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I’m not questioning whether a manga is deep enough in plot or an underlying story. What I’m bringing up are the differences in manga and an actual novel, and the skills it takes.

Manga are what Aya pointed out; picture books. The closest thing it can be compared to that is literary would be a play’s script. And a play’s script are just the bare bones of a story. They need a director to envisioned the rest of the things that make up the story. Readers become that director when reading a book. When reading manga they cannot because the author already shows what it’s supposed to look like, and gives little room for the imagination. The words in manga are just dialogue, while the pictures do the rest of the story telling.
Sometimes how a reader envisions a character or setting could play a major role in a book. And there are some things that cannot be drawn out in manga, no matter how hard the artist may try. for one poetry, and a better discription of emotion*

Also, there’s writing style, and the skill it takes to write it, as well as to recognize the skill. People are complaining every day how illiterate America is becoming, and from articles I’ve read, Japan is no different. The majority of people over there are reading mainly manga, not actual books. They worry that in time the interest in books will dwindle, and soon no one will be reading them any more, and then one of the oldest art forms will be lost to them. They wrote one of the very first novels, and it’d be a very sad thing indeed if their country were to stop producing more. If we just start accepting manga as a novel, we’ll be soon to loose novels. And if people loose complete interest in novels, we’ll still loose them.

OK, littlegreenwolf, you're trying to make me into a reading slacker, when, in reality, I'm almost the furthest thing from it. I'm certainly not trying to do a report on DBZ manga; I'm refering to manga and novels thereof of real literary content(complex character development, symbolism of deeper meaning, etc.) Why do I even consider writing a book report(not just an analysis) on aforementioned material? Simply because it has not been done before at my school. Do I like reading classic novels? Of course I do! If I were not allowed to do this report, I would eagerly interpolate the themes from "For Whom the Bell Tolls" instead. The people you should concern yourself with are the ones who are unable to pass a writing assignment to save their soul. I am undertaking this task because for every x-number of fluffy manga out there, there is at least one with real literary content.

Just a side note, part of the assignment is delineating the similarities of your "book" with that of a piece of artwork. Where manga may fall short in restricting the imagination due to the images contained therein, those said images can often provide a stunning display of symbolism, as well as aesthetic appreciation for the story.

I'm just going to continue to point out that a book and manga are different, and that once some person gets the permission to such a shortcut in their book report, other's will follow that example, and use it as an excuse. The term "book report" is for books, not comics, not manga, not the newspaper, and not works of art. BOOKS.

You say that the artwork then shows symbolism, and that I'm not going to argue with at all. But then what's to stop someone from eventually analyzing some painting for their book report? Paintings tell stories, and are full of symbolism. but that does not make them literary.

Manga will never be considered an actual book. They are graphic novels that take no more then an hour to read a full volume. They are not meant to be books, otherwise Japan would not have novels based on manga in Japan. They are pictures with a word here or there to help along the story.

You say that you're doing this because it's never been done in you school? Why bother doing something that's never been done. There's plenty of things that have never been done, but trying to pass off a comic for a book just so you can have "fun" doing you book report is insulting to the literary art. Go do yourself a favor and find a book to read. Books can be fun, and interesting. All you need to do is find something you haven't read yet, in the genre you like. It's not all that difficult.

I never said I wanted to "have fun" doing this report. I think I garnered more enjoyment from this thread than doing the report. Which, by the way, has been and gone. My teacher meticulously read over each page of Bhudha (thank you Tempest) and I proceeded. I walked away with a 98 and the satisfaction of my teacher being "pleasantly surprised" of the content of my writings. So, in essence, I proved my point, grew wiser from the experience, and was heartened to find that I had a 760 on the verbal section of the SAT(guess my "picture books" didn't make me an English deadbeat after all) Wink

Ehh... what was your point? ^_^'

I totally agree with littlegreenwolf. A novel is a novel and manga is manga. It's not right to do a book report on a manga, since it's basically a picture book. I really don't understand how your teacher let you off with a comic. I've never read Bhudda, but I've heard it's deeper than your average manga but still, with a comic you can just skim through the text and look at the pictures and you'd probably still know what was going on in the story, which in my opinion isn't fair.

