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There’s an interesting discussion over at Manga Village News about the definition of manga.

What is Manga?

Ever since Tokyopop created their line of American created titles, dubbed OEL (Original English Language) manga, fans have been debating if they should be called manga. What is manga? Is it a style, or set of drawing conventions? Is it a country/ethnic specific creation? Or is just as the word translates to, funny pictures, or comics?

The discussants reject a definition based on “style” (big eyes, etc), which is a relief. They pretty much fall into two camps –

1) “comics from Japan.”

John Thomas: ……”culture-specific story lines and themes that can only come from Japanese natives.”
…..”what’s so appealing about manga? I think it’s about diversity. There’s all sorts of stories being told in manga so each person can find their niche….”
….”movement lately away from Western paradigms and culture….”

Alex Hoffman: “culture specific content.”

Katherine Farmer: “… we need to take economics into account. The structure of the Japanese manga publishing industry is radically different……”

2) strong storytelling:

Dan Polley: “manga has a story to tell; a lot of American comics have a character to tell.”

Lori Henderson: ….”The art and greater propensity for character stories…..”…. “more flexible content.”

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I haven’t ventured much into the world of OEL manga (original English language manga or mangaisme, global manga), but picked up some recommended titles from the debate that I will check out.

The simplicity of thinking about manga as “comics from Japan” rings true to me. Still, nobody would be interested in manga if the stories were not compelling.

In the four years that I have taught the “Analyzing the Appeal of Manga” seminar we always conclude that the basis for the “appeal” is the storytelling. With manga that don’t appeal to everyone in the class (Swan + Sexy Voice and Robo come immediately to mind) we always identify plot as the basis of the problem. (How can someone who struggles with practice keep winning international competitions??? It is troubling to think about Sexy Voice being only fourteen years old — her age undermines the credibility of the plot sometimes.)

Any other ideas on how to define manga?

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This year’s manga seminar just ended. As in past years, it seems like we were just getting into a stride. The end came too soon. Well all I can do at this point is start thinking about next year’s course. I asked the students for input and got some great ideas.

One of the questions I always face is about where to start, how far back to go in constructing this 1-credit, 10-week course. This time we started with Tezuka’s Black Jack (OSU catalog). That was a big hit, so I’m going to keep it for next fall’s course. However, I am thinking to assign Kuwata Jiro’s Bat-manga (OSU catalog) as the first week’s reading. There’s an interesting article about it on the Valdosta Daily Times web site by Dean Poling, “COMICS: Batmanga”

Meanwhile, Ohio State’s holdings of Kuwata Jiro’s works are expanding with the acquisition of the Manga Shop Series. We’ve received a grant from the North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources’ Multivolume Sets Project recently to purchase a second (circulating) copy of the first 150 volumes in that series — and OSU will continue to purchase a 2d copy for volumes being published into the future. The second set is on order now. Meanwhile, Mayumi Kamata (GA working in the Cartoon Research Library) is already cataloging the first set that arrived about a month ago.

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Helen McCarthy was in Kuala Lumpur recently to give a talk about Tezuka Osamu. In KL she was interviewed by Elizabeth Tai of the Malaysia Star who wrote an article — Veteran Otaku: How did an English lady get hooked on a Japanese phenomenon some three decades ago?

OCLC’s new “Worldcat Identities” provides an overview of how widely Helen McCarthy’s books are collected in libraries worldwide. Many are at Ohio State, but not the newest one (yet).

This quarter Sarah Kniss, a senior at Ohio State, has been indexing McCarthy’s book. 500 Manga Heroes and Villains, on Carmenwiki to help improve access to the book, connect it with the manga in our collection, and encourage people to look more closely at characters in manga. That’s a great way to start doing research into manga. This is part of a larger project in which Sarah is exploring “professional writing” while promoting Ohio State’s manga collection.

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Hey! I’ll be teaching a course in spring quarter on “What is the Global Information Society?” with my colleague, Miriam Conteh-Morgan. I’ve just written a post about it on my Japanese Studies blog –

Spring Qtr: What Is the Global Information Society?

Syllabus is here: http://is.gd/wHrp

Manga is a good example, I think, of how information/knowledge functions in today’s “global information society.” I have been interested in this for some time, so that led to developing the course. In September 2008 I gave a paper, “Framing Knowledge: Global Youth Culture as Knowledge Society (Research in Progress)” that outlines my plans for further research into manga as global knowledge/information.

Of course, there are many other kinds of global information/knowledge. If you are interested in this kind of thing, please consider taking the course!

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I will be teaching the freshman seminar again in Winter Quarter 2009. (more…)

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Today’s Wall Street Journal has a front page article about Japanese anime tourists visiting the Washinomiya Shrine in Washimiya, Saitama Prefecture, because of its association with Lucky Star (らき★すた) by Yoshimizu Kagami (美水　かがみ). This caught my attention because Saitama is Ohio’s sister state in Japan!
(more…)

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BT No. 876 is a special issue on “Is Manga Art?” (more…)

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Has anyone else been following the US Navy’s release of a manga entitled “Manga CVN 73” and commissioned from Japanese cartoonists?

Here’s a news report about it–

Cartoon is Navy’s envoy to anxious Japanese By Philip Ewing
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/06/navy_comicbook_061408w/

English and Japanese versions are available at:
http://www.cnfj.navy.mil/Manga.html

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Last month Toshinori Egami (江上敏哲), a rare book librarian at Kyoto University Library who has been visiting and cataloging rare books at Harvard-Yenching Library for the past year, came to Ohio State to see the manga collection in the Cartoon Research Library. (more…)

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