As always, this post title probably sounds much more promising than what I will actually rant about. If this is the first time you stumble upon my blog, let me tell you: I’m a management student (!) at a crappy university (!!), I have crappy grades (!!!) and absolutely no talent for writing, therefore I have absolutely no credentials to criticize the academia, I guess. Okay, all of this is only partially true, but still: You are warned.
After reading about 700 manga series, I have kind of stopped reading manga last year although I still check scanlation news, which is how I stumbled upon Matt Thorn’s “Hanshin”. At the end of it, he explains that he translated the short story for a seminar/conference/speech/whatever at Columbia University. Matt Thorn is a big name in academic research for manga (and his name is used by everybody who wants to go “But manga are actually serious and academic too!”) and Moto Hagio, the mangaka of “Hanshin” is absolutely brilliant in my opinion.
However, I think it’s a really, really bad idea to show a Moto Hagio manga in front of a most probably ignorant audience, no matter how great the manga is. (Read it, it’s really good!)
In the same way, people love to mention Rose of Versailles, Moto Hagio, Osamu Tezuka and similarily old manga and mangaka as “Hanshin” in academic papers. However, how many of you know Moto Hagio? Machiko Hasegawa? Keiko Takemiya? Yukari Ichijo? (Okay, she’s a bad example because she is still active and popular, and her Yukan Club got a recent live-action adaptation.) I know them because I’m interested in this stuff. But a typical manga fan? Especially in the western world, where manga are flourishing and gaining popularity, the old classics, that lots of japanese people might know, do not matter. In my opinion, the impact of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Nana (the manga) are much more interesting and much more representative, also academically, than the long forgotten Georgie.
After all, is Shakespeare representative for all of english literature? What about Oscar Wilde, Woolf, Joyce, Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck… Nick Hornby? (j/k) For manga history, Hemingway is just as young as Hana Yori Dango is. Is a 7-10 year old manga too young to be taken into consideration by academia? Why does Matt Thorn’s course syllabus make me think of history teaching that stops at 1936? (Or 1945, if you want, that’s not much better. The Cold War affected us more than both World Wars together if you ask me.) Do you guys know any of the manga he recommends as reading? I do and I know that they used to be popular. To be clearer: They used to be. Shakespeare at least is still loved today.
Moreover, shoujo manga are evolving and there is aren’t many nowadays that looks like “Hanshin” besides Glass Mask and Patalliro (how many of you know that one?) that are already running since the 80s. If academic research is interested in the history of manga, then they should at least attempt to stress the current movements and the evolving process, i.e. how shoujo manga has changed over the years. For example, sex sells much more now and the smuttiness of Mayu Shinjo and the like has nothing to do with the subtlety of love-making in the Rose of Versailles; at the same time, yaoi has evolved from Kaze to Ki no Uta to Okane ga Nai/No Money. That is what makes manga interesting in my opinion, and even though Matt Thorn’s audience has probably gotten a positive impression of this high quality manga, it bugs me how small its representative value is.
In the following, here’s a little selection of what I would have used if I were to give a speech about shoujo manga:
- Rose of Versailles
- Hana Yori Dango
- Nana
- Glass Mask
- Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou
And if I had to choose a single manga, I would definitely go for a “new classic” such as Honey & Clover, Karekano or Nana rather than an old one like Glass Mask or Patalliro.
If it absolutely has to be a short story though, there surely is a solution to this too: Mayu Shinjo has written quite a few short story, there are side stories to Honey & Clover, Karekano has a very beautiful side story and Nana has some as well.
PS. More pictures are likely to come.
Comments 13
How can you be a pretentious Ivy League Student if you’re talking about the same stuff every other weeaboo in America is talking about?
Posted 20 May 2008 at 16:55 CE(S)T ¶Have you ever heard of ratemyprofessors.com?
Posted 20 May 2008 at 17:24 CE(S)T ¶And I’m wondering how Mechademia fits into the picture of academia + otakudom = subcultures in the spectacle of cultural studies
Posted 20 May 2008 at 17:26 CE(S)T ¶@lelangir:
Posted 20 May 2008 at 17:33 CE(S)T ¶1. Yes.
2. I have no idea?
3. What the heck is actually your point?
The moral of the story is ppl need to be less ignorant and more open ^^
Posted 20 May 2008 at 19:13 CE(S)T ¶What’s an Ivy League? something related to Pokemon?
