When I told my mom that I had joined Ohio University’s anime club (dubbed JMAGE), and was also going to write about anime and manga, it was not without embarrassment and a bit of shame. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not ashamed of what I like. But I know her opinion of it: she thinks it’s immature, for kids. That’s what most people think.
When I told my mom that I had joined Ohio University’s anime club (dubbed JMAGE), and was also going to write about anime and manga, it was not without embarrassment and a bit of shame. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not ashamed of what I like. But I know her opinion of it: she thinks it’s immature. That’s what most people think.
When most people think anime, they think Hello Kitty, Sailor Moon, Pokemon, Yugi-Oh! and the like. Well, let me tell you something: you’re wrong.
Let’s just get something straight here: anime is what you watch, and manga is what you read.
I’ll assume that most people don’t know much (if anything) about manga. Picture it being like a comic book, read from right to left. To give a very brief background, manga loosely translates to “whimsical pictures” and according to Wipo Magazine, can be traced back to 12th century animal scrolls.
Point is, it actually has deeply-embedded historical and cultural roots.
To dispel any doubts you may have, you should know that in Japan, manga is read by everybody, the young and the old. In an article from Wipo Magazine, manga accounts for over 25 percent of all printed materials in Japan. It is a very large part of their economy. Think about that, and then consider the fact that in 2011, North America was the largest consumer of anime and manga outside of Japan, again according Wipo.
Manga that sells well enough will often be turned into anime, not unlike how books are turned into movies. There is such a large market in anime and manga that there is inevitably something for everybody. The creators and producers often try to reach across cultural borders, if only to make things sell better. We should all embrace this chance to learn more about an art form that may be foreign to some of us.
As it is, manga sales in every country are hurting, similar to how print media outlets are hurting. Everything is being put online. Sometimes the publisher of a graphic novel or book may make it so that the printed version is more appealing to buy. But this is not the case with manga. And so we find it free and ill-gotten on sites like Spectrum Nexus, Manga Fox and Manga Tank. There’s no way to protect the material from being pirated, except by way of threatening legal action. Even anime has better protection. You can easily find legal anime on sites like Hulu and Netflix. But then again, you can get the harder-to-find ones on sites like Crunchy Roll, even if it is somewhat poor quality.
The Internet has been pivotal in the development of our “weeaboo economy,” or people who prefer Japanese culture and art. Not only has it become easier to find what we want, but we are exposed to things we might have never found otherwise, like older classics and brand new ones, straight out of Japan. It also centralizes the fan bases of different anime/manga.
In real life, we are scattered and far flung, but on the Internet we’re just a click away. It’s fascinating to think that barely two decades ago, we wouldn’t have been able to deliberate with each other about, say, the way Blade of the Immortal ended. But on sites like Spectrum Nexus, I can do that. They have Disqus installed on the site, and it’s like a community. They even have a schedule for a nightly chatroom to talk about anime/manga.
It’s a way to connect with people that we never had before. When I see someone I don’t know with an Attack on Titan messenger bag (because I saw that today) I immediately go up to them and strike up a conversation, and it’s like we’re already somehow connected. It’s a cool feeling.
In the end, there really is something for everyone.
Kirsten Lindsay is a sophomore studying creative writing. Do you read manga or watch anime? Email her at kl840712@ohio.edu
