branchandroot | The difference between manga and comics

Well, but that difference is still not between manga and comics, but rather between fandoms.

I still don't think that calling US comics and manga 'genres' works. They're a handy classification, but even then, shoujo and shonen are different. So are Peanuts and Superman.
We could say there are some aesthetic commonalities between manga as a whole and Western comics as a whole but, for example, comics strips also have aesthetic commonalities between them, regardless of which country produced them.

Manga, comics, historieta, bande desineé only refer to national traditions inside the same medium.
Even if The Tale of Genji, the Arabian Nights and El cantar del Mío Cid are really really different, have different story tropes and come from different cultures, we call them all 'literature'. Sculptures are sculptures and dance is dance.

*blinks* Um. To whom are you speaking? Because I have not, in this entry suggested calling comics and manga genres, and I am specifically attempting to address the fandoms and their cultures above the style and content of the source. I had thought I made that distinction about as clear as could be.

So, if you want to discuss what I actually wrote, that's way cool, but if you want to argue with someone who is not me, could you perhaps go argue with them? Instead of me?

As an explanation, a part of fandom mostly related to AO3 wranglers arguing about media categorizations (but not exclusively!) are having a discussion about the 'western/eastern' dichotomy, that gets translated into a media dichotomy with which many of us don't agree. One of the arguments presented was afaik that the fandom cultures are different.

This is not to say that you're not right, and your post is about something vaguely related but different, but you may want to post a clarification if you don't want people barging in thinking it's the same discussion. It shouldn't be necessary, but I think most of us are kinda used to this kind of discussions continuing themselves across journals and time in a unstructured way. :D

*sighs* I see.

I've caught the edges of that, of course, and the edges were what started me thinking, but yes I certainly don't want people to assume that I've already been participating in that discussion or take what I've said as some kind of shorthand reference to things I was not present for.

Ah, internet. You make our lives so... interesting.

Heeh, yeah. I mostly like it, because I like big discussions, but it can be, as you say... interesting. /0\

I'm really sorry I was so blunt and opinionated. It wasn't my intention at all.

(To actually answer you: I've seen some differences between ASian 'bandom' and Western ones, but mostly dealing with translation.)

I hear the discussion you were referring to has been going on for a while; I can understand having a bit of burn-out!

if it helps -- I had a similar initial reaction. It's your title: "the difference between manga and comics". I mean, once I started reading, I understood that you're talking about *fandom differences*, perceptions, etc., but the header kind of clashes and creates a different expectiation, you know :)

*wry* I did consider that once I saw the bookmark. When you're pointed out by title it leaps out a whole lot more than it does when just paging down the reading list, I suppose.

and it made me aware that for metafandom entries, I really look to the title as an indication of what the argument/content of the post, while I mostly completely overlook titles when I scroll past my circle updates, yes!

And do they manifest in gaming fandoms?

Yes, although the extent thereof and the permutations of it are a whole 'nother post entirely; I'm not capable of writing it now, but the manifestation is there.

Looking at it in a general view, it's not all that different in context of the medium to the comics divide, and - as

ranalore pointed out on the previous post on this subject, if we're willing to acknowledge that large of a gap between the fanbase while still lumping the distinct fandoms under the same media category for games like we do with every other medium, we ... should probably be doing the same for the printed page and animation, until/unless some bright shining star can put forward a sane and non-explosive way to divvy up the other media categories along similar lines.

Of course, AO3 really does need to decide if, category-wise, we're listing by media type or by fandom, because right now it's unclear and it's really producing more confusion and conflict than helpfulness. What we seem to be leading towards right now is a clearer delineation by media type in the initial browsing categories, regardless of whether this ends up leading to more or less simplification on the initial categories page.

One thing that makes this hard to discuss is that, speaking as a wrangler in many of the fandoms that will be affected by this decision, the wrangling staff as a whole and in particular for fandoms with (there really has to be a better word for this) non-Western sources takes a really dim view of the "fuzzy Orientalism" you and Rana point out (as many of us - myself not included, however, for the sake of clarification - are from cultural backgrounds where they have to deal with that kind of racist misinterpretation on a regular basis), and I expect we'll continue to be mostly uninterested in providing a solution that caters to such a mindset.

I myself am uninterested in providing that kind of solution, as well; if there's a way to utilize the AO3's current structure, or manipulate it to work a little differently to cater to the fannish culture differences without pandering to that Orientalist and source-culture-erasing streak, I'd be really interested in pursuing it. I'm falling back on the "let's just categorize it as its media type like we do everything else" option for lack of anything that's actually a better idea, you know? But so far, nobody's provided one.

Sorry if this comes off like I'm jumping you or anything! I honestly am not trying to do anything of the kind; I saw you in comments on

lysapadin's KHR fic and came looking to see what you had to offer on the topic of more of that, please and stumbled into this instead.

*laughs* Well, do feel free to read the fic too! It's all tagged under "fic: khr".

In a way I'm trying to step back from the specificity of "what the heck do we do with this stuff in the archive?" and look at what I have actually /seen/. What I've seen is that there are, indeed, cultural differences in the fandoms which seem to be, how to put this... not always directly linked to the cultural differences of the sources themselves.

Having said that, if I were to attempt to apply the observation to the archive categorizing, I suppose I would say that it seems likely the fandoms in question would resist a media-only categorization. Sometimes that will almost certainly be for reasons I disapprove of a lot! But I do think that will need to be taken into account. That's the self-identification of the fandoms in question, and while some of the reasons for it should and must be questioned I think trying to impose a new identification or organization using the archive as a lever would be unproductive. On the other hand, I very much agree that a schema that perpetuates orientalism is a Bad Idea.

For myself, I think media-based supercategories could combine reasonably well with fandom-culture-based subcategories across the board. Looking at how fast the numbers of fandoms are mounting, I think some kind of subcategory will be needed for most supercategories real soon now! I like the idea of acknowledging the different cultural origins of the sources, because claiming that there is no difference seems to be as egregious an act of erasure as is using someone else's life as one's bling.

Okay, I'm starting to wander off and need to go to bed. Thanks for a thought provoking comment!

fdh;lfksdkl your fiiic I'll be coherent at you eventually about this, aaaaa it's so good (I'LL GET AROUND TO COMMENTING ON ALL OF IT THAT I READ EVENTUALLY I SWEAR, ffff I'm such a bad reader :x I'm so sorry), also stop making me want to reread KHR, I'm not sure I could cope with attempting the first seven volumes again (the bad comedy w-why).

I should note, before I go any further discussing what the AO3 can and can't do, versus my opinions on the matter, that I'm really not trying to speak for the AO3-as-a-whole here - I'm only offering my own perception, which could be missing a few nuances or whatever. But I can at least offer some more insight into what it looks like from a wranglers' perspective, and what I know is on the table and what isn't, yet, and what it's helpful to bring to our attention.

Although honestly, pretty much any suggestions you think would be useful would be welcome - as a reader and creator of transformative works, you are exactly the AO3's intended audience, and who it's eventually meant to be designed to cater to as best it can, and if it's not working for you, the AO3 would love to know why, preferably multiple times, in extensive detail. Trust me, they want the feedback. They're special and wonderful that way.

I agree there are differences - I just am not sure if they're any greater than the differences between the English-speaking fandoms for RPF for Western musicians and RPF for Eastern musicians, and all the wranglers for those categories seem to agree there's really no good reason to split those categories up, and likewise across the board for the other categories, and I do feel that something's getting stomped on if we keep the field of sequential art and animation the special media-category snowflake it currently is because of its split down hazily-defined (and hella offensive) "geographical" lines. It's not really a matter of claiming they're identical, any more than lumping DBSK fandom with My Chemical Romance fandom is meant to claim such a thing - it's just housing them within the type of media they both come from, and this is something that will hopefully be more obvious when the category page gets overhauled to include blurbs for each category explaining what all goes under them.