Posted 20 May 2008 at 19:20 CE(S)T ¶Actually, maybe the moral is that even if history is very recent, you still have to try to study it seriously. Or somethin like that, I’m not sure, lol.
Manga is having a big cutural impact right now, but how can you actually study that impact if you don’t pay attention to the actual stories that make people be interested in it? As much as old stuff is great, most people in the US and other countries are not reading it. It’s mostly material for a very specific and small audience. Yeah, they’re very important because mangakas right now must be inspired by them. But, for example, how can you you which elements from that stories are actually still important right now?
Posted 20 May 2008 at 20:13 CE(S)T ¶@lametastic: Not really, the moral of the story is that when it comes to manga, recent movements should not be overlooked because they are what mainly affects the western manga readership. And this guy looks to me like he doesn’t know who Ai Yazawa is. Everything else you say is the same as I’m saying, or else there is some misunderstanding between us.
@Ryan A: Read my posting.
@Necromancer: No, it’s actually Digimon.
Posted 20 May 2008 at 21:30 CE(S)T ¶Academic research for manga? That seems somewhat unappealing.
Posted 20 May 2008 at 22:07 CE(S)T ¶It would probably be unfair to compare manga to literature, though. Probably something to do with the ‘lololol they’re comix’ argument. Since I’m terribly unfamiliar with the world of academia in manga (and in general), I’ll stop there.
Too.. many.. name-drops… academia… Brain… hurts…
Naw. You’re fine. I only recognise Ai Yazawa and the last 3 manga; H&C, KareKano and Nana. Agree with your sentiments though. Academia needs to keep up with the times, especially fields that are always updating itself every few months.
Posted 21 May 2008 at 04:49 CE(S)T ¶Matt Thorn here. (^_^)
Thanks for taking a look at my stuff. I agree that going on and on about older “classic” manga is of limited usefulness. Which is why I try not to do it. If you looked at my the English translation of the syllabus for my “History of Manga” course, you’ll see that the first semester covers “prehistory” to the 1960s, and the second semester covers the 1970s to the present. I haven’t updated that translation of the syllabus in a few years, but rest assured, I occasionally update the second semester to account for recent trends. Last time, I ended the course with _One Piece_ and _Nana_.
It’s true that most academics who do a paper or two on manga are “dabblers” who have an extremely limited (and often twisted) knowledge of the field. Even I, who basically studies manga full-time (for money!), have a hard time keeping up because of the sheer volume of manga produced in Japan every year.
But keep in mind that what is popular among manga fans in the English-speaking world is not necessarily representative of what is popular in Japan. The stuff that gets translated into English tends to be skewed to otaku tastes (_Evangelion_ is a good example), and plenty of manga that are hugely popular in Japan are pretty much unknown to anglophone readers. One good example is _Nodame Cantabile_, which is wildly popular in Japan–arguably more popular than _Nana_. This has been (horribly) translated into English, and as far as I know, it has hardly even registered on the radar of American manga fans. This is probably because (in addition to being horribly translated), it has few of the trademarks of an otaku manga.
Having said that, I think the list of five manga you said you would introduce in a paper on shoujo manga is about as good as any list I could think of, but there are thousands of other combinations of choices that would be just as legitimate.
And I agree that if you wanted to talk about Japanese shoujo manga readers today, and could choose only one title, it would have to be something like _Honey & Clover_, _Nana_, or _Nodame Cantabile_. I would probably choose _Honey & Clover_, because the characters (although all art students) are truly representative of young Japanese today, whereas _Nana_ is, well, a rock’n'roll fantasy, and Nodame features eccentric characters who share a love of classical music, and can hardly be said to be really representative of typical young people today. (Of course, a study of *why* typical young people love _Nana_ and _Nodame_ would also be a very interesting subject for study.)
Now if I can switch to schoolmarm mode here… A lot of students who take my “History of Manga” class say they want me to use more contemporary manga that they have read. That might be fine for another class (say, “Contemporary Manga”), but the whole point of a history class is to show how we got from point “A” (Norakuro) to point “B” (Nana). And what would be the point of a class that doesn’t introduce students to new (to them) material and ideas? If I used only manga that have been big sellers over the past, say, ten years, and stuck with the group discussion format I use, discussions would devolve into “I love/hate this character,” “I love/hate this drawing style” etc. Hardly thought-provoking, inspiring stuff, right?
