For this week’s Flipped, David Welsh interviews Ed Chavez of MangaCast. Ed waxes lyrical about conventions, compares Comiket to the human body, and tells us exactly what he thinks about the different manga publishers. Organic Broccoli, anyone?
Rivkah has a preview of volume 2 of Steady Beat. (Via The Beat.)
At Comics-and-more, Manga Monday takes a detour into anime country before taking on the biggest manga of them all, Naruto.
The Beat has the Harvey award winners, and it’s official: Buddha won the award for Best American Edition of Foreign Material.
Del Rey is giving away page proofs of Train Man. They’re asking people to send in their e-mails, and they’ll draw ten names.
Lyle is not in the mood for silly personifications of War on the Tokyopop calendar. What were they thinking?
ANN has a side-by-side comparison that shows a cross in volume 8 of Fullmetal Alchemist was redrawn into a slab for the American edition. Reactions at the forum range from outrage to yawns, but some intelligent discussion creeps in as well.
Now you can pay for your manga with a Nana credit card!
Off-topic: I don’t usually pimp my own work here, but hey, it’s my blog. I interviewed Kelly Tyler-Lewis last week about her new book, The Lost Men, which tells the story of ten men who set out in 1914 to set out supply depots for Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition. Their ship drifted away in the ice, leaving them stranded with supplies for Shackleton but nothing for themselves. Nonetheless, through a combination of creativity and sheer grit, they traveled 1,300 miles to lay the depots, convinced that Shackleton and his team would be coming that way and would starve without the supplies. In fact, Shackleton had his own problems and never made it onto the mainland, but they didn’t find that out until they were rescued. It’s a great story. Check it out soon, as the link will self-destruct in two weeks.
I saw the FA art at ANN last night — that symbol means less to the Japanese than to Americans, so they can “get away” with publishing it over there in shonen comics. This is special circumstance where that image might take away from the story because of it’s historical iconography and cultural significance in the U.S. I don’t think it’s a good idea to rock the boats of how religious groups feel about manga right now. [I didn’t actually read that chapter yet so this is a “pre-opinion”]
I’m sorry to hear about the censorship of the image, having worked on that script. While XXXXX (almost had spoiler!) is hardly christ-like, the cross is a powerful image of martyrdom. I guess it’s understandable, but again America shows its hypocricy in protecting children as this volume also contains one of the most twisted acts of violence I’ve seen in a shonen manga. It’s still a great volume (possibly my favorite) and I look forward to checking it out. This is also the volume that marks a total deviation of the anime and manga, introducing a whole new country and culture, different Homunculi and different deaths.
RE: Steady Beast 2 — Great work, Rivkah! You’ve improved in leaps and bounds and you set a high bar to begin with.
The flipped link is redirecting to the ANN news. I wanna read the interview :)
Fixed it! Sorry, Ed. Great interview, too. I love your dating Del Rey analogy.
Jake: If you’ll indulge a bit more self-promotion, here is an article I wrote two weeks ago about an antiwar artist who uses crucifixion imagery in his work. Sexually explicit crucifixions, at that, although they are only one ingredient in an interesting melange of images. In the printed version, which gets mailed out to local households, one of these images was visible in the background of a photo. It caused a commotion in the newsroom, until the editor-in-chief came out and said, “It’s art! Get over it!” But according to my editor, we only got one nasty call or letter from the general public. Methinks sometimes we worry too much.
RE: Steady Beast 2 — Great work, Rivkah! You’ve improved in leaps and bounds and you set a high bar to begin with.
Aww! Thank you, Jake! *^-^* I’ll make certain to keep on improving! I’ve started going to life drawing class again and I’m making a point to write every single day, so volume 3 is just gonna be twice as good. ^_~
ANN has a side-by-side comparison that shows a cross in volume 8 of Fullmetal Alchemist was redrawn into a slab for the American edition. Reactions at the forum range from outrage to yawns, but some intelligent discussion creeps in as well.
I remember something similar happened with the Sailor Moon anime where the main characters are actually crucified in an ending episode and those images . . . were cut entirely from the dubbed release. Americans have strong reactions to religious imagery, and honestly . . . I don’t really blame Viz for changing it. It’s pretty dangerous when the implications are that the character tied to the cross is the “messiah”. I don’t think the crucifiction imagery has such strong conotations in Japan as it does in the US, so it seems a stone slab would suffice.
The cross means it looked cool visually. Since great, great majority of Japanese aren’t Christians it’s not offensive to them. But yes they know where it came from. This is one edit I don’t mind, since it changes nothing in the storyline and just serve the purpose of not offending the world-famous religious right of the great US of A. I think those who’re pissed by the change should just take up Japanese and read the original. The only reason to have Christian imagery is for the coolness factor. They couldn’t care less about the religious implications to Christians. In fact if you told them they would probably laugh about it. They do this all the time to their own religions so it means nothing to them doing it to gaijin religion.
You know, I don’t remember any of the Sailor Scouts getting crucified in episode 45 or 46 of Sailor Moon…
What made those episodes so questionable was the fact that you have each of the Sailor Scouts getting horrifically slaughtered one by one! They die very horrible and painful deaths (with tentacles, even!) trying to ensure Sailor Moon makes it the final showdown. Throw in Sailor Moon having a nervous breakdown and being visited by each of the scount’s ghosts…and then using up every bit of power she has and dying herself… and yeah, that was a bit much for most children’s programming.
Personally, I love the DiC edited version of those 2 episodes. It’s both touchingly sad, and uplifting…
The original Japanese 2-parter just made me want to throw up after a while.
Like I said before about Priests in BL…it’s the clothes, not the man. They’re icons of interest. Like CLAMPS abuse of Sakura petals. ^^
>>Like CLAMPS abuse of Sakura petals.
HAHA! never thought of it that way… but yeah, the japanese government should regulate that!
When I read (and reviewed for AoD) vol 8, I totally took that edited image to be a crucifixtion anwyay. The fact that VIZ changed the rock-made-cross into just a slab did nothing IMO. XXXX is still sporting his Jesus Christ Pose for the camera and the talk between the characters is still very religious in nature.
Ahh, the days when edits made sense instead of just feeling like knee-jerk reactions from people with tight deadlines.
This reminds me very much of Stephen King’s “The Stand” when it was turned into a mini series for television. There’s a scene where the characters are crucified on crosses, but they were changed to horseshoes in order to play it safe for audiences.
I don’t blame people for being cautious in that type of situation, but I don’t think it would have hurt to leave the metaphor in. If anything, right wing activists would help promote the title by generating publicity rather than hurt sales.
HAHA! never thought of it that way… but yeah, the japanese government should regulate that!
Dude, they won’t even regulate CLAMPS cannibis… LOL. Honestly though, some icons are going to have deeper meanings to us in the west, and less to the Japanese, but still, it does stand to reason that people should just…lighten up?
I didn’t see people of my own faith who study the Kabbala, get all up in arms when Sephiroth made his appearence in the Final Fantasy series. It’s silly.
-Tina
Dude, they won’t even regulate CLAMPS cannibis…tobacco? ^_~
Dude, they won’t even regulate CLAMPS cannibis…
Don’t you mean tobacco? ^_~
Don’t you mean tobacco? ^_~
Yeah…that’s it…yeah…
You know, I was thinking, not all Japanese creators are completely ignorant of the cultural significance of certain themes and icons. I mentioned Sephiroth and FF up there, and that’s a perfect example; one need only follow the Final Fantasy 7 story to know that someone in Japan took a crack at Kabbala studies. LOL!