Visiting family, big (paying) work project, kids who want to be fed regularly (the nerve!)… and so much going on in the mangaworld! What’s a girl to do? Post the links and leave the hard work up to her readers. Here’s the latest roundup:
David Welsh devotes this week’s Flipped column to the power of yaoi, looking to recapture the thrill of the first time. His two picks, Loveless and Shout Out Loud!, come close.
The Japan Times serves up an article by Fred Schodt on learning Japanese from manga.
Mark Blum, Associate Professor in the East Asian Department at State University of New York, Albany, marvels that recently most of his students are motivated to study Japanese because of manga and anime. He says manga are a particularly good resource for the 14-20 age group because they combine “creative artwork, a nostalgia for the pre-puberty experience of cartoon viewing and comic reading, and themes of greatest concern to adolescents and young adults: sex and violence.”
Absolutely! I took two years of French in college, but when we moved to Geneva and I needed to say more than “la plume de ma tante est sur la table,” I took to reading the local scandal sheet, La Suisse. Between the murderous dominatrix and the muesli-smuggling scandal, I had plenty of motivation to look up unfamiliar words. This article has lots of very useful tips and I highly recommend it.
Tokyopop is launching a line of translated fiction for young adults.
Fruits Basket and Naruto own the BookScan graphic novels list, taking 12 of the top 14 spots between them. Kingdom Hearts is doing pretty well, too, with all 3 volumes in the top 12.
Mangacast looks at the April 26 comics and chooses Boys of Summer as the pick of this week. Also at Mangacast is the Taiyosha Top 10, with our beloved Yotsuba&!, vol. 5, topping the list.
From Manganews comes word that Death Note is ending. Death Note junkies, start looking now for a new fix. Would Her Majesty’s Dog fill the bill? Manga-ka Mick Takeuchi will be appearing at this year’s Anime Expo.
Can’t figure out what to spend your money on this week? Jog goes through this week’s new releases, including the much-awaited paperback version of vol. 1 of Tezuka’s Buddha and new volumes of Death Note, Eden, and Robot.
Speaking of robots, here’s an article about a Japanese manga about robots by Minoru Kamiya:
It’s taken four years, but ROBO-ONE has finally reached manga status in Japan. This summer a new manga will hit bookstore shelves featuring the uniquely Japanese robo-sport front and center.
The Florida Sun-Sentinel has a nice, thorough story on Jewish and Christian graphic novels, including the manga Serenity. I thought the Jewish entry, Megillat Esther, sounded more interesting:
The story, about a Jewish maiden in ancient Persia who becomes a queen and saves her people from genocide, is told both in the original Hebrew and English, although some pages are wordless. Other pages have numbers at the bottom indicating rabbinical commentaries from books such as the Talmud, and there is a detailed, scholarly bibliography at the back.
At the same time, it is a typical graphic novel: Female characters tend to be voluptuous, and the pages are peppered with self-deprecating wisecracks. Near the end of the story, one small character says, “The whole thing seemed a bit overdrawn to me.”
I also like it that the writer of the article gives a deadpan shout-out to Christian comics pioneer Jack Chick.
The fact that Yaoi is being read and celebrated by so many casual Western manga readers is still baffling to me. Only people who dare to even own up to read Yaoi are out-of-the-closet lady otakus, and it’s pretty much just an understanding and no one outside of the community would even talk about it. Like, you won’t just goto Ikebukuro and just talk about Yaoi to a girl otaku. No man, gay or other wise, would admit reading yaoi, period. I mean, theya are really mostly just gay porn manga after all… All this must be facinating to Japanese eyes… Hen na gaijin-tachi ne.
Manga is a great tool for intermediate Japanese learning, yes. Manga is also great at keeping Japanese sharp, as you can only keep a language if you’re into its pop culture. Many Americans learn a foreign language without the culture, and of course they’d lose it. It always amazes me that so many students of French and Spanish students never heard a French or Latin pop song. You can’t just learn the language and leave it at that. If you’re not going to enjoy the culture which came with it, you’ll forget it just like that. Love for manga and anime will certainly keep your Japanese skills sharp for years, and even as I move on to J-dorama and other TV shows, I never forget how important it was to read that first volume of Dr. Slump in Japanese armed with only a dictionary.
Death Note ending.. sigh… at least we have the movie to look forward to.
Robo-one manga? Everything popular has a manga in Japan. Robo-one gathered manga staus when they announced that they are going to hold future robot fights in Space abord a satellite. That is THIS close to real-life Gundam, as we all know Gundams are made for Space Battle. Unfornately for Japan China’s got the lead in Space faring technology now and their own space station and moon base will happen in 20 years. I guess the Japanese can build some Mobile Suit to help build the space stations in exchange for a piece of the moom base… kekeke…
Whew! I’m glad to hear that Death Note has an end in sight. I love the series but the addiction has to end at some point.
I really agree about pop culture learning. I learned some french in school, but I never kept with it. Now that I’m more into indie/foreign movies and have gone through the process of japanese culture, I find it kind of baffling that I wasn’t watching french movies and listening to new pop songs. It sure would be handy to watch City of Lost Children or Amelie without having to use subs!
And while I’m still no where near reading a manga or holding a conversation in japanese, it is really interesting how much you pick up by osmosis just in terms of general feel. Like when I first started listening to jpop, I didn’t even realize that most of them had english words here and there, because of the strong accent! Like recently on the yo-yo radio station I listen to, they interviewed a japanese player briefly in english. When it was done, the host was a bit baffled since he could only make out a couple of words, while it seemed totally understandable to me.
I need to start reading Death Note one of these days…
The thing about Yaoi is interesting and makes some sense to me. I think in general, the distance from Japan gives us some leway. Quite a few guys will read/watch even some shoujo on the “girly” side of the spectrum or at the least titles like Love Hina which involve some amount of romance. Contrast that to any guy going near harlequin with a 10 foot pole or even most “chick flick” movies, or guys in Japan admitting to reading shoujo.
Then again, as popularity increases and more girls read the shoujo actively and if we get to the point of having shoujo toys and cosmetics and stuff on tv commercials, I’d think there’d be more of a hardening of gender lines with less boys reading shoujo, just because of the stigmas involved.