Late night incoherent ramblings on Manga.

I’d like to start by saying this post is based on a very limited knowledge of manga and anime, and I’m just basing this on my own observations. I’ve been reading Miyazaki’s book - ‘Starting Point’ recently which is a collection of his articles and talks on anime and animation throughout his career. I think it displays intelligent and interesting views on anime that I also think transfer very easily into just about any medium. For the sake of this blog post - I’m talking about manga. He says that the industry today (anime shows, specifically) is like one big steam and that there is so much work out there, if you’re really not making something for a good reason and with the intention of making a progressive piece then it’s just going to become another drop in the steam and it’s going to become immediately lost in the flow. I think this is true of manga and I think this is part of the problem with how manga is viewed. So much of it is catered towards pleasing a fan base that often I don’t think it IS very progressive, or if it is suffocated by the need to show big breasted women with their clothes half off. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with that, generally - but I also think that there is a time and a place where it can invalidate some other greater point you are trying to make. As such, lots of people just see anime and manga as an attempt to show cute girls getting into situations where their already skimpy top (or bikini) comes off, some guy oogles and then gets a nose bleed and called a perv. (I’m thinking of Gurren Lagann when I say this, because I just watched it.) I think the genre struggles in that, just as people like to sum up Game of Thrones as ‘blood, sex and incest’ it is easy to sum Manga up in a similar way (without the incest)... Really though, I’m sure there are some fantastic manga’s out there - I’m just talking about how it is often perceived by a western audience, especially those not actually reading it. So these pieces become part of the larger stream, and are lost - only remembered as that piece with the lady with big boobs who did something, somewhere that was pretty cool.

(Kind of irrelevant but here is my short and brief history with manga... ) I used to read some manga and watched a certain amount of anime. I definitely enjoyed it and I even remember I started drawing anime at some point in my early days but I don’t think it was ever REALLY me, I grew up around the classical masters and none of my friends were really very into it. Saying that, I do know I enjoyed it - and watched a reasonable amount of anime. However, maybe I’m just comparing myself to some of my friends who watch it now and I can’t even pretend to say I know the first thing in comparison. I’d like to read some more if I ever find the time.