Josie and the Pussycats are going manga, following in the footsteps of their cousin, Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Can Archie and the Riverdale gang be far behind?
Actually, the art in the preview pages doesn’t look particularly Japanese. It looks more British to me, like my old Diana comics from the 1970s.
With Papercutz releasing manga versions of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, it seems like my entire childhood bookshelf is going to be reappearing in manga form. Trixie Belden, call your office!
They have one in Chapel Hill. It’s not a bad idea. One of the reasons I have seen why manga appeals to girls is that manga are marketed in bookstores, where the girls go anyway—and where they feel comfortable. There can be something off-putting about a small basement comics store where everyone stares at you if you’re not a regular. Maybe it’s a sign of middle age, but I like Barnes and Noble, with their nice decor, comfortable chairs, and Starbucks lattes. I’d like an independent bookstore, like the one in the article, even more.
Nice story in the Chicago Tribune about teenagers getting into Japanese culture in general. I like the kid who says sushi is “the gateway drug to Japan.” As my kids are younger, they are more into the kawaii (cute) stuff—not so much Hello Kitty as her demented cousins, the San-X crowd. As much as I dread the day my kids start affecting a “Gothic Lolita” look, I like the fact that at least these kids are so enthusiastic.
Meanwhile Bella Online complains that many manga are poorly translated and often altered to boot. Their remedy: Learn the language. Failing that, try to get a few different translations.
I know what the writer means. When we lived in France and Switzerland, I used to go to American films and laugh at the subtitles, they were so off. It’s never easy to do a good translation, and often I can read something in French and understand it just fine, but I have trouble doing a word-for-word translation.
I was in a Japanese bookstore last month and picked up a copy of “Fruits Basket” in the original Japanese—a later comic that hasn’t been translated yet. With fruba-mania reaching a fever pitch in anticipation of volume 8, the girls have started flipping through it. We have books on hiragana and katakana so they can at least transliterate a bit, and they’re picking up a few words just by osmosis. There’s something enormously satisfying about being able to read even a small amount of a foreign language, and I’m glad they’re getting to taste it early. Plus I want to know what happens next.
Lots of interesting commentary on the comics blogs over the past few days about She Was Asking For It,by Lianne and NotHayama, which critiques the submissive female characters in some shoujo manga aimed at older teens.
These series feature possessive and controlling men, young girls who find male domination a standard and a turn-on, and the concept that sex is something only men initiate.
Responses to the essay have been varied. On Cognitive Dissonance, Johanna Draper Carlson makes an excellent point:
The authors of that essay seem to miss the basic point that presenting something in a story isn’t the same as justifying it.
Over on Comics 212, Chris Butcher counters that
there are some folks, male and female, who determine gender roles and take relationship advice from manga, for good or for ill.
He links to a discussion by Radio Comics publisher Elin Winkler about her experiences in fandom to back up his statement.
I think they’re all right. As a middle-aged mom, settled in a happy marriage, I can take these manga for what they are, fiction. But as a teenager, I constantly measured myself against my friends, my teen magazines, the TV, to figure out what was normal and whether I matched it. I don’t think I was unusual in this regard; whole industries have been built on it (see: advertising, teen magazines). The problem isn’t so much what is written as how it’s read—as fiction or as a prescription for life.
The younger the reader, the more crucial this distinction becomes. I find many of the girls portrayed in younger children’s shoujo manga are way too eager to please. This is not an overtly sexual issue, but Tohru Honda in “Fruits Basket” and Belldandy in “Oh My Goddess!” both seem to believe that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. And Yukino, in “Kare Kano,” submits briefly to blackmail, then throws it off (good girl!) and starts a romance with her blackmailer (eh?). Often the boys are protective, but sometimes their behavior borders on the abusive, and the girls seem to accept it.
On the one hand, I’m concerned that my daughters will absorb, even unconsciously, the notion that they should be sweet and submissive and do all the housework. On the other hand, I haven’t seen that happen yet. (If anything, they swing to the other extreme, especially where housework is concerned.) So I’m not pulling the books away. We talk about manga a lot these days, so I have plenty of opportunities for counter-propaganda. Plus they have plenty of stronger role models in the world they live in, which I believe hold more sway than the characters on the printed page.
So, ban shoujo manga? No. Be aware of the messages? You bet, and that’s what I think the authors of the original essay were saying. My daughters will probably eventually read some of the manga cited as “dangerous.” In my experience, it’s pointless to try to ban a book. But I will suggest they measure what they read against what they observe in the real world. Hopefully they’ll already be in that habit by then.
Art history and theater professor Robert Peterson lectured on manga to a packed house on Friday at Eastern Illinois University. Peterson said the image of manga as porn is flawed, noting that “Japan has very strict censorship laws” and asserting that most pornographic manga is drawn by fans. This doesn’t exactly square with the accounts I have read . Anyway, he makes an interesting point:
In 2001 a Texas retailer was fined for selling adult manga. The district attorney argued that all comics are intended for children so the retailer was found guilty for selling pornography to children.
Yeah, they should have checked with Joe Camel on that one.
Peterson also says that many female characters in manga are good role models and mentions CLAMP, the manga publisher run by four female manga-ka.
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin reviews “Four Shojo Stories” by Viz. This is actually an older comic that has been out of print for a while; one of the stories goes back to 1975. Still, it gets good word-of-blog. Bonus points: It was translated into English by anthropologist/manga maven Matt Thorn.