It's a book report, so read a real book.

Last edited by space clam on Fri Nov 14, 2003 8:15 pm; edited 1 time in total

Cerberus wrote:

...with a comic you can just skim through the text and look at the pictures and you'd probably still know what was going on in the story...

You can do the same thing with a book, buddy. Most of my anime friends are, effectively, idiots. Yet they manage to get by on book summaries with average (B) grades. Why? Because they skim the text without really reading it. It's most certainly no way to read a book, but it's also no way to read a quality manga. One last thing I should have cleared up earlier (I thought it was self-explanatory by nature) is my loose use of the term "book report." The guidelines for said paper were, "...a 5-7 page paper on a 'story,' approved by the teacher, and covering the following ideas..." I'm not a book hater, and I don't want to appear as one. If this whole ordeal was caused by my imprecision of language, I apologize, and you can subject ME to punishment a lá "The Giver."

(*sorry for the objective case mix-up*)

First, to address your defense that a person can skim a book just as easily as they could a skim through a manga; this is a yes and no situation here. Depending on the type of book you are reading, skimming could give you the basic understanding of what is going on in the book. If you’re reading an incredibly simple book, for example a grade school chapter book that lazy illiterate people tend to pick as a shortcut, yes, they can skim over it and get the basic understanding of what’s happening. For a book that is more detailed in the writing, or something that has a larger number of pages, this does not quite work. Manga however is easier to do this to due to it is made up of around 70% visual story telling. A person can easily fast forward a movie, and get an idea of what’s going on, even without the dialogue. Reading the text of something, and looking at pictures use different parts of the muscle called the brain.

Next, why should anyone who did not get your point due to your “imprecision of language” be forced to read The Giver? For one, The Giver is a good book, hardly torture, even if it is a grade school level book. Having to read your posts that show your denial in the point made here is what I would call punishment enough. Your stubbornness to drag along this topic is all a waste unless you have something new to contribute to the debate. Otherwise, I do believe this topic is over. Just repeating what you have said earlier, and stating things with no point is not going to add to your argument.

Space clam,I,also,am a junior.Also,coincedentally,I am doing a book report also.Though IO am doing my book report on Battle Royale,I must agree with littlegreenwolf.If you did do a report on a manga,there would be little to write about.It's kind of hard to write a report when the manga is only about 200 pages.There is a slight chance you could do the entire Akira series as a report,though.There is enough material for you to write down.

Two words: Cliff Notes. Some of the people I knew in high school didn't even bother to read the book; they did a report on the Cliff Notes summary. The scary thing is that they passed with a 'B' most of the time.

But, I have to speak in defense of being able to do a report on a manga. However, it depends on the type of report; if you only need to do a plot summary, go and read a real book. However, if you need to do a discussion on ideas or concepts presented in the material that I see no reason why a good manga has any less literary merit than a novel. However, I think that in order to do a good paper on the ideas you are probably going to have to read the entire manga (All volumes of Akira for example) not just the first book. But, you will not be able to do a discussion on just any manga, because manga is just a way of presenting a story there are many different audiences that they are directed at and as such I don't think you could do a very good report discussion philosophy from say Love Hina, where as you could from Ghost in the Shell.

I'm also in defense of manga for a valid book report.

A book describes a setting with words, and a manga does it with lines. Their both in black and white. That little bit of imagination you can use to color it in for yourself gives it more validity than american comics IMO. manga tends to be compiled into sizable paperbacks too. Where as american comics do it per issue. (of course there doing issues with manga too like Gits 2) but anyway, as long as it has the same kind of character development as a book and the same kind of response from the reader. Then it is valid. I'm probably being ignorant but I have yet to see an american comic to flesh out character motivation and emotion with the same kind sophistication as "some" manga.

if there are american comics that do have complex and compelling stories. Please, do tell.

SkullKnight wrote:

if there are american comics that do have complex and compelling stories. Please, do tell.

um...Sandman, Safe Area Goradze, The Watchmen, Transmetropolitan...