If we could come up with another consistently defined schema for the categories that was more specified, I'd be at least cautiously supportive, because I am someone who favors greater specification where it's possible and where it doesn't cause excessive confusion and that would be more intuitive for me.

But I can't figure out how to make that idea work, and so, for now, I'm standing behind this solution as the one that makes the best sense in terms of being implementable as well as coherent.

The AO3 will, however, eventually, have subcategories and the supercategories we'll need to put them in; AD&T calls them "metatags", and they're as of yet just a gleam in the coders' eyes, not even a zygote of any written documentation, but believe me, you're not the only one waiting impatiently for the day when they're usable. This is one of those "it's, er, still in beta ..." things, you see. And when we have those metatags it may be time to bring this discussion up again - because we'll be able to more capably handle the idea of splitting up media type by genre, then - but we may have found a totally different solution by then, so who knows?

*hearts* Take your time!

*grins* I am currently showering the archive with feedback, while I'm still on term break. And asking for things that will require significant re-coding. I'm sure somebody thinks "oh god" when they see my email address again.

*nods* I understand the feeling that the a/m special snowflakehood is symptomatic of some pretty wrongheaded thinking. I agree that the current arrangement needs to change somehow. When thinking about how to change it, I have to wonder about browsing patterns. If someone is browsing through the categories at all, presumably they are either looking for a fandom they know the name of or else looking for something related to a fandom they are already familiar with. It's that second case that I think would be served by grouping comics separately (in subcategories) from manga. And, presumably, if they wanted to broaden out into "any sequential story art" they could click on the supercategory instead. One of the things that this entry and all the comments has clarified in my own thinking is that the self-identity of (many) manga and comics fen are distinct, and that it would be *fishes for the right word and falls back on* problematic to deny it wholly. So, yes, throw them all into the same supercategory! But give them subcats, when possible, that respect that self-identification.

...that sounded dreadfully prescriptive, didn't it? "In my personal opinion" should be appended to all that!

But give them subcats, when possible, that respect that self-identification.

The next time this discussion officially raises it's ugly head, I just may quote you on this.

uh, not by name. just the self-identification bit. ^_^ <--animanga tag wrangler

Oh yeah, no problem! Heck, feel free to quote all you like.

That's the self-identification of the fandoms in question, and while some of the reasons for it should and must be questioned I think trying to impose a new identification or organization using the archive as a lever would be unproductive.

*whines* But what about my self identification? ;D

But seriously, I feel like there's a subtext to these types of conversations that people who disagree with the current majority in (for example) US anime/manga fandom (and I do agree that it seems to be the vast majority currently) aren't real anime/manga fans. I identify as a manga fan, and I'd prefer to see manga treated as one type of comics. I don't think it's the majority view, but it is the view of at least one manga fan.

My AO3-specific issue is this:

1. We need to put manhua and manhwa somewhere. That somewhere can't be called "Anime & Manga".

2. Our "Comics" category already includes comics that aren't part of the standard manga/comics divide (Calvin & Hobbes, for example) and whose fandom is totally unrelated to superhero fandom.

3. J-dramas and other subcategories that would be useful to have separated out aren't. They're in with all the other TV shows (or whatever their media type is).

I can see various responses to this situation, but mine is that I want to combine anime/manga with cartoons/comics.

*nods* I really think subcategories are the smoothest (user facing) answer. And that the subcat divisions should be on some basis that can be consistent across the various supercategories. A point I mentioned to someone else comes back to me, which is that someone browsing by categories is probably going to be looking for either a title they already know (so smaller subcats helps make the list less overwhelming to scroll through) or something related/similar to a title they already like (so the subcats should perhaps aim for some division along those lines).

Neither comic fans nor manga (or anime and cartoon) fans are really going to stand for being shoved together and there are very good and valid reasons why they shouldn't be (which you cover very well), but seperating them completely, seems very unfair to me, /especially/ if nothing else is going to be handled that way. It continues to foster the animosity that some members of both groups have for each other.

There are also cases where it's not so clear cut where fan stuff based on a specific work would go. What is someone did a fan work based on the X-men manga? Would it get separated from the rest of the X-men stuff, or would it be allowed with the comics? What about OEL manga? Would those type of works get shunted to one or the other, or would it be handled on a case by case basis?

I like the idea of things being better separated, either through using small categories or subcategories withing larger categories. At the very least it would make the manga/comic distinction stick out like less of a sore thumb. I've never seen anything anything else divided purely by country of origin like that, even for video games where the divide between JRPG fans and western game fans can be just as big.

Believe it or not, I actually had a bigger comment written about this. As a fan of manga and comics the hard distinction between the two has always bugged me. People from both sides have given me flack for liking both, even when they know nothing about the particular series that I like.

As an after thought, there are some differences between Western and Asian TV fandoms, but most of that seems to come from the fact that many of the stars of Asian TV shows are 'entertainers' or 'musicians', the fandoms of some Asian TV shows aren't really TV fandoms at all, but are really a subsection of a music fandom.

*nods* Personally I'm all about doing it across the board, especially if the fan-cultures are distinct all over. Which, really, seems extremely likely to me.

*thoughtful* The "multiple media in multiple locations" is one that I think needs a bit of coding work to fix, actually. I think that many fans would be inclined, when writing different continuities /and/ different media to note that in some way. Sometimes in the tags and sometimes in how they enter the fandom name itself. So there might wind up being a fandom "X-men (manga)" in whatever location anime/manga wind up. But I think it would be a very good thing if clicking on the "X-men" fandom anywhere called up the results of /all/ the 'different' entered fandoms, possibly filterable by media/fandom difference if such exists. (did that make sense?)

Anyway! Interesting info about the TV fandoms. Given what I do know about the "idol" production machinery that doesn't surprise me, I suppose.

That makes a lot sense of actually. It would take more work to set up, but I think in the long run it would make things much more friendly.

I think it's sort of sad that many newer big archives are just following nearly the exact format that the older ones have used. (I'm very fond of the way your archive is set up, but I don't know how well it would work with a huge archive) AO3 is trying to do some interesting things with the tags, but it really seems like baby steps from the standard fic archive format to me. I guess for something huge like that it's better to keep to something people are more familiar with, at least on the surface anyway.

*wry* Yeah, mine works pretty much because it's a single-author archive, to which I have added a few guests. And even then, I'm the one who does the metadata for them. I do think there are some good things, in terms of category and tag schema, that AO3 might take from WordPress, though, and I've already suggested making it possible to make one series the "child" of another, so we can have sub-arcs inside a big project.

There's always that tug of war, isn't there? Between the Really Cool New things we can do as database and metadata coding progresses and people's natural desire to stick with what they already know.

It's the nature of people to stay with what they know. And for something like AO3 it's not necessarily wrong to do so. I don't know of anything they can do that is going get rid of all the problems even though I may feel the basic fic archive format is not very user friendly and dated, at least people are familiar with it's quirks.

I'm very interested in how AO3 ends up handling tags. It's their big bid for user friendliness, but the more I think about what they're trying to do the more I can't help but think they're going to end up with a huge mess. Linking user created tags like that is great in theory, but people in general are horrible about being consistent with their tags.

Sorry to barge in, but I've always found FFnet's system--with a category to describe the media and then sometimes a "Universe" for those that exist in multiple media--confusing, and think using tags or another system for defining the universe best, and a fandom can be multi-listed.

For example, Yu-Gi-Oh! started as a manga, became an anime (twice), then several video games...it could technically fall under all of those media categories, as someone can write fic for all of them, never knowing about the others, or someone could write something taking place in one universe and inspired partially by another...I don't know, it's pretty fuzzy and I think having more options (via tags, for example) makes this whole argument a LOT less confusing for the author.

I hate FFnet's system, because you really do have to look /everywhere/ to find things.

