If You’re Going to Hate on Manga…
Imagine, for a moment, your editor approaches you with a story idea: write a manga review for the school newspaper. Now you’re a dyed-in-the-wool superhero fan who never reads the manga stuff, thank you very much, but you’re also a journalist, so you accept the assignment. You make an honest effort to read first volume of Bleach or Fruits Basket and decide that it’s not your cup of tea. Here are a few pointers for writing a fair review that won’t antagonize your readership with glib pronouncements about manga’s shortcomings or make you look like an asshat for preferring Superman over Lone Wolf and Cub, as this cub reporter does in “Scott Pilgrim, or, How I Read Manga and Lived to Tell About It.”
Tip No. 1: Manga reads right to left, not back to front.
James Joyce’s less-famous brother might have made a play for literary notoriety with a book that reads back to front, but no one else has written such an animal. Manga reads right-to-left, following the centuries-old practice of writing Japanese characters in vertical columns that are ordered in a top-to-bottom, right-to-left orientation, a.k.a. tategaki. In the US, most manga publishers preserve the original right-to-left orientation of the layout, though some publishers “flip” the images so that the layout conforms to Western preferences.
Tip No. 2: Manga artists work with screentone in lieu of color.
Yes, color is an important element of many Western comics, but its seeming absence in manga does mean that manga is “just black ink on newspaper-gray pages.” Look carefully, and you’ll see that most manga artists use a variety of patterns to create volume, define shapes, and suggest the full spectrum of color. Before the advent of computers, these patterns were transferred by hand from pre-printed sheets of paper (a.k.a. screentone), a time-consuming process that required both a steady hand and a good eye; now most of this shading is handled in programs such as ComicWorks and Photoshop. (For an excellent discussion of how manga artists conceptualize “color,” I strongly encourage would-be critics to read Dee Depuy’s article on how she tones Nightschool.)
By the way, manga comes in color, too — not because Ted Turner got his mitts on it, but because some Japanese artists like it. (The idea!) See Range Murata’s Robot (DMP/Udon Entertainment) and Osamu Tezuka’s Unico for two well-known examples.
Tip No. 3: Enough with the “googly eye” criticism, already.
You won’t be the first person to suggest that manga characters have “bug eyes,” “saucer eyes,” “googly eyes,” or “eyes as big as dinner plates,” and you won’t be the last, so why go there at all? Yes, some — not all — creators exaggerate the size and shape of their characters’ eyes, but there’s a valid artistic reason for doing so: they’re aiming for emotional, not physical, verisimilitude, using the eyes to show us what their characters are feeling instead of telling us through dialogue or voice-overs. Not all manga artists do it well, but the very best practitioners — Moto Hagio, Keiko Takemiya, Osamu Tezuka, Rumiko Takahashi, Naoki Urasawa — use this technique to amazing effect.
Tip No. 4: Manga is a storytelling medium; superhero comics are a genre.
Manga simply means “comics” in Japanese, and can refer to works as utterly different as Color of Rage and Sugar Sugar Rune, just as the Western term “comics” can refer to The Fantastic Four and Fun Home — in other words, manga is a medium for telling stories, just like film and television. Superhero comics, on the other hand, are a genre, or specific type of comics that have certain characteristic elements. Saying you don’t like manga because you’ve read one and didn’t like it as much as The X-Men or The Dark Knight is like declaring you hate movies because you saw one — say, There Will Be Blood — and found it wanting in comparison with your favorite reality shows.
If you’re going to dip your toe in the vast ocean of manga, try picking something that corresponds to your own interests as a reader. Are you a mystery buff? Why not try Case Closed, Fire Investigator Nanase, or Monster? A sci-fi fanatic? AKIRA, Jyu-oh-Sei, Parasyte, or Planetes might interest you. A superhero guy? Explore the world of shonen (boys’) manga, which abounds in characters who, like Peter Parker, have their ordinary lives upended by the unexpected discovery of a supernatural gift. But don’t just grab a random book, read one volume, and declare that the “entire art form is at odds with traditional comic books from a visual standpoint.” Actually, I have no idea what the preceding sentence means, but it sure sounds damning.
