MangaBlog

An American dad in Tokyo obsesses, in Business Week, of all places, about the effect of kawaii culture on his two young daughters. What upsets the writer is that Japanese porn appropriates images from children’s popular culture.

I started to project 15 years ahead and see Elena and Marie in their twenties, hanging around Shibuya (a youth fashion conclave in central Tokyo) in school uniforms, with Hello, Kitty pendants dangling from their mobile phones, sending out cute vibes to get the attention of creepy guys.

His Japanese wife sets him straight:

She accused me of cultural arrogance for obsessing on Japan’s quirky side but ignoring that kids in the U.S. are overwhelmed with far more graphic representations of sexual desire than kids here are.

after which he concludes that with a strong role model like her around the house, maybe he doesn’t have to worry so much.
I don’t think that kid culture/porn culture crossover happens as much in the U.S. (it does happen, but it’s not as visible or as ubiquitous). It’s disturbing that at first glance, kid manga and adult manga look a lot alike. I think that makes American adults a little suspicious of the whole genre; one of the reasons I started the manga4kids website was to help them make the distinctions.

Sequential Tart has a nice column comparing manga with manwha, Korean comics. I like the “if you like this manga, you’ll like this manwha” approach, as it makes the genre a little more approachable.

The Taipei Times review’s Peter Carey’s book “Wrong About Japan,” which has been out in the U.S. for about six months.
My favorite part of the book is where Carey interviews the creator of “Mobile Suit Gundam” and tries out his own scholarly interpretations of the cartoon. The creator simply repeats, over and over, that the intention of the comic is to sell robot toys. Nothing more. This had a profound effect on my attitude toward manga.
The book has its flaws (mainly, the author’s annoyingly bumbling persona), but it’s a quick read that provides some interesting background on Japanese culture, including interviews with a sword maker, a survivor of the firebombing of World War II, and anime king Hayao Miyazake. It’s worth checking out, especially if you can get it from the library.

Anime News Network reviews Eyeshield 21, which is a sports manga about football—American football. Despite initial doubts about the concept, they seem to like it. While I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet, it sounds like a good bet for younger kids, especially those who don’t find standard shounen manga appealing.

Here is an article about the improvement of women’s lives in Japan. The three factors cited: The government now provides long-term care for the elderly, domestic violence has been outlawed, and … more female manga artists. The artist they picked to interview, Machiko Satonaka, doesn’t exactly represent a new trend, as she’s been drawing manga since the 1960s. Still, I like what she has to say.

Satonaka claims a large following among Japanese women because of the attention she pays to female psychology. In the past, she says, male manga artists depicted women heroines as ”only cute and smiley all of the time, very passive”. Her heroines, in contrast, ”think for themselves about how to live” and are ”independent, thinking for themselves.”

It’s a little troubling, though, that she’s been drawing manga for 40 years and the genre is still dominated by annoyingly passive females. The girls in the shoujo manga I read put up with a lot more than I would, especially from the boys. Yes, yes, I know that it’s fiction, but fiction can be a powerful shaper of attitudes. I worry that kids who get a steady diet of manga will pick up the attitude that the road to happiness lies through complete self-abnegation and submission to even the most trivial wishes of others (paging Tohru Honda!). We need more heroines with backbone.

For those new to manga, Joanna Draper Carlson of Comics Worth Reading offers her recommendations, which include “Hikaru no Go,” “Hot Gimmick,” and a favorite of mine, “The Kindaichi Case Files.”

This story is a sidebar to a longer article on why kids like manga. One interesting point, from marketer and writer Robert Boyd:

Boyd believes manga’s popularity goes beyond that of Japanese cartoons (anime). “Manga have grown in popularity (based on sales) over the past year, while anime DVD sales have been flat. So, obviously there is a connection, but it would be wrong to suggest that manga is merely a coattail rider,” he said.

Interesting because the anime community seems much larger to me than the manga community. Of course, quotes like that can be misleading—manga sales could be smaller overall than anime sales.

The third piece of what is a really nice package on this topic is a manga timeline.

UPDATE: I just wandered over to Love Manga to see what was new and they have posted the same article—and the same quote. Great minds think alike!