Shou-cago!

Here’s why we read alternative newspapers. The “Shojo Manga” exhibit has reached Chicago, and the coverage it’s getting is a study in contrasts. New City has a well written article by Isaac Adamson that hits all the main points and does it accurately. It starts with a couple of examples of manga plots, then dives right in with a brief explanation:

Featuring some 200 works from nearly two-dozen artists, “Shojo Manga!” is the first exhibition touring the U.S. to show how women in Japan have been staking out their comic-book territory since the medium exploded in the aftermath of World War II. Along the way, the exhibition offers a penetrating glance into the fantasies, insecurities and shifting social roles of women in Japan.

And instead of tossing off “big eyes,” Adamson gives us a paragraph about the manga look:

Instead of hard bold lines and garish colors, girls’ comics often use pastels and a soft glow effect. Everyone has great hair and glamorous clothes, and historical pieces get a lot of mileage out of frilly shirts, flowing gowns and flowery backdrops. They offer up a fantasy world light years away from the drab school uniforms, glass and steel monoliths, and rabbit-hutch apartment buildings that make up many kids’ waking realities. Almost all characters in manga have oversized, twinkling eyes—but in shojo manga their eyes don’t contain individual stars so much as entire galaxies.

The curator, an art professor at Chico State, is called in to explain the popularity of yaoi manga:

“Some Japanese women no longer believe in love between men and women as superior since they see the reality after the happy ending,” says Dr. Masami Toku, the exhibition’s curator.

… and the author concludes that manga are an enormous medium and can’t be stereotyped:

But as the exhibit gleefully demonstrates, not all girls’ comics are about love or coming of age. Similarly, there’s no dominant visual style on display. As the contemporary “shojo manga” world expands and fragments, girls’ comics have spawned ladies’ comics, romantic homoeroticism has become a genre of self-parody, and (gasp!) artists have even started drawing ugly-looking people with normal-sized eyes.

As a newspaper writer, I know that the only thing harder to write than a good intro is a good close. Adamson has wisely saved a nugget for the end: Osamu Tezuka’s daughter-in-law is a shoujo manga artist—and sometimes she crosses over and does shounen. I didn’t even know that.

OK, here’s how the Chicago Tribune handles the same story:

Manga mania
Your love of Japanese culture extends to all things edible: You can’t make it through the week without maki, and you like your wasabi with a warm sake pairing (in traditional masu, natch). Now’s your chance to one-up your sushi-noshing neighbors on more than tableside trivia. Check out “Shojo Manga! Girl Power!” and see 200-plus examples of “girl comics” by more than 20 Japanese artists and ponder the genre’s influence on gender roles in Japan since World War II.

I know it’s only a calendar entry, and hopefully they’ll follow up with something more thoughtful, but this paragraph manages to be both obnoxious and uninformative in under 100 words, which takes some doing. Wasabi and warm sake? Methinks the writer grabbed a sushi bar menu and chose a couple of words at random.