Thoughts on OEL manga, anime-influenced animation, "manga-styled comics"—animanga produced by non-Japanese markets for non-Japanese consumers?

NewType USA - A THOUSAND WORDS
Since none of us can draw to save our lives, we filled the final page with a heaping helping of text

Made in America
Even the most devoted of Western manga fans will admit that the nascent genre has a major image problem

Quick! Think of your absolute favorite Japanese comic—Dragon Ball, Naruto, Fruits Basket, any of them will do. Recall all your favorite scenes, the ones that made you laugh or moved you emotionally. Now pretend that the author of this beloved comic wasn't Japanese—instead of having an exotic name like Rumiko Takahashi or Akira Toriyama, he or she went by something like Kelly Schmid or Martin Simms. Would that fact reduce your appreciation of the manga? Or, to put it another way, would the manga's American roots have made you so indifferent to the series that you wouldn't have picked it up in the first place?

Several US manga publishers are banking on the notion that you wouldn't care much. In just the past year, dozens of original manga have been published by people all over the world, from southern California to the Philippines. Some webcomics drawn in "manga style" have made the jump to physical books, and one outfit, Seven Seas Publishing, releases nothing but Western manga—comics written in English, but that still read right-to-left, Japanese style. This Western manga varies widely in quality; while some have that unmistakably generic How to Draw Manga feel to its art, much of it expertly drawn and just as entertaining as "real" manga. I personally dig Blade for Barter (Seven Seas) and Peach Fuzz (TOKYOPOP), though I'm probably biased towards Peach Fuzz because I own two ferrets myself and have personally played out some of that manga's chapters in real life.

Even the most devoted of Western manga fans will admit that the nascent genre has a major image problem. Part of the difficulty is that manga fans don't know exactly what to make of it. Many believe (and manga publishers have historically told them) that Japanese manga is the only "real" manga, and anything else is half-baked. End result: Fans point out all the lowlights of bad Western manga—incorrect proportions, US-style art sensibilities, little greater-than signs for noses—and dismiss the entire genre based on that.

"When I first started Megatokyo, there was a huge bias against American creators," manga artist Fred Gallagher explains. "There was an ingrained attitude that if it's not made by a Japanese creator, it sucks. The problem was the shallow level some manga-inspired works had a tendency to reach. So many attempts at the 'manga style' had all the stereotypes of Japanese manga without any of the depth or subtlety. People didn't get the same feel from some of the American attempts that they did from Japanese manga."

Mike Schwark, half of the team behind TOKYOPOP's Van Von Hunter, gives us his take on the matter: "We're obviously such big fans of anime and manga that it's had a major impact on our own artwork. You would think other fans would be supportive of the fact that we're expressing it, rather than being so opposed to it. As an artist who loves manga, should I just lament that I was born in the wrong country and resign myself to drawing superhero comics?"

What Gallagher says about the early attempts at "manga style" is true enough—thumbing through some older issues of the late Studio Ironcat's AmeriManga magazine can be a harrowing experience. Still, let's think about the original definition of the word "manga" for a moment. As far as the Japanese language is concerned, "manga" can cover any form of sequential art, including US superhero comics (although there are other terms for those). It doesn't mean "comics read right-to-left" or "comics with big eyes" or "comics where the ladies take their tops off every five pages"—anything suitably comic-y is fair game.

"Manga is not just one particular style of art or story, but a full spectrum of genres and art styles that differ greatly from one creator's work to the next," says Lindsay Cibos, co-creator of Peach Fuzz. "There's no reason why one's ethnicity and origin should define whether or not a particular work is manga, so long as the creator can capture the qualities and spirit of manga."

Which is well and good, but if the word "manga" doesn't have any connotations in and of itself, then what is the spirit of manga? It's easy to make anecdotal comparisons between what Japanese manga does right and what US comics do "wrong," but nobody can give a concise, comprehensive definition of the word "manga." The best definition I could come up with is, "a comic with long, cohesive storytelling, instantly identifiable characters, satisfying pace and a definitive conclusion"—and that says nothing about art style, which (like it or not) plays a big part in most readers' eyes.

So what does that mean for non-Japanese artists who want to produce manga? The question seems difficult, but I think the answer's pretty straightforward—quit wasting time pursuing all the little details that make manga art "manga art," and concentrate instead on what makes manga "manga."

"The misconception that only Japanese creators can do work that appeals the way manga does exists because manga hasn't really been influencing people here for very long," says Gallagher. "It takes a long time to develop creators who can produce works that appeal to people in the same way. Give it a few more years, and with so many young and talented people now being influenced by it, I think you will see a lot of work surfacing that will appeal to people the same way the Japanese stuff does."

In other words, it isn't a Japanese thing—it's a storytelling thing, and if more Western artists pick up on that, the future of this so-called bastard child of "real manga" could be brighter than you'd think.