Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! - Pilloried Talk
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Genten
 Posts: 71 Location: A Mitten (Michigan) |
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Being a fujoshi myself, I too admit that the heroine of My Girlfriend is a Geek annoyed me quite a bit as well. She didn't come off as someone I could relate to or find comedic like Kirino from Oreimo; she was a pushy, self centered, unlikeable person. Labeling her as a fujoshi doesn't make her any more empathetic. I hope the manga was exaggerating her quirks as it is supposedly based on a true story.
I agree with this. I'm not against buying anime or manga and would gladly pay for something I love. However, if a company releases a low quality product I'm not going to buy it. If I buy it I feel like I'm saying that I'll buy any kind of product the company puts out, even if it's bad. This isn't the message I want to send. Companies need to know that people will buy quality products. Why do you think NIS America offered replacements for Toradora after people stated the problems with it? That being said, I do understand, generally, where Brian is coming from. If you love a series so much that you want to own it, no matter what, then you will buy it. For example, I just bought the release of volume one of the Hetalia manga. Since Hetalia was a webcomic originally a lot of the strips are very blurry and look, well, not so great. Enlarged and put into a book it looks, well, not so great either. Did that stop me from buying it? No! I love Hetalia to bits and would eagerly snap up any version of the anime/manga released. That doesn't mean I wouldn't prefer a quality product but I understand Brian's opinion. Lastly, that flake made my week. I was dying while reading it 
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Bingal
Posts: 95 |
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That's quite simple to answer. Unlike the other two, One Piece never lost its spark. It remains faithful to its subject matter and you can see that the author has fun telling his story. Sure it can plod from time to time, and there are some (stupid) things about it that annoy me, but it never radically veers off from what was established in the beginning or dive straight into a downward spiral of suck like say... ugh, Bleach. |
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The Xenos
 Posts: 1519 Location: Boston |
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The first question about Bakuman frustrates me greatly. Why do kids think making comics in Japan is really that much different or better than doing in America (or England or Canada or wherever)? I was into comics before manga. Though even then many American artists had heavy influences from anime and manga. Yet they seemed more realistic, embracing both the American industry as well as Japanese influences of their favorite artists. Now a number of companies and a surprising amount of fans act like they're in their own special group. No. You're not. You're not even the first American artists influenced by manga.
Get with the program with American publishers and help make your home comics market as strong as Japan's is. You're not living in Japan and I really doubt you speak Japanese. (And even after that huuuuge effort it's still a bitch for a foreigner to get published in Japan. ) Write what you know, where you know. The English speaking American comics market is complex enough. And yeah, reading Genshiken or Bakuman are interesting fictional looks at Japanese fans who want to become creators. Yet nothing there is going to help you get enough detail to work in Japan, especially if you're not already reading them in the original Japanese. Though I gotta disagree with Brian. While I think DC and Marvel are mostly lost causes, there are plenty of outlets. Well DC's Vertigo is a bastion of hope, but those are pretty big league. Image and Dark Horse is pretty big league too, but they're nice places ti aspire to be. Personally I've loved Oni Press and glad to see Scott Pilgrim become a hit. Now if only more people discovered their other books! Blue Monday was along before Scott with its John Hughes by way of Rumiko Takahashi feel. Well, I guess Guy Davis's Marquis moved to Dark Horse, but it started out at Oni and I think it's a brilliant horror comic on par with Berserk. Then there's AiT Planet Lar which first did Demo before that moved to Vertigo. And just because some publishers pass in the night or a series doesn't sell. You don't give up. My friend who moved to Japan for a tech job reads manga there. I'll never forget his comment about how, like Bakuman, most American fans never see all the abysmal failures of all the canceled series. And remember, most stars start out small. Looking at Japan from over seas, you hardly see them until they're already hits with giant anime series. Yet everyone starts on smaller series. Hell, in Japan you even start as a nameless assistant on a bit title. There's maybe a handful of that in America, but mostly you get your own series to start with. Before Walking Dead became a much talked about new TV show, before it became a hit comic at Image, Robert Kirkman was the guy who made a wonderfully goofy satire comic called Battle Pope at a small time publisher Funk O Tron. Hell, I just saw a documentary tonight on top name and one of the current Bat-scribes Grant Morrison. It's interesting to see how he started in a small blue collar town in Scotland and worked into British comics and then across the pond and around the world. Don't even think about working in Japan until you're ready to go to a local publisher or convention or small press show or even comic shop with some mini comic. Start where you are and see how things work out.