They've both a mess when it comes to figuring out exactly where something goes. There are a few things that could be done behind the scenes to link an anime, manga or whatever series that the authors would never have to worry about. Tags is one way to do it. I'd prefer to have a 'universe' category that covered everything. In my dream archive an author could upload a story to 'Yu-Gi-Oh! (Manga)' and it would automaticly be listed under 'Yu-Gi-Oh! (Universe)' at the same time. Someone looking for the fic would be able to find it under the manga or universe category and all fandoms that had a 'universe' category would have link to it somewhere.

It is really too late for me to be thinking about this. Hopefully I made sense.

In my dream archive an author could upload a story to 'Yu-Gi-Oh! (Manga)' and it would automaticly be listed under 'Yu-Gi-Oh! (Universe)' at the same time.

Wikipedia refers to the same concept as a "metaseries" (the first redirect for Sailor Moon, as I recall, refers to the metaseries), so I think you're on to something.

I think that makes perfect sense and would be a part of my dream archive, too! I think the problem lies in simplifying that main page navigation: does it really need to be done for folks browsing the archive, trying to lump fandoms together in some form, or is it possible to just list ALL the universes somehow--maybe alphabetically (but even then, what do you do for fandoms like Fushigi Yuugi--some people might look for it under F, but others, knowing the title Mysterious Play, might look under M? Wiki lets you create redirects for "commonly mistaken terms" or "names for the same thing," but it still involves creating a database entry and a redirect for "the other thing.")

Yeah, whatever happens, the code and hardware are both going to need to be optimized for a really heavy usage of the database. I can't see any way around that while still keeping this usable.

Err...

Manga fandoms do not have this discussion,

Depends on the individual fandom. I can't really agree that manga fandom in general doesn't, because I've participated in the discussion of this myself, and can therefore conclude that manga fandom has this discussion.

Yes, drek like Queen's Blade won't have the discussion. Mainly because barely anyone who finds the sexualisation problematic is watching it, and discussing it in particular is silly, because people who watch it don't care.
This is not different from western-media fandom not discussing generic porn comics.

for example, show a more intense defensiveness, sometimes devolving into outright gay-bashing,

Uhm...no.

Comic book fandom seems to have far, far deeper homophobic roots, and the homophobia is usually worse and more direct. Gay bashing is frequent, and there is outright cheering when LGBT characters die. I have never seen even anything remotely like that in manga fandom, ever, not even on 4chan, which is probably the vilest, most troll infested part of anime fandom.

The homophobia in comic book fandom is utterly vile. In Manga fandom, it's definitely present, but nowhere near as volatile.

I definitely feel safer in manga fandom because the bashing just isn't that bad.

only not real gay, which is a whole nother essay

One that would be interesting, especially if you can cite examples for the supposedly not-really-gay characters. I for one would love to read it.

I'm glad you have been so fortunate. Not one of the anime/manga fandoms I have been in or through (a couple of the larger ones have been Tenipuri, Naurto, Bleach, Sailor Moon, Clamp of all sorts, Gundam Wing, Weiss Kreuz, Fushigi Yuugi, SaiMono and Utena for pity's sake) have been willing to have the objectification discussion openly. The mechanisms for suppressing and shuffling it off into small personal discussions only it could make a fascinating anthropological study in and of themselves, I suppose, but I can't say I ever really appreciated them.

I don't think you quite understood the specificity of my comments re homophobia. I am quite aware of the rampant homophobia in comics fandoms, especially among the men. What I refer to is that particularly pressurized homophobia that shows up among people, and especially women, who are attempting to keep their claim to normativity while still reading boys screwing. It results in the most insane, double-minded, exploitative "screw for my enjoyment while I deny you the right to live" statements imaginable. I find that more pernicious than the louder version.

*pauses* Okay, are you serious? I don't wish to deliberately offend, but have you really never encountered any discussions about the fact that the "gay" men in BL manga are utterly unrepresentative of any real gay community or lifestyle? That utterly unrealistic stereotypes are being deployed as paper dolls for the pleasure of a privileged majority (straight women)? And that this is a problem?

In any case, if you want to converse further, I'd appreciate a name of some kind.

And that this is a problem?

Sure I did. Enemies of slash fanfiction pull this argument out of their hat all the time.

I wouldn't call it "enemies," but "folks for whom yaoi/slash simply doesn't float their boat." I don't hate slash or yaoi, but I prefer not to read it. When asked why, yes, I have said because I'm not fond of the stereotyping that's prevalent in most fic of that nature. Sometimes someone points me at something that's NOT so stereotyped, and I have, in fact, enjoyed it. Am I an "enemy of slash fanfiction?"

*rubs forehead* Oh honestly. Okay, you've just pretty much deep-sixed any credibility I had given to your above-expressed views.

On the off chance that you are simply uninformed and inappropriately flip, rather than a troll, I shall say this: that is not the argument of enemies of slash. Their argument, such as it is, goes more like "eeew, get it off the comm!".

The argument I mentioned is the one made by gay people who object to ass-hole behavior and the appropriation of their name to perpetuate misconceptions about the real people who have to live in this world.

I have a foot in both camps, on this one, and have had to put in some long thought about my own writing before deciding how I can reconcile one with the other.

I suggest you take that example, and a few seconds, and put in some actual thought, if you wish to continue participating here, rather than wave around thoughtless preconceptions which will gain you no credit at all.

Enemies of slash fanfiction pull this argument out of their hat all the time.

So do many fans of slash.

This happens to be just one of many different opinions about slash that is shared by both pro- and anti-slash people.

...do you think "the objectification discussion" is necessary in those fandoms?

You keep referring to The Discussion as if it's a single uniform entity, but you characterize it as being about "the hypersexualization of women, and how objectionable it is to reduce all the women to a set of tits and an ass". Which is very relevant to Western comics (y halo thar, Power Girl), but it's hard to imagine similar conversations about Sakura, Rukia, Usagi, Yuuko, Relena, Miaka, or Utena.

*blinks* What about Samurai Deeper Kyo? Tsukino in Yakitate!Japan? Heck, Doraemon?

I'd aim for a comprehensive list, but I'd be here for the next twelve hours. That's not even a hyperbolic statement.

Saw a couple episodes years ago, never seen it, not even sure I've heard of it. So I really can't speak to how they treat female characters, much less how their fandoms react to it.

But, look, I'm not arguing that no anime/manga has a problem with hypersexualized women. (I do read Saber Marionette J, for instance.) What I'm saying is that I'm pretty sure Sailor Moon fandom (to name one example that the OP used) is not suffering from a lack of discussion about all its large-breasted, one-dimensional female characters.

Elaborate on Doraemon?

but it's hard to imagine similar conversations about Sakura, Rukia, Usagi, Yuuko, Relena, Miaka, or Utena.

Uh, but I've had them. And I've read them. Not just in private posts, as the OP asserts, but all over my flist (public posts), in reviews, even waaaaay back in the day of mailing lists. Utena was one of my first fandoms and I remember being a little chomping-at-the-bit newly-minted feminist in high school, kvetching on a mailing list about Relena in Gundam Wing. Mostly in the there's-more-than-one-way-to-objectify-a-woman vein.

The majority of these discussions today are happening in what I guess can loosely be called the "manga reviews blogosphere," in which Serious Manga Bloggers discuss issues about sexism and objectification all the freakin' time.

there's-more-than-one-way-to-objectify-a-woman

This. This is exactly what I'm trying to get at. There's an objectification discussion to be had over Utena - but it's not the "all the men are fully clothed and all the women are in G-strings" discussion of Marvel and DC.

*tries not to pounces on you too eagerly* Links! Links! Please, my kingdom for some links!

...which actually starts a whole different train of thought about the media/platform of fannish engagement and the possible cultural differences produced among them. Links? *hopeful*

The majority of these discussions today are happening in what I guess can loosely be called the "manga reviews blogosphere,"

It happens in personal journals, as well.

I remember the endless discussions about Relena: How she is in canon, how she is in fic, how much negative opinions of her are due to misogyny versus poor characterization due to misogyny, and so on and so forth ad infinitum. I've participated in a few of those myself.

