We’ll pardon the headline–Demand for anime, manga has libraries wide-eyed–because this article from the Daily Breeze (“LAX to L.A. Harbor”) has some interesting insight into the thought process behind buying manga for libraries. Seems manga has been in short supply at the Torrance, CA, library, so the Friends of the Library ponied up a $10,000 grant to buy more.
What caught my eye is that while most libraries seem to toss all manga into the Young Adult category, Torrance is going to calibrate it a little more finely:
To make sure titles are age appropriate, books and videos will be categorized into four different age groups — 9 and up, 10-13, 13-15 and general adult audience. Library employees will enlist the help of local anime publishers to determine in which age group the titles belong.
(You’d think there would be a lot of overlap between the 9 and up and 10-13 categories; maybe they meant 9 and under?) The article notes something that I have already observed, that the age rating on the cover is not always a good guide for American readers, at least those who think 10-year-olds are too young for panty shots. On the other hand, this line seems a bit gratuitous:
While anime is well known for producing big-busted, scantily clad female superheroes dealing in decidedly adult situations, the library said it will not purchase any sexually explicit material.
OK, great, no hentai manga, but for the record, the Japanese did not invent “big-busted, scantily clad female superheroes.” We have a few in America, too.
[…] Mangablog points us to this article about a library who is going to be spending a $10,000 friends of library grant on manga. One of the things that really irks me about mainstream news coverage of manga is the assumption that it is filled with sex and violence. This article goes to such great lengths to point out that the library isn’t purchasing books filled with “big-busted, scantily clad female superheroes dealing in decidedly adult situations” someone could get the impression that it is difficult to find the material aimed at a young adults when there is plenty of manga out there that work very well for that age range. The writer also refers to anime and manga being part of the Japanese counterculture, which I also found bizarre – anime and manga is very mainstream in Japan, and while countercultural manga exists, it doesn’t make up the majority of the content. […]