MangaBlog

Washington Post reporter Mark Jenkins takes a peek at the wacky world of Katsucon and the popularity of Japanese culture in the U.S. I almost stopped when I got to this:

Mostly, these huge-pupiled characters keep to the contemporary electronic equivalent of the back roads: cable TV, video-rental stores and the Internet.

The back roads? What does he consider the main highway—broadcast TV? But aside from that, the article isn’t bad, with a genial explanation of the name Katsucon (apparently it literally translates to “convention of pork,” and no one is quite sure why) and riffs on anime, cosplay, and PuffyAmiYumi.

But we’re here to talk about manga. After the obligatory historical paragraph that mentions both Hokusai and Osamu Tezuka, the author notes that shoujo manga found a new audience with girls 8 to 20, who had not been well served by Marvel and DC. Then this:

John Malott, president of the Japan-America Society of Washington, admits to being “amazed when I see young [American] kids singing the theme song from ‘Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi’ in Japanese.” A former State Department “Japan hand,” Malott tallies “three generations of people who got interested in Japan. There was the original group after World War II, who were attracted to the culture. Then there was the next generation — I would consider myself at the start of that — who were attracted to Japan because of what was happening there economically. And now we have the next wave, of people who are attracted to Japan because of the popular culture.”

This comes as no surprise to Mitsuru Kitano, the minister for public affairs at the Embassy of Japan.

A reader of manga since he was a child, Kitano attributes the universal appeal of the genre to its high level of craftsmanship and complex worldview. “Each character embodies good and evil,” he says. “It is not a purely good guy or a purely bad guy. Each character is a reflection of the varied natures of human beings.”

I think American comics have improved in that regard, partly because more grownups read them. In the universe of comics that my kids read, though, it’s safe to say that even a bit of fluff like Ultra Maniac has more complex characters than those in older titles like Archie.

Regarding OEL manga, the writer quotes Peter Casazza, manager of the Georgetown branch of Big Planet Comics:

… American-made manga has little commercial appeal, according to Big Planet’s Casazza. “Marvel really tried to capitalize on that. They did [Spider-Man love interest] Mary Jane as a teenager and stuff like that. It met with mixed results, at best. Most people who are really into manga want original Japanese, or Korean or Asian stuff. They don’t want an American version of it.”

I suspect that a Borders executive would not be so quick to dismiss OEL manga. In his analysis of 2005 BookScan numbers, Brian Hibbs found 13 OEL manga that sold well enough to place on the list, and this is a category that is still quite new.

At his store, Casazza says, “I’ve seen the interest in manga wane a little bit. Once you go through the best material, a lot of the other stuff isn’t that great. And kids’ interests move on. They read them for a few years, and then they move on.”

He’s not the first person to suggest the market is leveling out a bit, but again, I think that reflects the unique point of view of a comics store. Manga seem to sell better in bookstores; Hibbs noted that 80 percent of the BookScan comics chart was manga, up quite a bit from previous years. And I don’t think Japan is going to run out of good manga to export to us anytime soon. Recent releases like Monster and the second volumes of Cantarella and Crossroad are evidence of that.

Comic Book Resources has posted the Diamond sales figures for January 2006. I’m sure David at Love Manga will be able to interpret these much better than I could, so I’ll just limit my comment to congratulating Go!Comi for getting two manga in the top 50 manga chart, volumes 2 of Cantarella and Tenshi Ja Nai. Not bad for the new kids on the block!

Here’s an offbeat and very entertaining interview from the Hampstead and Highgate Express with manga-ka Kiriko Kubo, who lives in England but continues to draw manga that is published in Japan. Self-taught and unassuming, Kubo has been drawing comics for 20 years, working nights part of the time so she could keep her day job.

“I didn’t tell anyone where I was working during the day that I was a cartoonist, I didn’t think they would think I was serious about my day job.” It’s a habit she still finds hard to break.

Kubo majored in English literature, not cartooning, when she went to college, but she was already a professional cartoonist while she was still a student. The article includes this rather droll explanation for the rise of the female manga-ka:

Drawing cartoons was traditionally a male job, but as women began to work and needed something to distract them from the subway journeys as much as their male counterparts, the women’s market expanded. And, besides, Japanese men have always read her stuff – there is no stigma in reading about pink fluffy talking pigs in Japan.

Kubo’s manga don’t seem to be translated much into English, but they are popular in Japan and one, Cynical Hysterie Hour, was made into an anime, with music by John Zorn.

More about Kubo:

Another interview is here.
Her website, mostly in Japanese, is here.

Nothing new on the Tokyo arrests, but The Korea Times has an article on internet comics sharing that estimates the loss to publishers at 60 billion won ($60 million) last year, which approaches the legit comics market of about 70 billion won.

In response, the [Korea Cartoonist Association] has taken steps to crack down on the copyright violation in cooperation with online security firms. Last year alone, it filed complaints against 15 violators. One of them was even slapped with a 5 million won in fine. “Among the violators, one had images of more than 20,000 comic books,’’ Kim Woo-sung, head of Defender System, a copyright protection firm. “It was like a small comics library.’’

According to the article, Korea is flooded with free internet sites, and artists are actually reluctant to take action for fear of backlash:

In the case of an artist with an initial K, he has drawn many complaints and harsh words from readers after he vowed to bring a copyright violation of his work to court. “Many readers are still not aware that the scanning and reading of the scanned images is no different from theft,’’ You said.

(Via The Comics Reporter.)

Here you go, moms and dads, another reason why reading comics is actually good for your kids: It might motivate them to learn Japanese, like these youngsters in Saskatchewan are doing.

Naoko Takaya, the teacher interviewed in this article, says that 30 years ago, most of her students were Japanese-Canadian kids brushing up for a trip back home. Now most of her students are there because of anime and manga.

On his blog, Completely Futile,” Adam Stephanides shows us why, with a lengthy post of translation notes on Vol. 12 of Fruits Basket. Translation is not an exact art, and translators must make choices that sometimes don’t resonate with the rest of us. It’s good to be able to appreciate the nuances of a language.

The more my family gets involved with manga, the more we all want to learn Japanese. We’re starting to feel like we’re missing something. When I was overseas I used to watch American movies subtitled in French, and I realized for the first time how much is lost in translation. Recently my husband was watching an old Kurosawa movie and the kids were laughing at the stilted subtitles. (“You woke me! I am cross!”) Now I’m wondering if we’re missing something with the books as well.

The scare quotes are deliberate. VIZ is announcing five new shoujo manga titles, although they aren’t exactly new. Four of the titles, Absolute Boyfriend, Baby & Me, Godchild, and Kaze Hikaru, have been running as serials in Shoujo Beat, and the fifth, Kamikaze Girls, was also in the magazine. They’re also releasing the Kamikaze Girls novel.

Furthermore, this press release seems to be a bit late, as I believe the books are already on bookstore shelves. David Welsh reviewed the Kamikaze Girls manga in this week’s Flipped column and recommends giving it a pass.

You’d think VIZ would put the press release on their website, wouldn’t you? Well, you’d be wrong. The press release went out yesterday, but as of 8 this morning, it wasn’t on their site. Just for laughs, I entered the “new” titles into the site search engine and was told there were no results, although a little digging (I am a reporter, after all) turned them up at the VIZ store.

The lights may be on at the VIZ website, but it looks like nobody is home.