Forum - View topic

NEWS: Eva, Metal Gear Creators Judge Twilight Art Contest

A part of me thinks that if Twilight was originally released as a shojo manga or anime, you guys would all be singing its praises.

And to the English Teacher who said they should have punched Stephenie Meyer, I have to ask you, what would you do if you caught someone reading the book in class? Would you fail them simply for reading something for pure entertainment? What if that person was someone who could talk about the book intelligently?

Sakamoto, he's got no excuse and really should get to finishing the Eva manga already. If he's got time to waste on the worst excuse for jumpin' on the Potter train then he has time to turn people to Tang, is all I'm sayin'

It's about a bunch of beautiful vampire men who mostly only think about one girl, then a bad boy wolf comes along, etc etc. It's Perfect for an Anime/Manga, at least it'll show it's true colors as Bishoujo.

well, duh there's stuff a lot worse than Twilight. However, does that mean people just need to accept that and let this mediocre series run rampant? Answer: NO. And furthermore don't think for one bloody second that anime fans would somehow let this slide if it were an anime series. That's nothing short of stereotyping because I can assure you that I HATE vampire series that devolve into syrupy, convoluted angst regardless of country of origin.

I would never judge my students for what they read outside of class. It makes me sad to see otherwise intelligent kids devouring such trite material, but they're high schoolers (who didn't like stupid things in high school?) and there's no accounting for taste. I was, however, very proud of one of my students who said that she found the Twilight books nauseating because of how anti-feminist they are. Nonetheless, as a teacher, I can't be partial to or against students for their extracurricular reading. That wouldn't make me a teacher, it would make me an not-so-nice-person. On the other hand, I can judge Stephanie Meyer for writing trash and getting ridiculously famous for it. I don't have any qualms about that. She's basically a big middle finger to all of the good (or even halfway decent) writers out there who work hard to get published but can't find a buyer because their novel isn't teenage softcore porn with a useless female lead and a main male protagonist with no personality outside of his pretty cheekbones. Do you know how many of my freshmen write more clearly than that woman? A lot.

As far as saying if Twilight were shoujo mango we'd be all over it, that's just as much of a blanket statement as saying "all Twilight fans are retarded--" which I don't believe, by the way-- if you don't like shoujo manga like Vampire Knight (the aforementioned teenage softcore porn) or anything with a super weak-willed lady lead (*cough* Fushigi Yugi *cough*), you wouldn't like Twilight even if it were shoujo manga. I have my guilty pleasures (who doesn't?), but for the most part I hold my manga up to the same standards as my books. As a proponent of manga as a legitimate art form and, perhaps more importantly, something one could legitimately learn from, I have to feel that way. If I were running around telling the administration that romance-novel-quality comic books were good for the curriculum, I highly doubt they wouldn't start wondering why they hired me. Promoting bad literature of any variety-- books, manga; hell, fanfiction-- is no way to further your cause, and I think that, unfortunately, an entire generation of students has been brainwashed into thinking that Twilight is good literature because it's the only literature that people who don't read read. That's like saying The Valley of the Dolls is a good book because every housewife in America read it the year it came out. Clearly untrue. People argue, "well, at least they're reading." Well, would you feel that way if they were reading a manga version of Twilight? Probably not. How about if the book cost a dime at the supermarket checkout and had a picture of Fabio on the cover? Really, you wouldn't want your kids reading that? Bad literature can't hide itself forever.

Please recommend good, meaningful books to your kids. They'll be happier, healthier, more rounded human beings. And if you don't read, please set a good example by finding them a good librarian.

From what I can tell, there are just a lot of people bashing this series, without having gone to the effort of trying to read it.

That settles it. Basically Twilight is live action Shojo Manga. Other than whole love/hate thing that people express so far, there aren't much difference between two media. Now how about redirect that love/hate feeling to other shojo manga? I wonder who will say the same thing to Fushgi Yuugi?