Don’t get me wrong: I have no desire to evangelize on behalf of manga, nor do I wish to insult readers whose tastes are different than mine. We’re all united by a common interest in comics as a way to tell and experience stories, even if we don’t agree on what constitutes good sequential art. I do think, however, if you’re going to call yourself a journalist or a critic, you owe it to your readers to write a review that’s free of the gross generalizations that abound on message boards. Trust me — it’s a lot more professional to post a review that offers specific criticisms of a particular book than to rehearse the same tired complaints about why manga sucks.
Can you send this to everyone on the Internet, please?
Cheers,
Erica
Hungry for Yuri? Have some Okazu?
http://okzu.blogspot.com
Every word is gold. Now we have a post to point to when some idiot decides they are going to be “open minded” enough to try those strange backwards comics!
Excellent post, Kate! It’s a shame that even after the proliferaton of manga, these sort of clarifications are still even necessary, but the misunderstanding of manga as a medium still resounds.
Kate, you are my hero.
I think that sentence means “This entire art form (which I have helpfully pigeonholed as big eyes, small mouth, uncolored crap) doesn’t look like superheroes and is therefore hard to read.”
It can also be read to say, “I am pretending to have an informed opinion, but I really, really don’t. Did you notice yet?”
@kate. Wonderful post. I never understand how people can become so myopic and not realize it. Your point with regard to the use of larger than human eyes for the sake of conveying emotion is spot on and some one has a problem with that. However they will lap up the anatomically incorrect proportions given to superheroes both men and especially women. Open mindedness is hard to come by these days. Everyone just wants to impose their version of what’s right. Thanks for showing that its possible to be free open minded and fair.
Thanks for the feedback, guys! I’ve been stewing about this review for a few days and finally decided I had to respond to it in more detail than just a Tweet. And David, thank you for translating that sentence. I had a bad flashback to grading student papers for a moment there…
What a great response to that article! I think I’m going to forward it to a few journalists that I know…
Manga is comics, Comics is manga, as long as people try to separate the two we’ll have MASS generalizations and prejudice to one another.
Comic (or if your in japan, “Manga” ) = Medium
Graphic Novel / Web comic / Single Issue / Anthology = Format
Superhero / Shonen / Romance / Mystery = Genre
But no one gets it because they want to hold onto prejudice of one or another, so things like Scott Pilgrim blur the lines, and everyone gets clusterfucked. It’d be nice if people just learned to categorized properly, it’d save us alot of time, because it’s GOING to happen eventually.
Thanks, Daniella! That essay must have made you gnash your teeth, given your background in journalism (let alone your professional experience in manga publishing).
@Maximo: Couldn’t have said it better myself! I hope a few folks trying to make an apples-to-steak comparison between all of manga and their favorite DC comic take the time to parse those distinctions.
More than likely they won’t…People are trained to make mass generalizations, so they don’t have to “waste time” with what the presume is not worth their time. But I can always get a “comic fan” to read urasawa’s work. And I can get a “manga fan” to usually read Calvin n’ Hobbes.
I see it as a huge wall of prejudice that needs to be cracked immediately, if we’re ever going to have the word “comic” be taken seriously.
@Maximo: Too true. I know I made my share of dumb comments about why I didn’t like superhero comics when I first started reading manga. Writing for Good Comics for Kids really opened my eyes to the possibilities of other styles, and cured me of my “all superhero comics are bad” stupidity. Sadly, folks on both sides of the East/West divide tend to hunker down in their comfort zone and lob missiles at the other side.
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I’ve had to refute these prejudices in real life, and it was hard, because the temptation to start gnashing my teeth or tearing my hair out was very strong. (In one case, #3 was accompanied by “I suppose this is their way of making the characters look Caucasian”, and because it was a face-to-face discussion, I couldn’t just say “read this piece by Matt Thorn” and have done with it…)
“I suppose this is their way of making the characters look Caucasian”.
Because no one in Japan writes comics that take place in Japan or that feature Japanese characters. *Sigh.* Too bad you didn’t have your computer to settle that argument — I’ve referred a few folks to Thorn’s essay, and it shuts down that line of stupidity fast.
When manga first started burbling around in NA, suddenly there was a lot more colour and women at conventions and they were developing their own little subculture of fandom around their goofy black and white books. These manga fans didn’t need to go to a particular neighborhood and experience whatever reaction some possible socially-maladjusted comic geeks might give them so they could read about a woman being stuffed into a refrigerator. They could go to a regular bookstore or later, read scans on-line. They didn’t need an initiation into a fandom circle and learn all the rites and litanies of a decades-old franchise.
