Sunday, February 15, 2004
ON MANGA
I own a number of the Japanese manga anthology magazines. Since I bought them all on sale, they're mostly not first-tier magazines, although I do own an issue apiece of Shounen Jump and Shounen Ace. I was looking over some of them last night, and I was reminded that although it's far from true that all the good manga have already been published here, it is true that the manga we see here aren't an unbiased sample. A lot of manga is as uninteresting visually, and appears to be as hacked-out, as the most mediocre superhero comic from Marvel or DC. I would still tentatively assert, though, that the average level of craft is higher in manga. And of course so much more manga is produced that even if the proportion of good stuff were identical, there'd still be a lot more good manga in absolute terms.
I own a number of the Japanese manga anthology magazines. Since I bought them all on sale, they're mostly not first-tier magazines, although I do own an issue apiece of Shounen Jump and Shounen Ace. I was looking over some of them last night, and I was reminded that although it's far from true that all the good manga have already been published here, it is true that the manga we see here aren't an unbiased sample. A lot of manga is as uninteresting visually, and appears to be as hacked-out, as the most mediocre superhero comic from Marvel or DC. I would still tentatively assert, though, that the average level of craft is higher in manga. And of course so much more manga is produced that even if the proportion of good stuff were identical, there'd still be a lot more good manga in absolute terms.
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