In my experience, the main difference between the "meta" culture of anime and western fandoms is that in anime fandom, it's just not as widely linked. These discussions are happening, but they just don't spread as far. You have to be watching the right communities or personal journals to catch them.

Exactly. It's a different way of participating, a different kind of fannish culture. You'd think that because Western media fandom and animanga fandom both have a huge niche on LJ that their cultures would at least follow the same lines, but that's really not the case at all. And it doesn't mean that the way animanga fans discuss their sources is wrong -- we just like to keep it in the family. :)

*takes a deep breath*

*lets it out*

*calmly* Yes. I do think it's necessary. And no, I don't think it would be the same discussion, nor that discussions of objectification in separate sources are ever going to be identical and unitary. They are, however, going to have a starting point in common, and that starting point is essentially "why can't the women get a fair shake here?".

For example, consider the women of Clamp. It looks quite encouraging, and the stories almost all seem to uphold the notion of females being both empowered and emotional, and good things like that. But this only lasts while you look at the pre-pubescent girls. Adult women with adult sexuality are killed off almost every time. The most outstanding example of this is Magic Knights Rayearth, but the pattern is extremely consistent.

The women of Gundam Wing suffer the fate of capable women in most shounen, which is to be capable but secondary. They can be good as long as they're not as good as the men, and most certainly not better. Relena herself was also very damaged as a character by being made to carry too many narrative roles, but that's a different discussion.

Usagi herself I consider the one character on your list who has most escaped the trap, but consider Makoto. Consider, most especially, Makoto in the anime, and the endlessly repeated transformation sequence that has both a panty shot and a boob shot. This in something that's marketed toward girls. Consider the costumes of the women, heroines and villains alike, in comparison to the costumes of the men.

As for Bleach, shall we instead consider Orihime? Matsumoto? Shall we consider why an artist would feel called on to paste such enormous breasts on them? Shall we consider the reasons behind the swimsuit art and episodes?

Yes, I think discussion is necessary.

They are, however, going to have a starting point in common, and that starting point is essentially "why can't the women get a fair shake here?".

I am all for this, and only wish you had phrased it as such at, well, the start.

(And I would love to see a full post on pretty much any of the specific issues you mentioned.)

*wry* Yeah, me too. I actually just went and added an eta trying to encompass the lot of that. Not easy to do in one sentence.

I'm really interested in your Sailor Moon examples, not because I disagree. I'm curious about what it means that the heroine costumes are so heavily based on Japanese school uniforms. I think it's interesting that these objectifying outfits are the ones most closely based on real clothing -- which doesn't mean they're fine.

I'm also wondering if the same problems are present as heavily in the Sailor Moon manga. I don't remember it clearly, but I'm pretty sure there were a fair number of men in bizarre and revealing costumes. Or I'm just imagining things, of course...

I don't recall many men in weird outfits, but it's been over five years since the last time I read the manga. *thoughtful* And overall, it isn't quite as... impactful in the manga, I think, which is indeed curious because the outfits themselves, including the sailor uniforms, are actually skimpier. I think it's because the bodies themselves are drawn in a more stylized way. There's less emphasis on big curves and glare points; it's actually almost a sketch style.

I'm always a bit conflicted about those sailor suits. After you read a handful of interviews of older men practically salivating over the sex appeal of a school girl uniform specifically because it's a schoolgirl uniform, well... yeah. In my brighter moments I imagine that Takeuchi was trying to reclaim the sailor suit as a symbol for girls saving the day and kicking butt, but I have no actual support for that beyond my own wistful hopes.

a fair number of men in bizarre and revealing costumes

Oh, definitely. Anime and manga alike.

And when it comes to the sailor uniforms - remember that all the original design work was done by Naoko Takeuchi, who, according to her own liner notes, basically went with what she thought was cute. (Or sexy. Check these artbook notes, the one where it talks about Black Lady's dress...and I could swear there's one where she's getting giggly over a panty shot with Usagi, but I can't find it at the moment. Point is, whatever other influences may have been acting on her, she was putting the sexy stuff in for her own entertainment as well.)

As for Bleach, shall we instead consider Orihime? Matsumoto? Shall we consider why an artist would feel called on to paste such enormous breasts on them? Shall we consider the reasons behind the swimsuit art and episodes?

And consider that the crasser end of the English-speaking BLEACH fandom has taken to calling him, when he draws attention to these features, Kubo Titty.

:| The nickname may not solve the problem or ... really serve as anything but "ironic" commentary on the problem's existence (... I am, as a note, so very sick of "ironic" takes on the genres' problems like Haruhi et al. for precisely this reason), but, you know - it's not like he hasn't earned every crass ounce of that nickname.

(And, as my icons should clearly indicate, I have a massive fondness for the series, so I do spit on him out of love. Really fucking annoyed and frustrated and disappointed love, but love nonetheless.)

So I agree. So fucking hard.

(As a side note: Takeuchi may have drawn the BSSM manga and been quite a gleefully kinky writer all on her own - I'm not going to dispute that, one of the reasons I love it is its freewheeling kinkiness - but the overwhelming majority of animators and all the directors were men. And when they were faced with what to include in the copious amounts of filler necessary to pace the series so it didn't end before the manga did, there were multiple panty- and boob-related jokes added in to the anime that weren't in the manga.)

One thing that makes a discussion of objectification so hard to sustain for me with regards to some characters and some fandoms is because I've put a lot of spit and nails into liking the characters as they are, especially because I gravitate towards the broken and the nasty and the just plain morally grey, and I think sometimes, for me, it feels like dismissing those characters as just objects of desire undercuts that there are real girls out there who think similar to those characters, that it's necessary to have a character people like me can at least recognize as like us on some level, even if it's not a whole comparison (and it never should be - I've met enough NGE fanboys to know how dangerous that level of overidentification with a character can be), and I tend to flinch back from conversations like that because it often can descend into just-shy-of slut-shaming tactics, and no. (I'm not using a Simca icon for this comment by accident, after all.)

Also, I survived GWing fandom in the early '00s, I am reflexively predisposed towards disagreement with anyone trying to make me feel guilty for liking a female character, or that I should feel guilty for wanting tons of porn written about her, either, whether they realize that's what they're doing right away or not.

This doesn't mean that I think it's a bad plan in the slightest to discuss whether the creators threw too much narrative responsibility onto Relena, for example (I would disagree, but that would be an awesome conversation to have nonetheless), and it sure as hell doesn't mean I disagree that this - They can be good as long as they're not as good as the men, and most certainly not better. - is a truer statement than a true thing and that I don't still go F YEAH every time I hear someone else besides me say it despite having met plenty of people who are/were in the fandom who agree with me on it, but.

It's like, "this character is bad because she fits a role I don't like" isn't a criticism I buy into, because there is a fan out there for whom that character gives them satisfaction, and hope, and fuck if I'm going to countenance taking that away from them. (This conversation, for the record, hasn't yet gone there, and I doubt it will, based on observation and knowledge of many of the participants, but - it'd be wrong for me to say I get twitchy with certain conversational topics if I didn't explain why, I think. Since I'm explaining so much of everything else about how I see things, and all.)

And yet I totally want someone to much-more-publicly fucking take creators like Kubo Tite and Oh!Great to task for feeding the chauvinist/sexist beast that continues to thrive on those very flawed characters I love, those characters who I'm not sure would be the same if you took that context away from them. I fucking hate the fat jokes that litter shounen and shoujo manga, the vocal tics that have become so emblematic of "moe" characters, the absurdly huge breasts and innocent-no-really fanservice personality of the characters that get created to justify them, and the constant shunting aside of the female characters for the sake of the awesomeness and/or pandering not-really-gay subtext of the menfolk. I want to talk about how these characters having mature desires and interests of their own so often leads to pain and misery for them on a totally different scope from the male characters, and how this is, in its own way, a case of slut-shaming inherent in the narrative that the fandoms recapitulate in their hatred of the characters in question. I want to talk about why there's so few female characters who get to lead their own series outside of shoujo/josei comics, why so often that "lead" status within those categories often leads to the main character being led by the male love interests' demands/desires, instead. And I want to talk about how, no matter what the sales numbers seem to say, women and girls in their source cultures aren't actually comfortable with this perception of themselves and they've said so, repeatedly, in a thousand different ways, and the ways in which creators have and haven't listened to them, most of which English-speaking fandom ignores or glosses over or doesn't recognize as such because it's not how they would have done things.