---

As someone who actually *has* written a high school "book report" (well, a senior thesis section) on manga (using Miyazaki Hayao's _Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind_ to explore one approach to the (post-)apocalypse in 20th-century literature), what all of this comes down to is whether you can use the same literary theories you would apply to a novel to look at manga. The answer, at least in my opinion, is a resounding yes; in a way, the art of a manga is similar to the background and setting of a novel: definitely an added bonus, but not in of itself essential to either the plot or the ideas expressed. So coming right out of the gate, picking any random manga title off a shelf, and trying to make it equal to a novel probably will *not* work, but if time is taken to select a title that actually aspires to be something more than cheap disposable entertainment, *and* if time is taken to think about exactly how you can present an argument about it using secondary sources, there really should be no problem or issue with using a "graphic novel" in an academic context.

I never said manga and comics don't have deep plots and stories, I just pointed out that it takes skill and work to actually make sense of what is written in a book.

If manga becomes accepted in some schools as material eligible for book reports, the already poor American literacy will dwindle. Kids will see that they have a choice between a book full of words, or a book full pictures, and will choose the one with pictures. Most teachers use book reports as an attempt to get kids interested in reading. Giving them manga as an option isn't going to help that. God knows the effort my school is going through trying to actually get people to read because of low test scores. *they actually have teachers reading out loud in class a chapter a day from a book. It’s annoying as hell* The SAT and ACT, as well as state test *the FCAT in my case* require students to read passages, and understand what is in them. How is a person who has only read comics supposed to make sense of the foreign words and writing style when test time comes? In my class, I am the only one who actually reads books. If anyone in my class has read a book all year, it’s usually the ones required in English class. Most don’t even read those. They find books boring, and the test scores we get back shows the result in their reading skills. Take a person who only reads manga, and take a person who actually reads books, slap a reading test in front of them, and the odds are in favor of the book reader in getting a better score.

By the way, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman rocks. I would love to see it animated.

I can understand you point, however, I'm defending manga in the contex of more advanced classes rather than lower level classes. Personaly, I think that part of the reason that most schools are having a hard time getting people to read is partly lazyness, and partly the fact that most books that you read for reports are the "classics"; and let's face it, most of the classics - while good - can be quite boring and slow to develop. Of Mice and Men was quite interesting, but while short it was very slow to develop and I almost had a hard time reading it, in fact most of the people in the class did not. The same also goes for The Scarlet Letter which I think is a very good story, but, again it starts slow and doesn't pick up that much. I know in some cases the teachers make a good attempt to integrate other books besides the classics but in that case then you have different tasetes in novels that what I think is excelent others will think is dry. I think the point I'm trying to make is that you can't force someone to sit down and read a book for a report (Especialy if they can find Cliff Notes for it) and expect them to develop a love of reading over night. The best way (IMHO) is to introduce people to a varity of books (i.e. Do a report on a Science-Fiction book from this list) and let the reader have some lee-way in what they read.

Usually book reports are on books a person chooses, and are not classics. The books we're forced to read as class assignments are the classic ones.

In the case of an advance class, I still don't consider it all right. A book report is still for books, and if you are in a advance class, you shouldn't take it as an excuse to slack off, but as an opportunity to challenge yourself. Now if a teacher gave you an assignment such as choose a subject and explain blah blah blah, we'll that's fine. Heck, I’ve done it before in my world history class with Kenshin, and I’m planning on doing a report on Lain in my psychology class. But I won’t read a manga for a book report. Books are books, and manga are manga..

Next thing you know people will want to do book reports based on movies, or even anime. Why not anime? It's not that big of a step from manga. An anime has the same contents of a graphic novel: Dialogue, imagery, and a story. Heck, to make it even more like a manga, watch it with subtitles, and turn off the sound. It's the exact same thing as a manga. The only difference is movement. Are you going to tell me that a person reading subtitles is the same as a person reading a book?

The point I'm making here is that manga are not in the same category as novels, and shouldn't be considered so.

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