OEL views

The conversation on the Anime News Network Forums about the recent layoffs at Tokyopop veered briefly into another topic: the question of OEL (original English language) manga versus licensed manga from Japan.

Two commenters summed up the two sides of this debate admirably. Here is applepro:

we don’t buy manga just for the stories. we love authentic manga because it has it’s own unique charm. the hype from japan, the fan subs, the joy of seeing it licenced… it all comes together to what we currently witness at out local bookstore. an entire shelf packed with just manga.

To which wisdom_of_trees responds

OEL is just another format of Manga. It’s good art and interesting stories that sell me; not authenticity.

applepro’s riposte:

i think that’s cool. to me OEL is more closer to american comics than it is to authentic japanese manga. so you can check out a lot of interesting stories out there because you’re not stuck on the “authenticity” factor.

i am though,…

It’s nice to see the two sides laid out without rancor. I’ve been reading a lot of OEL manga lately, and it’s all been pretty good, but aside from the format of the book, it doesn’t seem like Japanese manga. Others more knowledgeable than me have discussed why that is. My reaction is, eh, it’s a good comic so why try to make it something that it’s not.

The point I want to bring to this discussion, though, is that OEL is extending a new market that was opened up by Japanese manga: people like me. I buy my books in bookstores, not comics shops, and I don’t buy floppies because they don’t seem like a particularly good value for the money. Before the advent of manga, I vaguely knew there were other graphic novels out there but couldn’t be bothered to seek them out. They weren’t easy to find in bookstores, and they weren’t all that easy to read. When I did pick one up, I felt like I was missing out on something.

But now that I’ve been trained, by Tokyopop and Viz, to buy $10 black-and-white trade paperback comics, it’s not much of a stretch to buy the same format book by an author who is not Japanese. OEL manga seem easier to read than other GNs. The standardization of format and the straightforward style make them feel like old friends. Even better, my girls now have comics for them. Not superheroes (too boyish!), not Archie (too babyish!), but drama and romance and the stuff they like to read about, in graphic novel form.

The impact of format can’t be understimated. We’re talking about lesiure reading here, after all, and it’s relaxing to read something familiar. If I liked one Nancy Drew book, or Harlequin romance, I’ll be more inclined to pick up another one. Before manga came along, graphic novels weren’t standardized in any way, and many of them are very hard for the inexperienced reader to follow.

This is not to say that I want all graphic novels reduced to cookie-cutter uniformity, just that the more accessible books are more likely to draw new people into the market. Recently I’ve been reading Persepolis and Capote in Kansas, and they are both very different from OEL manga. But I probably wouldn’t have picked them up if Queenie and Rivkah—and a slew of Japanese manga-kas—hadn’t lured me in first.