But I already know a bunch of people I've had those conversations with, and it's tiring to have them again and again with the interference of people who don't get it, so since I know most of the people who I associate with feel the same, I don't have them very often in places where those assholes can get in and try to derail the discussion - it's not like I'm going to go out of my way to fuck with my own head like defending female characters and attacking the sexism of the industry in a given anime and manga to the vehement disagreement of significant portions of the fandom so often causes.

And yet I still want more of those conversations, someday. Fuck yeah, I do.

... that all made much more sense in my head, I think.

*sparkles at you really a lot* This. All of this, yes.

I hadn't actually run across Kubo Titty. How... unfortunately apropos. But, yes, the "ironic" treatment all to often seems to be an excuse to get out of seriously considering the problem. *shudders at the mention of Haruhi* That one... honestly never even struck me as very ironic? Which turned me off it instantly.

*wails* And I want to read Air Gear! But every time I do I trip over the hentai crap and have to run screaming! *shakes her fist at Ougure*

And yes. The character hate based on "do not like" seems to me very different from looking at and pointing out the systematic problems in the presentation of women. This weird concept that only things we like can be good... I think it may well be part of the problem.

I've been trying (and failing) to come up with a thoughtful response to this. I think I simply don't have the knowledge to talk about the fandoms so broadly. I have vague impressions and definite opinions but very little concrete context. You've made me think.

I've viewed Japanophilia as a scary and easy trap to fall into. I find other cultures interesting, and I can see the temptation to think that I'm learning a lot about Japanese culture when I read manga or watch anime. I have to remind myself that I'm still looking at what I see through my own filters and therefore missing or misreading some unknown portion of what's there for a Japanese audience.

*nodnod* Despite how generally I've phrased it here, I do think it's very difficult to talk about "anime/manga fandom" at large. There are a few broad strokes I've seen over and over, and so feel reasonably comfortable generalizing about but not many. There's always that tug, in fandom, between the culture developed around each specific source and the looser culture/battles (since you can hardly call it consensus) produced by movement between similar sources in a group.

Yes! I remember the first year or two when I thought "oh, well, it's the popular culture, surely it reflects popular values at least". Which, the longer I do study the actual cutlure... well, the less straightforward that seems!

I tend to lurk on the periphery of multiple fandoms. That means that there's a lot going on among those who're more enthusiastic or more focused that I miss. I think I may also have a layer of selective obliviousness that I use to shield myself from parts of fandoms that I'd find toxic.

'Popular culture' and 'popular values' are slippery at best. I'm now thinking of the Disney sitcoms that my six year old loves and considering what view of US culture one would get from them. There's a certain body of assumed knowledge that provides a framework for understanding what's real and what's not.

*rueful* Can't say I blame you. There are a lot of fandoms these days that I swing through looking for the red flags and back right out of the comms if I see them.

Yes, exactly that! Without the context that tells you what's accurate and what's exaggerated and what's fantasy and what's dredged up from the bottom of the pond, you wind up with this weird phantasm in your head that you might think was the culture. But it really isn't.

There has always been a certain give and take, between this particular two-set, of artistic style, and as US comics (the only ones I can speak to from experience) diversify it's becoming more evident, but there are also story tropes that are still distinct.

I know there's been some anime influence on superhero comics art in recent years, and there's at least one manga artist/writer I can think of whose character designs are occasionally homages to various X-Men characters (I forget his name, but he's the one who wrote/drew Ruroni Kenshin), but the visual storytelling techiniques are often very different, even accounting for the left-to-right vs. right-to-left issue. I had to learn an entirely different visual 'vocabulary' to read manga and doujinshi (then again, I also had to learn a new set of visual storytelling rules for Golden Age comics vs. modern ones).

Which says nothing about the fandoms involved, of course, and I think there is some degree of blending between the two -- most of the comicbook stores I've been in sell manga as well as the classic DCU/Marvel/Vertigo/Dark Horse stuff, for example, and I saw more than one set of Naruto or Final Fantasy or Dragonball cosplayers at NYCC last year. Not to mention that anime and Marvel/DC superhero comics both have international fanbases.

I'd feel weird lumping them all together under a generic "comics" tag on AO3, though, because the term "comics" is so strongly associated with American comicbooks that I feel like other artistic traditions would get erased or subsumed by it (a lot of people hear "comics fandom," and think superheroes -- even other Western comics like Asterix or Tintin or Calvin & Hobbes or Peanuts don't really come to mind).

Just stepping into say, I think if merging occurs, it would be under a more neutral term like "Sequential Art and Animation". At least, I haven't seen anyone propose to call the category "comics". (Am on the tag wrangling team.)

A "sequential art and animation" tag would cover the entire spectrum, yeah. *nods* Plus it would cover things like webcomics that are often their own seperate thing.

*laughing* Watsuki Nobuhiro, yes! And the first time I read him I thought to myself "this man has Stan Lee syndrome"--having an uninvolved character doing play-by-play for the fights.

It's been a little while since I took a swing through a comics store, but I would definitely be interested to see whether the different manga-genre visual tactics are being taken up and by whom. I mean, the full-body shot with background is a staple of shoujo but the last time I looked it was vanishingly rare in US comics of any stripe. Same with the box-breaking, though I have seen more of that picked up in some places. I wonder if anyone's done a serious study of the artistic and narrative styles recently?

I tend to think of Stan Lee Syndrome as Lots! Of Unecessary! Exclamation! Points! myself. That, and a particular kind of playful snark that a lot of silver age Marvel characters display (it often involves irreverent one-liners and giving people cutesy nicknames).

Whereas Frank Miller syndrome is ~~whoreswhoreswhores~~ self-consciously grim and noir-esque internal monologue in square text boxes.

I can't comment on layout, but there are a few comics artists from the late 90s onward who have some visible anime influence in their character design (every now and then, for example, I'll look at a comics panel and think "that's anime hair"). Tracing/photo references and some degree of photorealism seem to be in vogue at the moment, though. Sometime to good effect, as with Adi Granov's Iron Man art, and sometimes to very, very bad effect, as with Greg "I Trace From Porn! And Usually From the Same Three/Five Photographs!" Land.

Huh! The photorealism seems like a /major/ divergence from where cartoon style is going, with the block color and stylized figures. *wry* And there's another difference for us, given how often anime and manga are two versions of the same story and set a premium on copying the art style across both.

But if you did a cartoon based on a Marvel or DC comic, which art style would you copy?

In some ways, the fact that comics titles tend to shuffle artists rather than having a distinctive visual style gives animators more leeway to do whatever they want. On the other hand, I'd kill to have an Avengers cartoon as visually gorgeous as Tsubasa or X. (Okay, I just want CLAMP to do an Avengers manga that's turned into an anime and gives the Wasp a different costume in every episode a la Card Captor Sakura).

Jumping in to add yeah: you say "comics," my first thought isn't Calvin & Hobbes, but Superman or Batman and the like. But nowadays, if I go into a Borders, I can find DC/Marvel/Dark Horse/etc. all under "graphic novels" just a shelf away from all the Japanese and Korean manga/manhwa. Comics -which covers the Calvin & Hobbes, Dilbert, etc. are in their own, other section of the store. Not that Borders is the end-all, be-all Mode For Organization of Fan Media, but it was my first thought.

