TIL the mangaka Naoko Takeuchi (Sailor Moon) is married to another famous manga author Yoshihiro Togashi (Hunter x Hunter and Yu Yu Hakusho)
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Oh yeah, I loved sharing that fun fact when my wife wanted to watch the Netflix adaptation of Yu Yu and I wanted to let her in on the source material (I really liked the manga/anime as a teen).
I know this is off topic. But can you explain to me like I am five what the appeal of manga/anime is? I see all the adaptations and stuff but could never get into the source material it maybe because I am older but I try to keep up and still don't get it.
That varies a huge amount. It's not a genre, just a medium, and like any medium there are a wide variety of genres made with it. Studio Ghibli tends to make surprisingly thought provoking children's movies, often without real villains. Cowboy Bebop is a hard sci-fi show in a constructed world with a jazzy sound track, and was probably the inspiration for Firefly. Ghost in the Shell is the ancestor of all modern cyberpunk, but with the quirk of being from the (still sympathetic) perspective of government counter-terrorism agents. GitS also tends to be heavily philosophical. You've got slice-of-life feel-good shows like Azumanga Daioh and K-On. There are children's and teen's shows about saving the world, and brutal deconstructions of those shows aimed at adults; Sailer Moon -> Madoka, Getter Robo -> Gundam -> Evangelion (second round of deconstruction went hard), etc. Then you have the genre-busting quirky stuff, like Haruhi Suzumiya (which is fairly sane) or Kill la Kill (which is decidedly not).
There's probably something out there in that space that you'd love, but it's a good idea to start from a genre you already like and look at that rather than just going with whatever show is big right now. The stuff that got really big in the US, like Naruto or One Piece, isn't generally my thing, and that's probably what you've run into. If you want to try a movie, check out Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Akira, and the first Ghost in the Shell movie. If you want to jump straight to a series, Cowboy Bebop, Haruhi Suzumiya, Last Exile, Death Note, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Darker than Black, Serial Experiments Lain, Attack on Titan, and Spice & Wolf are all good without being too out-there.
Can't be explained. Has to be experienced.
A few anime to watch... Akira, Spirited Away, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Princess Mononoke, and many more.
It's just another medium. One appeal, it's from a similar, but different culture, so a lot of the tropes are unfamiliar and values being pushed are different.
Compared to US comics, manga isn't stuck in the superhero genre. You get more variety.
Another appeal for a lot of Japanese media is the original creator(s) have more control over adaptions.
The only thing I know about manga/anime is when my ex husband bought a video of teens that we having upskirt shots and playing with themselves all while he jacked off to it. I watched maybe five minutes and thought it was stupid. I am from the states but why in the states is it more closely associated with pron?
That was hentai. Hentai is the porn genre of anime it’s the exception not the rule
That would be porn. If you find live action porn, does that mean all live action is porn?
Compared to the US, Japan(and most of Europe) are more free sexually. The US is also more prone to violence and being lead into war. Make of that what you will.
good point.
With the source material, at least for me as compared to western stuff like X-men, Superman, etc, is that one, it crosses all genres and appeals to all genders. Comic books for much of their existence were largely geared to a specific, very male audience, and it was made quite clear by their writing and the actions of people into comics at the time that other genders (and, to a certain extent, skin colors) need not apply to join the club.
Since I’m a girl, when I was a kid I got teased a lot for liking ‘guy stuff’ like Batman and GI Joe. The problem was, well, I liked action stuff for one, but back then there just wasn’t anything for girls. Hell, I remember them even taking Wonder Woman’s power away, because apparently women empowerment reasons?
Those comics were all written by largely out-of-touch white guys who had, shall we say, definite opinions of what a woman could look like and should act like. And as a woman, I was never impressed. Especially by the time I got to the hundredth drawing of a woman’s ass and legs framing a supposedly ‘serious’ scene.
Then I found manga, with all-women writing teams, and artists who wrote well-rounded characters of all genders and orientations (Sailor Moon had many adorable scenes between a lesbian couple, just to name one example). They drew women who were people. They were sweet, they were brash, they were rude and crass, they were funny. And who weren’t afraid to fireball their way out of trouble. Hell, they drew varied guys who were weak, strong, silly, spacey… they felt real, in a way that I’d never seen in western comics.
Another thing is that mangaka tell the story, their characters get a satisfying actual ending, and then the artist moves on to another story. None of this ‘Oh, the X-men found happiness and solved their problems! In our next comic, watch as everything goes back to the shitty status quo because we have no idea how to write different stories!’ or ‘Welcome to the 2,171st reboot of Superman, now with Extra Edge^TM (because we hear that’s all the rage with kids these days). And remember that this iteration specifically references that one part of reboot #1,023, so read that too (if you can find it lol).’
And the third thing for me is it was quite a bit more beautiful and fluid and varied than western animation. Especially in the case of the days of Too-Many-Pockets Rob and his wooden doll faces, or the small beady eyes of, well, every comic character ever. Anime and manga faces were much more expressive, the worlds more varied and creative, and they weren’t afraid to draw regular people as protagonists, without muscles bulky enough to make you think you were looking at a Macy’s parade balloon.
Ok first got to say the Macy's balloon reference made me spit out my coffee. Second I want to thank you for writing all that up. But I grew up reading comics like Spiderman and always thought here is a guy taking care of just his hood. Then as a black female I got excited when they introduced Miles Morales. But I get your point about females in comics.. Never got into wonder woman because it reminded my of the myth of multiple gods and everything and the tales that I had to read in school
I did like Spiderman the best, I will admit. It felt a lot more relatable and real.
But then the Gwen-Stacy-as-a-plot-device-and-not-a-person nonsense started, and I was just like… oh, here we go. Again.
At least the manga I read never treated women as fridge stuffing, even if they were regulated to background characters.
I think the thing that grinds my gears the most about Rob Liefeld isn’t that he’s a terrible artist; it was that he’s a terrible artist who was kept on the payroll and allowed to keep making terrible comics. They could have fired him and hired someone else, anyone else.
Hell, at the time there were lots of successful women doing manga in Japan, and I doubt they had the only women in the world who could draw comics. It really feels like he was mostly keeping his job because he was white and male.
Even today Marvel and DC all but body-check women comic artists out the door. Thank goodness for the internet, so they can put their art out anyways, and on their own terms.
Edit to add: I recommend reading Magic Knight Rayearth if you have the time. (Maybe don’t watch the anime. Trying to simplify Clamp’s highly detailed art… didn’t work that well. Although the OAV wasn’t too bad.)
It’s an oldie, but it’s one of the comics that first got me into manga back in high school. It’s by an all-woman team, it’s beautiful (really, pretty much all of CLAMP’s art is, and I recommend checking it out), and not only did it have teenage women as the protagonists, but it was the first story I read where there was no actual villain or hero, and the story was actually compelling!
This was a good write-up. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Too-Many-Pockets Rob and his wooden doll faces
I am curious if you have an example image for this.
This This is a funny one. It looks like it was drawn by someone who carves wood with a chainsaw for a living. It even has the dark areas where you’d use a blowtorch lol.
Plus bonus parade balloon muscles.
That is quite an image. It's so busy that I don't want to look at it long but if I try it bothers me more.
I briefly checked out the source material from Naoko Takeuchi, which demonstrates why her work is so well regarded, though I personally don’t fully grasp the appeal.
Which is fine, I just don't understand manga/anime.
Me and you are in the same boat. But as it is getting more and more popular and after having my doubts about it I am trying to understand the different itterations of it.
I can barely spell the titles, let alone understand the plots. Someone more well-versed would have to help navigate, but that shouldn’t be a problem at all.