That was really jarring to a lot of comic fans who enjoyed a few decades of unspoken segregation in their hobby and though I don’t think conscious aggression is at all common, I think that’s where some fans’ subconscious resistance and the goofier arguments come from. They don’t really know why they find manga so offensive, there’s just something inherently wrong with it and they grasp at strings trying to combat the idea of it. If you ask most superhero fans, they do like some titles or it just isn’t their thing. They don’t feel the same burning urge to wipe manga from the face of the Earth as some fans do, or if they do, they at least have logical and consistent arguments.
“Comic (or if your in japan, “Manga” ) = Medium”
In Japan these two terms seem to be pretty much interchangeable. They are using the word “Comic” as well and it will be written above what we call “the manga section” in quite a few bookstores. And if you say that you read “manga” you will often be asked to be precise whether “you mean the japanese ones?”.
But well, this is such an old topic … still, nice post.
@Jade: I don’t know if you read Danielle Leigh’s column at Comics Should Be Good!, but she noted that someone told her to “get off his lawn” when she posted her very first review two years ago. I wish I could say that kind of bunker mindset was isolated or unusual, but the robust “I hate manga” threads at many comic-oriented sites suggest the hostility isn’t going away. It’s a shame, because most of the comic fans I know read widely and don’t confine themselves to a single type of comic — that seems about as rational or healthy as limiting yourself to an exclusive diet of breakfast cereal.
@Minikui: Good point about the word manga’s use in Japan. It seems incredible in 2010 that we’re still having this conversation, but then folks go and post something as bone-headed as that Scott Pilgrim critique, and we’re off the the races again.
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Any time someone says they don’t like manga because of the eyes I point to a Rob Liefeld image and say I don’t like any American comic because of that. MOST understand the point I try to make with that comparison.
@Joe H: That’s a great point: comic artists generally stylize the human body in some fashion, whether exaggerating the characters’ muscles (a la Leifeld) or eyes (a la Moto Hagio). I’m not crazy about the kind of stylization I find in many superhero comics, but I would never point to the latest issue of The Hulk as an example of what’s wrong with American comics!
Feed trolls much?
[...] Dacey posts a thoughtful (and admirably civil) response to this maddening review of Scott Pilgrim, If You’re Going to Hate on Manga…, laying out a set of genuinely helpful tips for western journalists who are interested in speaking [...]
@Jura: How am I “feeding trolls”? If you look at my site, you’ll see that 75-85% of what I do is write reviews, not fan the flames of Internet controversy. I responded to this particular Scott Pilgrim review because the author rehearses the same tired old stereotypes about manga that I’ve seen over and over again at comic book forums and websites: big eyes, backwards art, no sense of line or color. He’s writing for a newspaper at a big, reputable university, not his LiveJournal, so he has an obligation to write something more thoughtful than “hey, I hate this ‘cuz everyone has bug eyes!”
I wasn’t planning on commenting on this post since my thoughts pretty much mirror everyone else’s.
And then I saw Melinda’s comment and had the urge to leave this: (cue music) “Did you ever know that you’re my hero?”
But, on a more serious note, I can’t echo what you’ve said enough — and I have with my traditional superhero-loving comics-reading friends. For some reason, they think manga equals tentacles, big-eyed (and big-”lunged”) women… It’s annoying to say the least. But, I’m slowly making headway by casually mentioning and suggesting titles to them.
Now, if only there were a way to force every stereotypical comics reviewer to read this!
It may seem easy to laugh off complaints from comics fans not familiar with manga that manga is “backwards,” but I think it’s a legitimate concern. Perhaps many of you grew up always reading right-to-left manga, but I remember finding myself thoroughly confused when the “authentic manga” trend (domestic manga publishers no longer flipping their books) took off in the early ’00s… it took quite a long time for me to get used to it. Pulling a book off the shelf and trying to see the front cover, but seeing the back instead… Flipping the page the wrong way and going back to a page I’ve already read… Making it halfway through a page rather confused until I realized I was reading the panels and balloons in the wrong order… trying to read these was a frustrating experience until I got used to it, and I hated it. I’ve since grown to appreciate it, both for the artistic reasons and the fact that the publishers pass the production cost, savings on to us, but for someone who’s only ever read books, comic and otherwise, left-to-right for their entire life, trying to read right-to-left manga is going to be a frustrating experience and I don’t blame anyone for showing resistance to it.