I remember when Tokyopop (née Mixx) was trying to define manga as "motionless picture entertainment," which is a lark. It basically translates to "comics." And the term "anime" is really just short for the French word for animation, which covers things like cartoons. And yet I feel like it's transcended the original, simplified meaning and to someone like me within fandom, anime is not "a cartoon," even though if you want to be literal about it, it is. But it "feels" different to me, the same way manga feels different than comics. I'm in fandoms of all those varieties, and I'm used to not seeing Superman lumped in with Sailor Moon or Popeye paired off with Puni Puni Poemi.

the fad for and valorization of the surface and trappings of another culture.

I think you're seeing only the American side of the fandoms here! There's plenty of Brit-philia in British fandoms (including a small number of comics fandoms) and both America and Japan valorised in this way in other places.

In Australian fandom, for example, there's Japanophilia in manga/anime fandoms, and US-philia in comics fandom. People save up for once-in-a-lifetime trips to the US. We study how US culture and language works. We try to include American locations and speech patterns in our fan writing. I think we have more access to US culture than to Japanese culture (unless you live on the Gold Coast, a major Japanese tourist destination) but the narrow-focus, uncritical love is still there. And we do things like hate Bush while loving Captain America, and hate whale-hunters while reading Mushishi.

*takes a moment to get it* Ah, I see!

A very good point, that the x-philia for imported sources is most likely universal. Perhaps I could rephrase this as a universal category of response whose particular expressions will create significant local differences between fandoms? What I was trying to get at was that a/m fandoms go after Japan in particular, and that makes for a different tenor of behavior/adoption/appropriation than a fandom that's going after Britishisms or US-dream-tour.

I agree that x-philia from one Western country to another isn't the same as fans from a Western country being Japanophiles, but I don't think the differences are all that huge. See, for example, the decades-long debate about whether rap needs to have a US accent or whether an Aussie accent is okay. (Aussie accent is currently winning, though US dress styles and slang are common.) It reminds me very strongly of the scanlation debates over honourifics and name translations; not to mention the debates about adopting US spelling for non-US writers in US fandoms.

Not identical, but definitely on the same spectrum.

I am not sure whether you are talking about the same essay that I have in mind, but one important point of the essay seemed to me that the gap between Manga and Comics derives partly from an oversimplified view of Western comics, that is, taking one brand of U.S. comics and declaring it as representative for Western comics. It is a bit weird, as it is normally the other other culture that is seen in an oversimplified way, but it seems that most fans of manga know that there are manga with all kinds of stories while it is less known that there are also comics on every kind of story.

Oh, and for the record, at

chuunin it is now considered okay to discuss sexism and objectification of women in Naruto.

No, that was not the essay I was thinking of; it was a comment of Rana's on a different post of my own, some days back. That doesn't entirely surprise me, though. Among Western fen, diverse and widely available manga is a relatively recent thing, so they're getting the current view of it. The outside view of comics, received from popular culture at large, is still lagging behind I think, and if all you hear about is superheros you don't get how much comics have diversified in the past decade or two.

Oh glory, finally! I have gotten so sick and tired of the resistance to that! To any form of serious critique! May wrongheaded cultural relativism burn forever! *stifles a rant on the subject, which would not forward the discussion any* It is possible I've got a touch of burn-out on that front...

Ah, I have found the essay I had in mind: not really a Comics Fan. And sorry, I should have added "via metafandom" to the subject.

Yes, every single discussion of a new chapter of Naruto contains some complaints about gender!fail.

Ah, thank you! I shall take a look at that.

*wry* Not like we haven't had some unfortunate examples to work with, lately.

First- you mention discussions about the oversexualization of females in comics fandom that aren't present in animanga -- this is true, but I think that's because there are other focuses in animanga as far as gender is concerned. Usually, I see talk about the undersexualization of female characters who are built along the 'cute/moe/loli' model, and the differences between Western and Japanese femininity. The overexposed boobs don't seem to ping as many radars as the presentation of females as childlike seems to, at least in my circles.

Also. Your post made me think a lot about things that have been floating around in my head for a while. However, the response I eventually wrote out was very tl;dr and wasn't really aimed at you or anyone specific, so rather than spam your journal - this is the link. I'm leaving this here as it's related to the topic you started, but there's no pressure to reply to it. :) (the tl;dr, over-generalized post is tl'dr and overgeneralized, yes.)

*interested* What fandoms have you seen that in? I've mostly only heard passing references to that, usually in contrast to some overboobed character, and it sounds like it could become a very interesting discussion.

*goes to read*

Off the top of my head, I remember those particular issues being talked about in KHR during a chat and about Pandora Hearts under f-lock. I also remember skimming across discussions in Naruto (surrounding Hinata, I believe?), but that was a while ago, I wasn't directly involved, and I have no clue where that is right now. ^_^;

In the KHR chat, I remember the roles of Kyoko and Haru were brought up, specifically regards to their strike, the taking care of babies, and the whole 'we are happy support personnel!' thing that was going on in the TYL arc. It brought up a lot of comparisons between Japanese and Western gender roles for women (homemaker values, third wave feminism, the difference between an American stay at home mom and a typical Japanese house wife, etc). Then Chrome was brought up, a one girl who is part of the Vongola guardians, but not really -- she's a stand in for (and literally defined by) Mukuro. And there was Lal Mirch, the kick ass soldier, but who pines after a dead ~~baby~~ guy, and Bianchi, a dangerous assassin who's weapon is bad cooking. (this was way before Uni, so her particular situation was never brought up, but I do think it would have been interesting to compare her situation to the portrayals of the other female characters).

I remember there was other stuff going on in there (like why Yamammoto's jump off the school building was cut out of the anime, something I didn't even know about), but that was the general gist of things.

As for the undersexualization discussion, that I've seen in Pandora Hearts. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that manga (it's good, if you want to read it ^_^), but someone pointed out a few things on how age/sexuality in girls was being depicted -- females who are 'heroes' are shown as loli while females who are (sort of) villains are all older and look like actual women. That brought up differences in perceptions of femininity, where in Japan it's preferable for girls to be seen as younger and cute while in the Western world it's more desirable for girls to be seen as older and sexy. (If Pandora Hearts were an American publication, Alice would be dressing more like Lottie, basically. She would certainly be passed puberty.)

What's fascinating is that a few years ago, there would have been so much female-bashing in this fandom. But there isn't. The female characters, even the one that gets in between the main boy pairing, are roundly loved.

Also, I apologize for the extensive summaries. As I said, the first discussion was held in a chat (no transcript, sigh) while the other was under f-lock and I don't feel comfortable breaking that even if it's just to copy/paste responses. So, summaries. ^_^

*extremely entertained* So, that chat, would it happen to have looked anything like this post?

Yes, I do read Pandora Hearts! I haven't really found the fandom for it, but I've been reading it. I'm vastly encouraged to hear that Alice doesn't get bashed (I mean, really, the poor girl obviously has enough problems already...). The way PH plays with age and attraction all over is fascinating to me, really. I mean, Gil and Oz and Jack are a prime example. At no point are any two of them in the same age-bracket/state of corporeality, so there's this chemistry dangled in front of the fans like a carrot while the twists of fate gleefully deny any consummation.

But back to the women! I have actually wondered whether PH will explicitly address the arrested-development aspect of the pre-pubescent girls. It seems clear that Alice/the Will is older than she physically appears, and she already runs counter, in her character, to the innocence that's supposedly the point of the pre-pubescent fetish. I have hopes for PH.

hahaha, oh god, it's like a checklist. orz

At least a bunch of people are recognizing the problems? The group I was talking with were from a branch off of a re-read comm. There's just so much fail in the portrayal of every single female character in KHR, it's hard not to notice. :/

There's a lot of Alice and Sharon love. ♥ Not even Lottie gets bashed, which is awesome since she is a character who is comfortable with her sexuality.

Do you mean B-Rabbit Alice or Will of Abyss/White!Alice? Because I think the arrested development angle has already been engaged in regards to White!Alice - she was a helpless girl who was literally kept pure and childlike in up in her princess tower. And now she's stark raving insane (Break's eye, dear god).