If anything it's the scanlation and fansub only crowds that are the dirty hippy communists who think all art should be free and such bullcrap. It's just leftist idiots who never worked a day in their life and sit around downloading anime for free. that think that crap. Hell, I confess used some smoke that malarkey a little bit. Maybe I still do a bit still out of old habits, but I know it's wrong. (Also I need to get off my ass and find some work again myself.) Yeah, companies maybe get greedy should have lower prices. Yet you can't get everything for free like so many of these kids think either. You complain about not wanting to fund giant companies yet conversely you want to help the artist? Sorry. You can't have one without the other, especially with bigger productions like anime or trying to translation and distribute a manga internationally. |
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Ai no Kareshi
 Posts: 561 Location: South Africa |
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I like Chris's answer to the Answerfans question. That really sums up things nicely for me. I'm experiencing a decline in interest in anime myself, not because I now dislike it, but because at this point in my life I feel my time is better spent on other things.
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Cephus
 Posts: 139 Location: Redlands, CA |
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It isn't that I'm not interested in anime, it's that the anime that's coming out just doesn't interest me. What I want to watch simply isn't in vogue right now, therefore, I just don't watch genres I don't enjoy. I don't feel the need to watch something just because of where it comes from, that goes for anime, movies, TV, books, etc. When they start making something I like, I'll go back to watching it. Until then, I can find other things to do that I actually do enjoy. |
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erinfinnegan
ANN Columnist
 Posts: 598 |
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I wanted to say that I found Chris's answer this week a bit stuck in the 1990's when it comes to the American comics scene.
The 2000's saw a big boom in American comics and graphic novels - not just manga - as comics found their way out of the bookstores and into major bookchains. It's easy to ignore that section of the bookstore as a manga fan because manga was booming, too, but while that was happening comic shops experienced a rise in sales and major book publishers all started graphic novel divisions to jump on that bandwagon. Maybe I'm just wearing rose colored glasses, but a lot of the webcomics I liked in 1999-2000 went on to get book deals. I hated Diesal Sweeties and that's syndicated in newspapers. Even those without book deals go to conventions and sell merch. I think the real question is more like "Do you want comics to be your main source of income?" and second, "Do you want the comic you're living on to be a story that you wrote?" It might be easier to get in and get by as a colorist or an inker, which isn't the same thing as being an assistant in Japan. Being a comic artist is more or less like being in a band. For most people, it isn't their full time job, it's just an expensive hobby. There is a range of involvement in the industry, though. It's similar to how some people work shitty jobs just so they can tour with their band part of the year.
I've only read volume one of Bakuman, but I'm going to say it's totally different in America. I spent the last year working at a small company publishing graphic novels. We were continually looking at new artists, and our source for new talent was web comics and conventions. We looked for artists that could do or had already published sequential art. Then we contracted them to draw stories written by someone else. It was different from Bakuman because instead of talent approaching our office, we were scouting for talent - and not from junior high kids (as in Bakuman) or college students. We were looking for artists with some experience. Anyway, if you seriously want to get into comics in America, I highly recommend going to a college with a comics program, like the School of Visual Arts in NYC or the Savannah College of Art and Design. Any college with a comics program will do. Even that isn't strictly necessary. The biggest success story I know of lately is the chick who writes a web comic call Fart Party (fartparty.org), Julia Wertz. She worked as a waitress and did other odd jobs while working on her (crudely drawn) mini-comics. The writing was good enough that it got attention and a small press called Atomic Books compiled her first year of comics. Her new book, Drinking at the Movies, is distributed by Three Rivers Press, which is a division of Random House. In her second book, she talks about some Hollywood folks approaching her to make her comics into a TV series (I hope they do!). In the last two years, Julia Wertz has stopped doing part time work entirely, and edits comic book compilations while she works on her own comics. I've been to two of Wertz's signings, and her fans are neither manga fans nor superhero fans. There is a whole other scene out there. Generally speaking, animation pays more than comics, so there's cross-over employment for talented artists. If you can draw very well you're (probably) better off with Pixar than Marvel. |
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