That aside, I didn’t really dig Scott Pilgrim either, though for reasons other than those in the article.
Other classic black-and-white non-manga comics include Persepolis and Maus.
Garrett: I think Kate’s point (and she can correct me if I’m wrong) isn’t about the difficulty (or not) for western readers in adapting to right-to-left reading, but rather the fact that it is incredibly Euro-centric to refer to that as being “backwards” or reading “back-to-front.” A journalist needs to be able to make distinctions like that in order to be taken seriously.
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@Lorena: Now I have Bette Midler’s voice stuck in my head!
@Garrett: I understand your point: if you’ve never read a book with a right-to-left orientation, it’s confusing. It took me a few books before I got the hang of it myself. I’m not knocking the author of the original essay for preferring one orientation over the other, just pointing out that his description is, as Melinda observes, a very Eurocentric one. As a journalist, he ought to know that some words have stronger, more negative connotations than others; “backwards” sounds a lot more pejorative than “flipped” or “reversed.”
And thank you for mentioning some Western comics that are in black-and-white. It’s good to remind folks that comics come in all shapes, trim sizes, and color, even here in the US. Thanks for commenting!
@Melinda: Couldn’t have said it better myself — thank you!
Props to you and this post, Kate. I’ve received my share of criticisms on why I like manga/anime over the years, long before it became mainstream in NA and countries outside Japan (ironically coming from people who watched anime adaptations of literature classics dubbed to the local language). I’ve pointed out a lot of the same reasons as you did why one shouldn’t put it aside and consider it inferior to ehem, superhero comics, but your post organized it all and makes it easier to help people understand.
Matt Thorn and Frederick Schodt are among those people should read if they want to learn more about manga from the Western perspective.
Thanks, Kat! I couldn’t agree more about Thorn and Schodt’s writing. I still think Dreamland Japan is one of the best English-language books about manga — possibly even better than Manga! Manga! — and I refer to it frequently when writing. Thorn’s blog is also a terrific resource, especially his essays about translation and manga-reading habits in Japan.
YES YES YES! THIS. A THOUSAND TIMES THIS!!!!
Katherine, I wanna add to the ‘You are my hero’ pile. Because you are. I HATE HATE HATE the frankly snobbish and discriminatory attitude that is leveled at manga. I can’t help but feel that this is partly because a lot of women are into it–and as we all know, if girls like it, it is immediately worth less than big manly comics.
I totes agree that manga is a storytelling medium in itself, which makes it open to more variations than you see in American comics. Such as, believable and awesome female protaganists. (If you look hard enough, there are even a few that don’t dress stupidly and have feasible anatomies that don’t defy science.)
Re: big eyes/inaccurate human forms: Ok, can American comics really get critical about that? I mean, given how Star Sapphire is drawn these days…you know what? I don’t even want to hear it–that’s total hypocrisy and too ridiculous to seriously consider as a valid argument.
@Chai Latte: You’re very welcome! It drives me nuts when reviewers make no effort to come to terms with what they’re reading, whether it’s manga or Marvel. I’ve reviewed some superhero stuff for Good Comics for Kids, and it would never occur to me to just fire from the hip; I researched the characters’ histories, found out who was currently writing/drawing the series, and made an effort to understand who DC or Marvel was trying to reach with the latest reboot/storyline/event comic. By doing my homework, I could critique the issue or series on its own merits, rather than just pointing to the obvious things (e.g. gravity-defying F-cups with no underwire in sight). And you know what? I actually LIKED a few of the books I reviewed. Not all, of course, but even those I disliked got a fair shake. You won’t catch me writing “I Read Superman… and Lived to Tell!”
I also agree about the hostility towards female fandom. I don’t understand why certain male fans are so dismissive of manga. Given the pervasive negative stereotypes about comics and comic book readers, you’d think they’d be happy that there were women who shared their interest in sequential art! Why is it Garth Ennis or nothing?
Thanks for your comment!
Katherine, YOU GO GIRL!!! Anyone who hates manga is missing out big time!
[...] even read a manga, but a manga-inspired book, Scott Pilgrim. Kate Dacey of The Manga Critic responds to the piece not by just ranting (as I would), but by giving several helpful hints on how to sound [...]
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