And going off the last few chapters, it looks like Sharon is going to be getting some serious character development in the near future. She's a 23 year old girl in a 13 year old body and she was just given a very rude awakening on how powerless she really is without her chain. I can't wait to see the fallout of that. Sharon's arc looks like it's going to be very interesting.

Then of course there's Echo who is treated like a doll by Vincent, but who's the most pragmatic and logical character in the serious. Not to mention her *ahem* identity issues. Alice hasn't been focused on much lately, but I personally believe that's because the ending is going to be all about Alice anyway, so the mid part of the series is taking its time to flesh out all the other characters.

So yes, PH is my &heart; right now. :D

It totally is a checklist! *laughing* Of course, as soon as that post got linked in the IJ meta comm I was piled on by people who told me, essentially, that I was interrogating the text from the wrong perspective. See also "no you have to do it from the Japanese point of view (which obviously you don't know anything about)".

Ummmm... *thinks* I think I meant both of them? Since they appear to be, if not the same entity, then strongly related. But Sharon! *looks forward to this* I'm a little behind, I think. *rueful* I need to catch up with Monochrome Factor, too.

...oh dear god, I just went back and read my first comment. I am so, so sorry for all those typos. /o\ *wishes like crazy to go back and edit*

Yeah, PH just started in on a new arc. The next chapter comes out on the...18th, I believe?

I think the kneejerk reaction is because current animanga fannish culture puts a lot of emphasis on learning about the source (Japanese) culture and 'authenticity'. Which is great, since better cultural understanding is always a plus, but sometimes that... community desire for understanding gets hyped to the detriment of other ways of looking at a text.

From what I've seen in online fandom, I think the default assumption is that everyone is just like you. So if you're in the process of learning about and engaging with a foreign culture, then you tend to think that everyone else is to, never mind that that other person may be coming from a different place entirely. *shrugs*

*snorts* I'd have forgiven it faster if the people in question had given more evidence of being in "learn about the culture" mode and less in "uncritically adulate the culture" mode. Well, as has been said elsewhere in these threads, the uncritical adulation stage seems to be a pitfall of fanning just about anything. *thinks about the JKR = Next Tolkien thing*

*winces* Ah. Yeah, usually I attribute the (really annoying) cultural adoration to the first blush of fandom love -- it is blind and makes you do stupid things. The fannish hive mind that sometimes rears its ugly head doesn't help, either.

I don't really have much to add to your post, but I will say that it reminded me of that one line in Michael Crichton's Rising Sun where one of the characters says that he is the one called in to deal with cases concerning the Japanese Embassy, because so many people are either completely in love with Japan or completely hate it, and he's the only one that sees both the good and the bad in Japanese culture. That line has stuck with me for years, even as I've forgotten everything else the book was about, because it just encapsulates so well with the discussions about racism that I've been a part of and the harmfulness of both positive and negative stereotyping and putting any part of a culture on pedestal and refusing to engage with it critically. I just made a post about Loveless on my journal, and it sort of wandered into a discussion of some of the topics you touch on here, as well as things like slut-shaming and the Japan's culture of silence re: child abuse, so um. Yes. YOUR POST, IT RESONATES WITH ME. *cough*

*grins* Resonance is good. More posts are good too. *goes to read*

This just explodes in so many directions, and I want to follow all of them, and I can't catch them all at the same time. And so I just grab the nearest thread and hope other people will hop on with some of the ones that escaped.

I agree with a lot of what you said in your post, especially about the Japanophilia bit. It drives me especially crazy in fandoms where the anime/manga source material is not set in Japan, but fans still throw hissy-fits about translators leaving out honorifics or writing names in ways that make sense instead of using pure romanization. See: the great howling fury that was unleashed when Light Yagami's name was officially translated as, well, Light, instead of 'Raito.' It's instances like that that really illustrate the blindness of Japanophilia, I think.

I will, however, take huge exception to this statement:

Manga fandoms do not have this discussion, not as a Known Issue, not in the open, despite an at least equal tendency to appalling objectification in the source material.

I already kind of touched on this in my comment to sailorptah (after which I realized that I should have said that stuff *here* but I am not much with being articulate today). Anywhoo, as you said in the comments upthread, you personally haven't seen those discussions. Okay, but I have. Like, a lot. They don't tend to happen on livejournal, not so much, but they are definitely a huge part of the wider blogosphere that discusses anime and manga. I have eighteen different manga review blogs on my Google Reader list and they *all* discuss issues of sexualization and objectification when it's relevant to the title in question. Which is often, unfortunately. The reviewers at major news sites like Anime News Network frequently - not always, but frequently - touch upon these issues in their reviews, too. And yes, they talked about Queen's Blade a couple times earlier this year too - if only to smack it down. ;) And again, back to livejournal: I and many of the people on my flist dicuss these issues frequently, especially with regards to Naruto, yuri anime, etc.

Blah blah blah, I know, it all boils down to who's on your flist, which blogs you read, what forums you hang out in, etc. etc. I think that my fandom experience in this regard has been very different from yours. But that it exactly why I take exception to your statement that feminist discourse never happens in animanga. It does. Just because you haven't experienced it, doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.

And as for the organization of fandoms in A03, I have no comment. It seems blindingly obvious to me that manga and comics shouldn't be separated, but because it seems blindingly obvious to me, I suspect that there are issues here that I'm just not seeing. I need to read more before I can open my mouth about the topic without sounding like a dumbass.

Edit: I re-read my first paragraph and realized that there was some coherency fail. I know that Death Note is set in Japan; I just used the Light/Raito thing to illustrate something that most often happens when the source material isn't set in Japan. Yagami Light's parents just had an odd sense for naming their kids, it seems.

I don't suppose you could link to those blogs? I'd love some recommendations.

I like reading:

Manga Bookshelf

Manga Worth Reading

The Manga Critic
Kate Dacey is always awesome, but I especially love her recent smackdown of sexism in Pig Bride.

Comics212

TangognaT

Sporadic Sequential
John Jakala just retired from blogging, but his archives were worth a read. I think he was the first blogger to write a scathing critique of the sexism in Honey and Clover; I lost the link to that post, though.

The Hooded Utilitarian
It's a comics+manga blog with multiple contributers. I don't *like* all of the contributors (I almost always disagree with much of what Noah posts), but they are all very articulate, thoughtful people. Sex/gender issues are frequently discussed. There's a regular BL review column called Gluey Tart.

MangaBlog
Linking blog for manga. Lots of interesting posts get linked here.

I would also recommend googling "Casey Brienza" as she blogs/reviews for Graphic Novel Reporter and Anime News Network. She's one of the most unabashedly, openly feminist reviewers out there. I definitely don't agree with all of her reviews, but they are always a good read.

Aaaaand there goes the rest of my afternoon.

Thanks!

Made my way over here via hits in my statcounter. :) First of all, thanks for linking to me & everyone else on this list! I agree that going off LJ is the way to find the kind of discussion

branchandroot is missing. I also wanted to recommend getting involved in the manga community on Twitter. There is fantastic conversation going on there at pretty much any hour of the day or night and you can find pretty most the writers listed above there. It's a great environment for both casual discussion and heated debate. Here are a couple of lists to start with:

For general manga/anime discussion (heavy on the manga) http://twitter.com/#/list/mbeasi/manga-anime-discussion

For mangabloggers specifically: http://twitter.com/#/list/mbeasi/mangabloggers

- Melinda Beasi (Manga Bookshelf (http://mangabookshelf.com))

Oops, typo. That sentence should read:

"There is fantastic conversation going on there at pretty much any hour of the day or night and you can find most of the writers listed above there."

*shame*

On LJ,

meganbmoore does a lot of manga reviews that you might find interesting too.

*grins* And I've already pounced upon you pleading for links up there, so I shan't down here.

You're quite right; this entry is coming only out of my and my circle's experience, and I knew when I wrote it that there was a conflict between that specificity (which I did at least point out!) and the generality with which I framed that experience. *rueful* Rhetorical failure there.

