Fellow Good Comics for Kids blogger Lori Henderson has populated Manga Village with a crack team of writers, and this week, they tackle one of the more contentious questions facing American manga fans: what, exactly, deserves the label “manga”? All of the participants raise excellent points, pro- and contra- the “global manga” (or “OEL”) label, arguing that the word “manga” connotes more than a style or book format. As I was reading the discussion, however, one comment struck me as representative of a large segment of manga fandom:

Alex Hoffman: On a completely different note, I think I’d be much more forgiving of OEL manga if it wasn’t so terrible. I have yet to come across an OEL title I truly enjoyed. It feels as if something is lost in their translation of one cultural medium to another.

I’m in partial agreement with Hoffman. Many publishers are guilty of affixing the label “manga” to products that don’t pass the sniff test as comics, manga, or just plain entertainment; the word often seems like a calculated effort to reach out to young audiences without any regard for the style or presentation of the material. (The Manga Bible comes to mind as one such example.) But where I part company from him is the belief that all Western creators working in a “manga style” (whatever that may be) come up short. The real subtext of Hoffman’s comment seems to be authenticity — OEL manga fails because it isn’t created and published in Japan.

Yet authenticity is a more elusive concept than most of us are willing to admit. Most of us call something “authentic” when we think it exemplifies cultural traits that are inaccessible to outsiders. (Put another way, Vanilla Ice flunked the authenticity test because as a white, middle-class man with a bad flat top, he didn’t live the gangsta life that he rapped about.) Thus, fans consider certain anime and manga “authentic”—namely, those series with uncontestable Japanese origins—and all other products—no matter how similar—poor imitations. The big drawback to this definition of “authenticity,” however, is that manga and anime, like so many other pop culture phenomena, are hybrid forms with influences as diverse as nineteenth-century scroll paintings and Depression-era Disney films. The way in which these elements are synthesized may be uniquely Japanese, but it’s hard to make an argument for purity when so many cultural influences—eastern and western, highbrow and lowbrow—are at play.

Consider Genndy Tartakovsky’s Samurai Jack, a show that an uninformed viewer might reasonably mistake for “authentic” anime. Tartakovsky’s gonzo series is a playful and knowing engagement with Japanese culture, from its heavily stylized visuals to its frequent shout-outs to Akira Kurosawa and Masaki “Samurai Rebellion” Kobayashi. “Authentic” anime? Well, not by most definitions. But I’d argue that Tartakovsky approaches his topic in the same spirit as Shinichiro Watanabe mashes up hip-hop and historical periods in Samurai Champloo. If Champloo is anime, why not Samurai Jack?

As many fans will point out, Tartakovsky’s series was created for an American television network that actively courts anime lovers. How can it be “authentic,” they ask, if it was created in response to market demand? The answer is simple: it’s almost impossible to create a work of art without entertaining some notion of its potential audience, whether that audience is made up of millions of Japanese teenagers, fifteen male geeks in Omaha, or thousands of young American women. The origins of a product are less important than the product itself in determining whether an audience views it as original, real, authentic, or, conversely, as fake.

Marketing, too, plays a role in shaping consumer’s perception of “authenticity,” and I think Lori’s comments about marketing are worth quoting at length here:

OEL Manga is a marketing term. Tokyopop made it up to sell their originally written comics just so they wouldn’t be put with the regular comics. Why? Simple. Because girls are more likely to pick up a manga than a comic book. I’m one of these relatively rare exceptions, but in general, girls don’t go into comic book stores to buy comics/manga. They go to the bookstore and if they saw “new comic from Svetlana Chmakova”, and “new manga from Svetlana Chmakova”, they would probably pick up the manga. Marketing is all about perception, not content. Because Tokyopop got it out first, and shouted the loudest, it’s become the defacto term for domestic graphic novels in paperback size.

Many defenders of anime and manga’s “authenticity” are coming from the right place. Having learned more about the Japanese language and culture than their counterparts, they’ve taken it upon themselves to point out anything that smacks of phoniness: Gwen Stefani’s harajuku fixation, fan abuse of the word kawaii, American artists’ attempts at samurai manga. Far be it from me to argue for the preferred spelling of shojo or the etymology of shonen-ai. But I think that folks on the other side of the debate have a point, too. Their use of Japanese words and interest in Nightschool isn’t necessarily a sign of cluelessness — it may just mean that they’re less interested in policing the boundaries of the form to keep out anything that doesn’t say “Made in Japan.”

UPDATE, 5/5/09: Return to Labyrinth writer (and former Tokyopop editor) Jake Forbes posted a thoughtful response to this piece at Gobblin.net. In it, he clarifies the origin of the term “OEL”:

As someone who was in the trenches at the start of this trend, as an editor, and later as a writer, I’d like to say once and for all that OEL was most certainly not coined by Tokyopop. Tokyopop just called all of its works “manga.” The company’s line was/is not to have a distinction in classification between books created in Japan, Korea, Europe or the Americas. “OEL” was first coined, if I remember correctly, by the folks on the Anime on DVD manga forums, as many folks didn’t like (and still don’t like) Tokyopop’s blanket usage of the term. The term caught steam online, not because any company wanted to perpetuate it, but because readers (at least those who take the time to discuss it online)want some distinction. In retrospect, Tokyopop sort of shot itself in the foot with the naming debates by building its “OEL” expansion on the success of its “100% Authentic” campaign, thereby implying its own product is “inauthentic.”

Also, Tokyopop was not the first company to apply the word “manga” to a non-Japanese product. What Tokyopop DID do was make manga synonymous with the 5 x 7.5, B&W, 192 page graphic novel. Ironically, this format and aspect ratio isn’t even used in Japan, but was rather based on Korean manwha trim sizes, which happens bto be an ideal compromise between Japan’s two most common tankubon aspect ratios, making a 1-size-fits-all approach possible.

Go, read, and be schooled by someone who was there on the front lines!