Rants/Raves: Why I Don't Read Manga

You may have noticed that there is one glaring absence in my coverage of the graphic medium: manga.  Why is this?  Well, two reasons.  1) The library already had a Manga and Anime club for teens so it seemed redundant, and 2) I don't read manga and I know next to nothing about it.

I'm a bit ashamed.  With the growing popularity of manga in America, especially with teens and children, you'd think it would be easy for me to get into.  Large book retailers keep shelves of hundreds and hundreds of titles.  It's very available.  But that's also part of why it's so intimidating to me.  There's so much!

Let's go back a little bit.




Back in my early teenage years (12-15), I was OBSESSED with anime.  I thought it was stunningly beautiful and elegant next to American cartoons.  And the stories were more adult.  But in truth, I was only being exposed to the anime available on cable at the time, that is to say, what they were playing during the anime blocks on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim.  I'd seen anime before that, but I'd never realized it.  I grew up watching Speed Racer because it came on during Toonami, but when I asked why it looked so different, the only answer I got was "because it's Asian".  And then my sugar-addled 5 year-old mind raced away and I don't think I ever thought about it again until I was starting to watch Adult Swim.  Back then, there were about a handful of popular titles: Inuyasha, Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Witch Hunter Robin, and maybe Fooly Cooly (which only has 6 episodes).  Inuyasha was by far my favorite, and I owned dolls, t-shirts, and posters.  I considered myself a BIG "otaku".  But that is because I knew absolutely nothing about what I was talking about.  If you know anything about anime or manga, you know that these titles barely scratch the surface.  It wasn't until much later that I even found out that these shows were adopted from manga.

Which brings about why I stopped watching.  It's true that as I grew older, my social and academic life expanded and I simply had less time for it.  But on top of that, I had begun to notice something: Inuyasha never ended.  Even after 5 or 6 seasons of romantic tension, the main two characters never sealed the deal and became a couple, even though it was no secret that they were in love.  They started going on side missions that appeared to have nothing to do with the main conflict, even though the bad guy was still at large. It just drug on and on.  So I stopped watching.

Later, when I began to study such things, I learned that manga is normally printed in daily newspapers and later collected in books, much like Garfield in America.  And like Garfield, these strips could run for many years.  If a manga is popular enough to appear in a collected edition, you usually need to be prepared to strap in for the long haul.  It may be 40 books until you reach the end of a series. And to be honest, I just don't have the time to commit to a series that long.  That's what happened when I first tried to read a manga (after getting a recommendation) earlier this year.  I began to read Naoki Urasawa's 20th Century Boys.

It was amazing.  The story was complex and interesting, a mystery mixed with creepy cultists and 60s nostalgia.  The library had books 1,2, and 3.  So I assumed there were three volumes.  Ah, stupid me.  I read all three, and I was sure that the mystery would be wrapped up by the end of the third book.  I could taste it. But satisfaction never came.  Huh? I thought, flipping back and forth through the pages.  Had I missed something?  So I decided to look the series up, to see if there was just one more book needed.  No.  Actually, the last volume to come out was the 17th, with three more slated to arrive by next March.  The series is still running.  So I wrote it off.  I'll never know what happens.  Because 20 books is just too much, and I'm never going to commit to that.

 And hey, don't think I'm being hypocritical and start pointing out that western comics like Spider-Man have been going on since the 60s.  Believe me, I know.

That's why I only read trade paperbacks, collected editions of full storylines.  Keeping up with issue after issue completely loses me.  I want to read to whole story at one time.  This brings me to reason #2 that I don't pick up manga.  Picking up a TPB of Spider-Man is easy for me even if I haven't read his books for a year.  Why?  Because the mythos of Spider-Man is hardwired into the American public.  I know all the players, so getting into a new story is easy for me.  I can just connect the dots based on what I already know.  With Japanese characters and social standards, I don't have that advantage.  So if I pick up a manga and run across a word that has no English translation, it completely pulls me out of the story.  Many nuanced aspects of characters are completely beyond my inherent knowledge.  So basically, trying to read manga for me is like trying to complete a puzzle without all of the pieces.  It just screws up the overall picture, even if I can get a decent idea of what I'm looking at.

I know that a lot of manga fans simply pick this stuff up after reading a lot of it.  That option just doesn't work for me.  If I can't understand what's going on, I have no desire to continue.

Now, maybe my third complaint has more to do with the market manga is being sold to than the work itself, but when I see a shelf of manga at a bookstore, what I usually see is this:

Here's a plot synopsis from Wikipedia (more reliable of resources):

Amane Kamori lives in a rural village, isolated from modern society. She is a powerful medium, able to control living creatures and things through the use of its real name. Her main companion is Hyoue, her guardian demon dog, who she powers up through kissing. Forbidden from revealing her identity, she and Hyoue are allowed to move to Tokyo. Together they work to help both the living and the dead deal with various troubles, while also adjusting to high school society. Amane must deal with jealousy from classmates, who don't understand why the handsome Hyoue is so devoted to her, as well as with her own family attempting to force her to come home. The family even attempts to break her bond with Hyoue. Meanwhile, Hyoue devotes himself to his master, while struggling to hide the forbidden feelings he has for her


Now tell me dear reader, how I am supposed to wade through a literal sea of books that look JUST. LIKE. THIS. and this be able to find something remotely interesting to me?  Just shelving this crap at the library makes me feel icky.  Now, I work at the children's library.  I handle the young adult section and I know that all around, teens like romance and they like power fantasies that put high school students like themselves in the driver's seat.  But I can't even tell most of it apart.  Some of it seems to be purely smut.  And if you know me, you know I'm no prude. But there isn't any literary merit to it.  Sorry to step on toes.  


And the fourth (final!) thing: the art.  Now, I am an art snob for all mediums and you'll never catch me saying that western comics haven't had their share of bad art.  REALLY bad art:

*coughRobLiefeldWHYcough*

BUT.  BUT, that does NOT make up for almost every manga I pick up off the shelf looking like this:

Jesus Christ.

If you wanted to repel me from your work, mission accomplished.  The thing is, that the interior art is almost worse for me.  Why?  Because as an art student, I was taught that using a lot of spindly, thin, spider lines in black and white is pretty much painful to look at.  It's a design law.  It just doesn't work.  Coloring in and using shading fixes this problem, but 99% of manga are black and white.  "But Paisley!", you shriek, "Most of the comics YOU recommend are in black in white!".  True.  Here, let's compare.

Here is a page from a manga. to me, it is literally painful to look at.  There is so much white space to take in, the art is so delicate, and there is so much going on.  My eyes start to ache and I become disoriented.  I really have to concentrate to follow what's going on.  And no, I'm not just being bitchy.  Everything I just said is very true for me.


Now, let's look at a page from Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, which we will be reading at the end of the semester.

Much better.  The art is more simplistic, and this helps weigh the shapes down visually.  They are more solid.  The lines are thicker, and there is a lot less negative space.  Although I consider a fully colored page to be most pleasing to the eyes, I can read this without pain or confusion.


So there you have it.  I know that there are good manga out there.  There are way too many manga fans who I respect intellectually for me to deny.  But add up these four factors, and I just can't seem to find the right manga for me.  Any suggestions?