Tania del Rio’s newest column is up at Buzzscope, and this month she writes about teaching manga classes and what makes manga manga:
I remain convinced that what makes manga manga is really 70 percent storytelling and only 30 percent visual. You can take any American comic book and swap out big eyes for spandex, but you’ll still have an American comic book. But take a manga script and draw realistic characters with small eyes, or even stick figures, and it’s still manga—all because of the specific layout, narrative choices, and pacing that the creator chooses to use.
She points to Death Note as an example—no big eyes or sweatdrops, but you’d never mistake it for an American comic. (Of course, the giant shinigami is a dead giveaway.)
If you haven’t seen it yet, this is a good time to pull up Chris Arrant’s article on this topic from last month’s Comic Foundry. It goes way beyond most writing on this topic by showing how American comics artists absorbed manga techniques and styles, even when the result was far from what we would call manga:
1983’s “Ronin “by Frank Miller was clearly inspired by Kazuo Koike’s “Lone Wolf and Cub” (which wasn’t officially published in America until 1987, but available much earlier), mostly clearly though the use of strong emphasis on visuals and character interaction over more plot-oriented pacing that was commonly seen in American comics.
In the end, Arrant concludes that labeling comics as manga is too narrow; he’d prefer to see them simply classed by genre.
If Ozuma Tezuka, Bryan Lee O’Malley and Frank Miller each wrote a fictional novel about the same subject, no matter how differently they’d write it, it could all be filed in the same section: fiction. Instead of filing by the subjective parameters of style, origin or publisher (that’s another subject), it could be done in a more concerted fashion to make it more inclusive (instead of exclusive) to readers and potential readers.
Would it work? Only if you think the story is more important than the way it is told. For comics, that’s a huge difference, and this comes back to Tania’s point—it’s not just the way the characters look, it’s the pacing and structure and even the type of story. It’s true my library puts all the mystery novels in one section and doesn’t differentiate between cozies and hard-boiled—but it would be more useful to me if they did. So I’m not ready to throw away the labels just yet.
I agree with Tania’s about the manga aesthetic being primarily a storytelling one rather than a visual. Although it’s still rather subjective, examples are already out there. Kia Asamiya did a run on X-MEN (artwork only, not storytelling), and it was clearly outside the manga field. He didn’t change his art style for the book, but since he was executing a american comics styled script it wasn’t “manga” as a style.
But I think some people confuse manga as a format rather than a style. It’s not a genre, it’s not a format; it’s a style of creative storytelling. Be it that, it’s far harder to classify style compared to genre or format.
Chris,
I agree. But the term “manga” is strongly identified with a certain format in this country, and if everybody calls a black and white comic in standard manga format a “manga,” the definition will eventually shift to just that. I think that’s already happening: A lot of people would call Scott Pilgrim “manga” but would not use that term for the floppies of Sabrina or Blade of the Immortal. Go figure.
Honestly, if it really was 70% story and 30% art, then you’re saying the artist has all the control…and they don’t…
In American 32-page comic books, you have limited space to write the story and you plot it out panel-by-panel, page-by-page. The writer is calling the shots and it’s up to the artist to do their job and make it work and all fit.
Now in manga, the artist IS the director. They are the one in total control of the pacing of the book, what shots are used, how they are used. They still have to follow the writer’s script to tell the story, but it ends up being the artist’s vision of the title that is the one that gets presented. In this way, manga is a lot like a tv show or a movie.
That 1st paragraph should have actually read:
“Honestly, if it really was 70% story and 30% art, then you’re saying the writer has all the control…and they don’t in manga.”
I agree that the term ‘manga’ has been mischaracterized and misused and that a prolonged use of this will subjegate the definition of the word to mean a format rather than a style.
I don’t have a barometer on what the public at large considers manga, but since itterations of it exist in the digest size, the shonen-jump magazine size, the Dark horse & Marvel serialized US comic format, the battle is not completely lost.
Adam,
I think what Tania means is not just the plot but the way the story is told, which is much more within the artist’s control. The pacing, the arrangement of panels, whether you use one panel or three to represent a single moment, using backgrounds to set the mood—all these are more in the artist’s purview than the writer’s, and they are done differently in manga than in other comics.
Of course, I’ve never written or edited a comic, so I don’t know how the creative process breaks out. And maybe this manga style has developed because in manga, the artist and writer are usually (not always) the same person, so instead of the writer doing one thing and the artist doing another, it’s more of a seamless process.
About the 70% writing/ 30% art thing, I was thinking of manga in the sense that – much of the time- the writer IS the artist. So therefore the writer DOES have full control in manga. Unlike American comics where the writer and artist are usually two different people, many manga are created by one person (with the help of somewhat anonymous assistants). Of course, Death Note was probably a poor example, considering there is a separate artist and writer on that particular series.
But my main point was that, because manga artists often both write and draw the story, the most manga “magic” happens in the writing stages, before pen ever hits paper.
My problem with the idea that 70% of it is storytelling is that you need only look at any hit Shonen Jump title to see that it’s all about the art with very little in terms of actual storyline. The result is you have to read a handful of books to cover any real ground, sometimes. I think it’s a 50/50 deal here, because the only way you’re going to continue reading a title—even if you live in Japan—is the nice art and the likeable characters.
Ahhh, I see your point, but that’s not quite what I meant.
I wasn’t neccessarily speaking in terms of *quality*. I wasn’t saying manga writing is 70% entertaining or well done and the art is only 30% entertaining and well done.
I was speaking in terms of formula. The 70-30 percentage was my attempt to explain the *formula* for what makes manga “manga” compared to, say, American comics.
I feel that, *more* than the art, storytelling is what defines manga – regardless of whether it’s a brilliant psychological thriller like Death Note, or a 50 volume battlefest like Dragon Ball Z.
Take the most drawn out Dragon Ball Z battle that you’ve already seen a million times before in the same series. I personally don’t find that kind of story very engaging. But it’s still undeniably MANGA!
American comic writers just don’t write their battles the way Akira Toriyama does. American comics generally don’t have the same kind of plot or pacing – they don’t devote nearly the same amount of space to a battle as a manga writer would.
I enjoy Toriyama’s art much more than I enjoy his writing, but my point was that you could swap out his characters for stick figures and it would still be manga – without a doubt. Why? Simply becuase of his dialogue (or lack thereof), his pacing, and in how his *story* flows as a whole.
Does that make sense? I’m finding it hard to articulate what I’m trying to say… -_-;;
I completely understand and agree with Tania Del Rio. What TDR is describing is not necessarily “writing” and “art” but the way “writing” and “art” is presented. There’s an undeniable quality* it posesses over other sequential art.
*This quality can be negative or positive. I passed Deathnote to a friend who buys American comics and he hates it.
Thanks, Jack. You summed it up perfectly! ^_^