Notes from an amateur, dilettantish cartoonist. On that.

Everything's falling apart all over.

Manga and anime have essentially squandered what should have been a golden opportunity by making the same mistakes as their mainstream American comics counterparts.

Wait, is CNN teaching me about manga? Apparently. Strange days we're in.

What most depressed me about this alarmingly insightful summarization was that the things that I had thought were stifling anime and manga these last few years (spotty and slow localization, poor editorial skills and title selection, etc) weren't even mentioned. Instead what we see is how when it blew up, we tried to co-opt it culturally (Kill Bill, Animatrix), failed to match the highlights that made localization look promising [1], and put it aside. And apparently what the Japanese did was forget how to draw, fail to pay their talent [2], pander to their audiences instead of elevating them (through robots, moe ["mo-eh"], and more business as usual), and... who knows? How the fuck do I know? I'm American.

But I know the moe cutesy Lolicon innocence stuff bores the shit out of me, most of the time. [3] So sickly saccharine and unsophisticated. Give me manga like Oishinbo (美味しんぼ, lit. "The Gourmet"). Give me manga that is as intellectually ambitious as Barthes' Empire of Signs, and as educational and entertaining as Charles J. Dunn's Everyday Life in Traditional Japan. I know you can do it mangaka, because if you can't, who will?

I know good manga has to be teased from the greater collection of absolute garbage, and have its merits shouted out wholeheartedly and in ecstatic celebration.

If there's one thing to take away from the naive wonder of the 80's "golden years" of anime fandom (the Yappies), it's that cel animation (and in relation, being able to draw) are the only things that can save the entirety of cartooning.


["Yappie" image note: Ah hahahahahaha. Oh... ::wipes eye:: oh ho. You know what? If my girlfriend agrees to always have on a multi-function digital watch and carry around a stationary box for "data-gathering" activities, I will agree to schlep around a flexible sketch-binder of animation cels and a bizarre, globular, "Haro-shaped ice chest." Because... you know. Duh. Yappies like to keep things cool. XD]

Storytelling I know some people can do, and worst case scenario, cartoonists can illustrate classic works of literature (still mostly totally unexplored), and continue to make fantastic original 1-5 panel gag strips, sometimes wonderful autobiographical examinations, and fantastic mythology-infused content. If they want to!

It's kind of the videogaming problem. When a creative medium begins to only exist within its own boundaries, it loses the aspirations (and potential of "transcendence") of greater "culture."





[1] Ōtomo Katsuhiro's work, and what was achieved through Shirō Masamune's popular Ghost in the Shell franchise, as well as lesser known but legendary-to-me volumes like Orion.
[2] Systemic amongst cartoonists, unfortunately; not through any fault of their own. If I had to give my two cents, I'd say maybe something to do with the effort to cultural appreciation ratio. Most of culture, as far as I can tell, still doesn't know much about or care much about cartooning. They don't know the art, the history, the significance. Nothing. The Hollywood crossover drivel does much to keep people ignorant and incurious, and with good reason considering the general level of quality of "adaptations." But cartooning, the good kind, still and animated, takes an absolute metric ton of man hours. It's hugely labor intensive. Cut corners create further degradations of the medium (Pixar), and it's a downward spiral.
Man, am I cheery or what?
[3] I remember in the disappointing Disappeance Diary by Hideo Azume that he took a large portion of the credit for the invention of lolicon. This guy is a great illustrator, but man, what a toxic legacy to leave behind.

Image credit: Bas Jan Ader.