Urasawa’s Monster (Viz), at Time’s web site. (It’s not really surprising, because his book, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, is as stepped in geek culture as it is in the political history of the Dominican Republic. I mean, he compares Rafael Trujillo to Darkseid.)

    The other reason is that it gives me another chance to say how fabulously entertaining Diaz’s book is. Don’t let the Pulitzer trick you into thinking its some impenetrable tome; it’s brilliantly funny and accessible and great and you should read it.

    Neat trick!

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    In his very smart piece on recent discourse on manga, John Jakala includes this:

    “My favorite book from last year (something I never got around to blogging) was Drawn & Quarterly’s Aya, and the year before that my pick was First Second’s Klezmer. So even if manga isn’t scratching my older reader’s itch, I know there are plenty of other places I can look for comic book relief.”

    Then this morning Tom Spurgeon posts this:

    “AYA OF YOP CITY, MARGUERITE ABOUET AND CLEMENT OUBRERIE, HARDCOVER, 9781894937900, SEPTEMBER, $19.95.”

    So where’s the announcement of the second volume of Klezmer?

    Monday manga mayhem

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    Two of what are apparently my pet themes for this iteration of Flipped come up in the latest installment: publisher woes, and Eisner nominations. It also confirmed my theory that no depressing thought can survive in the wake of a re-reading of manga by Kiyohiko Azuma.

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    Just because everyone else has pointed to it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t: Chris Butcher on the shape of the manga industry, part one and part two.

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    Would you like your Anime Expo round-up annotated or exhaustive? You can’t really go wrong either way.

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    I can’t really go with a “manga invades Paris” tag, because that happened a while ago, but many of the conquering forces visited their territory over the weekend and received fabulous prizes. Money quote from the former link:

    “One in two French children are thought to have read at least one manga comic, and an entire French generation was reared on a diet of Japanese animated television cartoons.”

    I swear that reads just like those articles on a child’s chance of catching a venereal disease before their freshman year in high school.

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    John Jakala prepares for the new regime:

    “I for one openly welcome our new manga overlords and thank them in advance for all the wonderful entertainment they will be bringing us.”

    He neglected to mention the robotic, page-turning kittens that Kodansha will deliver to each customer who gets all the giant eyes punched on their frequent buyer cards.