Earlier this week, I found this article on Cracked.com, 5 Hollywood Secrets That Explain Why So Many Movies Suck. The article explains the reasons behind some of the most tedious (but moneymaking) movies out today, including:
- Merchandising supremacy (or will the toys sell?)
- Gaming the ratings system (or when's the last time you saw an NC-17 movie?)
- Movie projects get killed for bad reasons (a.k.a. 'development hell')
- Everything is simplified for the international market
- Writers don't come up with the ideas - producers do.
I've know several people who work in the entertainment businesses, and have worked in licensing and marketing, and saw a lot of truth in what was said here. So this got me thinking: Could I name five reasons why so many manga/comics are so boring and banal? It was late on a Sunday night, so I started tweeting my list. Off the top of my head, here's my five reasons why some manga/comics can be so... meh.
- Shamelessly pandering to fanboys/fangirls at the expense of plot/characterization
- Stories that just. won't. end. (even though they should've a long time ago)
- Damn you "how to draw manga" books for creating so many cookie-cutter creators.
- Catering to "what the kids are into nowadays." Oh, please.
- Comics about comics/influenced by comics by people who only read comics. Yawn.
As I tweeted my list, a few other folks from the Twittersphere chimed in with their thoughts.
Helen McCarthy (@tweetheart4711), author of The Art of Osamu Tezuka: The God of Manga (Abrams) and The Anime Encyclopedia (Stone Bridge Press) offered her 5 reasons for boring manga:
- Creators follow trends instead of making them
- Editors take and allow no risks
- 90% of everything is crud (Sturgeon's Revelation, made about SF but true in most situations)
- Nobody ever lost money underestimating public intelligence (cf most reality TV shows)
- All the dirt makes the diamonds shine even brighter.
Manga translator / editor William Flanagan (@WilliamFlanagan) also chimed in with a few more reasons:
- One reason is that most mangaka (comics creators) are taken out of high school. It takes years or genius to be able to tell a good story. And the geniuses are very hard to find. (Especially geniuses who can draw well.)
- Most mangaka are influenced not by life but by previous mangaka. So like US Comics, not too many new ideas.
- There is a lot of experimental stuff going on in manga, it's just that most experiments fail. Can't help that.
Other notable tweets on the subject pointed to the manga creators' workload and influences, and manga fandom as reasons for banality.
- "Physically grueling labor performed at inhumane working hours for less than a living wage." -Carlo Santos (@patachu), Anime News Network manga reviewer (Right Turn Only!!)
- "Comics about comics are one of my new pet peeves. it can be great, but you better have something great to say." - David Brothers (@hermanos), comics blogger/reviewer (4th Letter!, Comics Alliance)
- "Asking for many great manga/comics sounds to me like asking for the world where there are tons of geniuses." - Kazami Akira (@kazami_akira), anime/manga blogger
But amidst all the grousing, one tweeter @Koiyuki asked:
"What would be good ways to remedy these issues?"
Off the top of my head, I replied:
I would love to see comics get a broader readership that would support different stories/art styles/subjects. I think digital/iPad publishing has the potential to reach new readers who normally don't venture into comics shops.
New manga/comics that go beyond the usual cookie-cutter/banal tropes need special care and attention from the publishers to get them into the hands of readers who will appreciate them. This requires time/care/appetite for risk in the publishing companies' editorial/marketing department to get an innovative title to an appreciative audience.
McCarthy added this:
"We can help to create the conditions for good art to thrive by being adventurous and critical readers and buyers."
But enough from us -- what do you think? Why do you think so many manga are banal / boring? And what do you think would be needed to change foster more original, creative and entertaining manga? Add your thoughts below!
Image credits: © Alice / Getty Images, © Twitter
Comments
I saw you and a couple of twitter folks posting this and I wonder if it’s not too late to give a reply. I’m basing this on the globally available manga market and closer to how we are as consumers and partly why the publishers respond to what we want. On a personal level, I think manga is quite varied and has never been banal or boring for me.
1.) Our interests doesn’t exactly coincide with the interest of the Japanese population
- They like their cute girls and ninja foxes while it’s possible that we enjoy more adult things. Unfortunately, the target market of these publishers will never be the foreign consumer hence whatever sells in Japan… that’s what we’ll probably be getting. Also… the kids don’t seem to be complaining either.
2.) We just don’t get the punchline
We have to admit that there are things lost when we translate manga to English. They have inside jokes that make Gintama sell in their top five every time a new volume is out. Unfortunately, we can’t get these jokes that’s why Viz just had to cancel this title.
The number one reason manga can be boring is that it sells. The small amount of us who want more different kinds of material is nothing against the legion of art-over-quality fans. I think accolades in the art is being achieved but as you say, the story suffers. Nodame Cantabile is my number one favourite series but it never took off in North America because of the art style. Most fans aren’t open-minded.
I feel like I’m probably one of the unwashed masses ruining the artistic value of manga, in that I only buy manga with cute girls.
If I want something with social value, I just read nonfiction books or the NY Times.
Here’s one major reason most Mangas are bland – most of them take place in a typical school setting.
For a population where the general targeted audience spends 80% of their lives in, this is understandable. It gives the place where they spend tedium in some sense of fantasy. However, it also severly limits the general settings for a majority of Mangas. For the most part, being told to “write what they know” means that they’ll be limited to writing about their current school system rather than looking for outside influences.
I can’t help but think most of these “reasons” only hold up for mainstream manga. But who cares about those? The people that don’t complain.
The top two reasons for me are…
#1. Lack of a viabel alternitve or underground Manga scene simplly put their is nothing out now that’s had as much an impact as Garo instead it’s either small magazines with almost no readership like Comic Beam or magazines that prefer to traffic in shock value with ocassional detours into substance like Ax along with what ittel get’s put over here is so expensive that it’s almost cost prohibtive to some who would buy it.
and number two
2. MAinstream magazines are more intrested in getting the most mony out of a few comicrally viabel artists instead of nurtureing new talaent this has lead to a plethora of new Manga artists who only know how to draw like the big three in Shonen Jump or the house art style of a mazine like Ribon
I think perhaps its like peoples complaints about the high fantasy book genre. Mages and dragons are too common. But unlike the manga world, I think high fantasy would accept mages and dtagons having high shool drama. Who ever saw a manga about dragons? xD
Thought I’d, like, respond or something. Unfortunately, “must be under 2000 characters” it was not. Linked it instead, in the URL slot. It’s more additive than critical, I think… Or, no. It’s differently focused, I’d say.
((Keep on article writin’. This side of the fence is fascinating to me.))
Here are my reasons…
1. Anime/manga is too mainstream now. Just like with music, creators “sell out” to turn a quick buck with some crappy generic produced content instead of something with more substance.
2. Same ole character personalities and character look-a-likes from other manga.
3. The resuse of the same gags are annoying. i.e. Weak guys getting beat up by females, characters “blushing” all the time, perverts, chibi form every panel…. plz something else
4. Totally agree with the comics about comics. It’s a easy way to tell your own experience, but not everyone’s experience is that interesting to read about or different from the rest.
I don’t have a 5th one, but taking what Khursten said about not getting the punchline was a good point. Seasoned manga readers probably won’t have a huge problem with this, but new readers will just. not. get. manga.
Other question:
“And what do you think would be needed to change foster more original, creative and entertaining manga?”
I think the only way we can see something different is that the mangaka make that effort to learn new cultures and experiences to foster new stories. Or maybe hire more people outside of Japan (the guy who created PeePoChoo?) to instill something different.