I love to show students manga from the 1910s and watch their “WTF?” reaction. To them, that stuff is not manga at all. Then, over the course of the year, I connect the dots, and show them that, as strange as it may seem, the manga they read now evolved gradually from this much older stuff, and that there are myriad reasons why it evolved this way and not another. To me, that’s endlessly fascinating. I don’t expect students to learn any dates, or even memorize more than a handful of names or titles, but I do want them to get a feel for how manga developed over a century, because I believe such an understanding enriches their experience of reading manga today, and also broadens their horizons as manga artists. (My students are primarily manga artists/writers/editors in training.)
For what it’s worth, these days I don’t do much academic writing on manga in English. When I give talks in English on manga, I try to infect people with my love of the form in an entertaining, easy to understand way, and also to get them to see the material in new ways. And I definitely prefer general (or undergraduate) audiences to “academic audiences.” Sitting through an academic conference on manga or some other form of pop culture is almost always disappointing, and sometimes just downright infuriating (I imagine waterboarding must feel something like this), although there are occasionally pleasant surprises. I like teaching manga-artists-in-training because it has a clearly practical aspect, and you can see the results of what you teach in your students’ manga, even if only in subtle ways. I also like translating (though I haven’t had much time to do so lately) because it lets me introduce all this wonderful stuff to people who have never seen it before. That’s also why I hate to see good manga badly translated: It’s a wasted opportunity. (And frankly, the vast majority of manga translations today are bad.)
Anyway, that’s my two cents.
By the way, Hagio is still very much active and popular. Her last long work (which I introduced in the preface to the interview in the issue of The Comics Journal pictured at the top of this blog entry) was brilliant and pretty popular, too. Her recent collections of short stories (such as _Anywhere But Here_) have also been very well received.
Posted 21 May 2008 at 10:06 CE(S)T ¶As a grad student whose fulltime focus is manga in America (or to be uber-technical the American translated versions of the Japanese manga text!), I have to say you’re both right.
For non-Japanese speaking academics who want to study manga, we are pretty much limited to contemporary works and that’s why articles and books on the “old” stuff is so invaluable- I would love to read “Rose of Versailles” or the rest of Moto Hagio’s titles, but I can’t read Japanese. If it wasn’t for the academic work written on these series, I really wouldn’t have any knowledge of them and their effects on contemporary manga. Well their work and Vertical (for publishing Keiko Takemiya and Osamu Tezuka’s non-“Astro Boy” titles).
That being said, its sorta embarrassing to see how little has been published on current manga and anime. And as much as I love Eva, it’s not current. Most of what I have found in my research is focused on anime and manga that became popular in the late 90s-early 00s: “Eva,” “Sailor Moon,” “Dragon Ball Z,” etc.
I have found a few articles on “Fullmetal Alchemist” and “Fruits Basket.” I am shocked that no one (from what I can tell) has written about “Naruto.” This may just be a generational thing- we watched “Sailor Moon” and “Dragon Ball Z” in high school and college and five years from now, we’ll be overrun with students wanting to write about “Naruto” and “Bleach.”
And on a side note, I would add two more topics to your list of shoujo:
Posted 10 Jun 2008 at 05:35 CE(S)T ¶1. “Sailor Moon”
2. CLAMP
One can not talk about shoujo without CLAMP. ‘nuff said.
Thank you for raising this interesting point, arachne. I really didn’t expect that old manga are such rarities even among academic circles and took their existence pretty much for granted. As scanlation reader for about 5 years who goes to France on a yearly basis to buy manga, I am used to having easy access both to contemporary and old manga. I can look at a beautiful complete edition of “Rose of Versailles” in french on my own shelves and the english scanlation world is a treasure chest for nearly everything throughout the decades. I also know that the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris basically has every single manga published in english and french for grad students available. (What about your libraries?) Without this accessibility, surely I agree with you that the knowledge you gain in such manga history classes are precious to understand “manga” as a whole.
CLAMP and Sailor Moon surely are influential phenomena - I’ve been subjected to them myself when I was younger. How could I have forgotten them!
Posted 10 Jun 2008 at 15:21 CE(S)T ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 1
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