I'm curious, now. The majority of my fannish engagement was in the Age of Shrines and then on LJ comms. Have you found many such discussions in those locations? (I have a nascent Theory of Platforms brewing, here.)

Linkdump!

The majority of my fannish engagement was in the Age of Shrines and then on LJ comms. Have you found many such discussions in those locations?

Hmmm, good question. In terms of the Age of Shrines, not really. At least, not in my experience. My experience with shrining, though, is pretty much limited to Sailor Moon and Utena fandom. I recall that Utena fandom had a lot of meta-heavy shrines, but none (that I can recall) ever explicity called out the series for its instances of sexism!fail, as they were more focused on its win. And trying to analyze the relationships between the characters. And trying to figure out WTH Ikuhara was smoking. Etc.

As for LJ comms, again, my experience on the animanga side of things is limited. Right now I'm very active in Soul Eater fandom. Topics like sex, gender, racism, and mental health issues have - *very* infrequently - been discussed on the main fandom community (

shibusen), but usually in a more-or-less open-minded way. There are two people in the fandom who have been vocally failtastic in terms of defending Soul Eater's instances of sexism and racism. Mostly, however, I've noticed that the

shibusen comm members are willing to engage in these discussions, even though many of them are still in high school and are clearly encountering fandom meta for the first time. I remember, about a year ago, there was a great post about gender-neutral pronouns like "hir" (used in some fan translations to refer to a character who has deliberately ambiguous gender). Based on the comments it seemed like a lot of the comm members had never heard of "hir" before, the but the reaction was moreso "Oh, that makes sense!" than "WTF?!" I'm kicking myself because I can't find the link now. It's somewhere in the community archives, though. (*keeps digging*)

I am intrigued by your nascent Theory of Platforms. :)

I actually wonder, you know, whether small fandoms have an advantage, here. It's still a bit of a crap shoot, but if a small fandom gets a few people willing to bring up such issues I think it may have a better chance of carrying them on without squashing and, as it were, bringing the younger fen up well. The bigger fandoms tend to be such a cat-in-a-bag fight already, I think there's a lot of pressure to not rock the boat any /more/.

And this leads into my Theory! Which is that LJ and kin, with the ease and emphasis they give to conversation and cross-dialogue, actually foster that pressure. A blog gives a little more authority to the primary poster. Well, actually, I think it gives a /lot/ more authority to the poster than a comm does. So a comm, while it fosters community growth all right, may also gives faster rise to communal discourse policing.

I actually wonder, you know, whether small fandoms have an advantage, here. It's still a bit of a crap shoot, but if a small fandom gets a few people willing to bring up such issues I think it may have a better chance of carrying them on without squashing and, as it were, bringing the younger fen up well. The bigger fandoms tend to be such a cat-in-a-bag fight already, I think there's a lot of pressure to not rock the boat any /more/.

Y'know, I think you're on to something. Seriously. Personally I feel a lot safer talking about sexism and racism in Soul Eater fandom because it's small-ish and I already have a sense of how many people are going to agree or disagree with me. however, I don't think I'd be brave enough to post something that would make people *uncomfortable* on a huge forum for a big fandom like, say, the narutofan.com forums, because there's a higher risk of being absolutely deluged by asinine bingo-ready responses, and having the conversation shut down before it can really begin.

A blog gives a little more authority to the primary poster. Well, actually, I think it gives a /lot/ more authority to the poster than a comm does. So a comm, while it fosters community growth all right, may also gives faster rise to communal discourse policing.

That makes a lot of sense to me, too.

Isn't that generally true of large Western fandoms too? I never had the impression you could walk into a SPN community and talk about sexism in the source without asbestos undies. Maybe I'm wrong.

Since I've never really been in any of the large Western fandoms, except for a very brief trip through parts of Buffy fandom, I couldn't say. If I'm right about the general dynamic, though, I'd certainly expect it to carry across.

fans still throw hissy-fits about translators leaving out honorifics or writing names in ways that make sense instead of using pure romanization.

Hmmmm... I'm not really a purist when it comes to translations, but I have to admit it annoys me when Japanese or Chinese characters' names are flip-flopped to follow Western naming orders, because while Light/Raito might be a translation issue, changing, say, Naruto's name from Uzumaki Naruto to Naruto Uzumaki will yank me out of the narrative every time, because rather than going "huh, he has a different name in this version," my brain goes "why is her family name Sakura? That's a first name" and it's as jarring as reading about Sam and Dean using electric torches and putting their guns in the boot of the car, or ipods at Hogwarts.

Oh absolutely, I agree. If the characters are Japanese, and speaking Japanese, then the translation should reflect that, keeping names in Japanese order and keeping honorifics intact, etc.

My complaint, though, is when fans (or even pro translators) insist that Japanese language norms be strictly adhered to even when the anime/manga characters in question aren't Japanese, don't speak Japanese, and don't live in Japan. "Elric Edward" is just as awkward to me as "Naruto Uzumaki."

Very, very late, but I don't want this to go unremarked:

Some Japanese choose to Westernize their name order when naming themselves outside of a Japanese context. The designer calls herself "Hanae Mori", not "Mori Hanae". The conductor calls himself "Seiji Ozawa", rather than "Ozawa Seiji". Is it an artefact of colonialized thinking? Perhaps, but it's a personal choice on the part of those people. "Naruto Uzumaki" isn't necessarily wrong (although in the context of the manga, which I'm not familiar with, it might be utterly out of character).

As far as I know, this is one of those things where generalizing to a pan-Asian culture leads to incorrect assumptions. (If I'm not mistaken, most other East Asian cultures do preserve sourcelanguage name order in English. Mao Tse-tung, etc.)

This comment is pretty much exactly what I wanted to say, only coherently put, so thank you.

Ack, my shitty wording keeps coming back to bite me in the ass. I completely agree with

elspethdixon and therefore, I'm assuming, also with you: like I said above, If the characters are Japanese, and speaking Japanese, then the translation should reflect that, keeping names in Japanese order and keeping honorifics intact, etc. My complaint, though, is when fans (or even pro translators) insist that Japanese language norms be strictly adhered to even when the anime/manga characters in question aren't Japanese, don't speak Japanese, and don't live in Japan. "Elric Edward" is just as awkward to me as "Naruto Uzumaki."

The fan translation that uses "Elric Edward" is particularly icky and exoticizing when the Japanese author himself writes "Edward Elric."

*That* is the type of fan response that I was trying (incoherently) to snark at in my original comment, which is why I said "not set in Japan."

Yes, that's what I thought you meant. I think we should always give precedence to the original mangaka's wishes.

Here via Metafandom.

Many things about the OP here bug me, and I've been trying to put my finger on them without success, but I'll give it a shot.

Leaving aside the AO3 business -- I don't care, I only share my fanfic with friends anyway -- I think the problem is that the OP is persistently applying Western cultural mores to a fandom which is quintessentially non-Western.

That is, the roots of animangame (just because I've always seen them linked) fandom lie in Japanese fandom, and though since the advent of Web 2.0 it's developed a more Western cultural focus, those non-Western roots linger and express themselves in some very particular ways. For example -- what you and others in this thread are calling "Japanophilia" is usually not, IMO. It's an attempt to show respect for the source culture; a kind of political correctness. So for example you see a lot of younger fans using "fangirl Japanese" and obsessing over Romanization and honorifics -- and yeah, to Westerners that looks cheesy as all get out, plus fetishy. But a lot of it has to do with the fact that translating concepts from Japanese to English is effing hard to convey, especially when English has no equivalents. There's a lot of nuance that gets lost if it's not done right, and it's hard to learn how to do it right. And fangirls not being trained translators, they tend to practice usages in order to understand them, and they often use ham-handed and ugly methods to try and convey the difference (hence the fangirl Japanese). But consider that these are people putting themselves through an intensive language-and-culture class without the benefit of an instructor or a curriculum; the only way they're going to learn it is to try it, and screw up, and try again.

For people viewing this through the lens of Western fandom, where this learning process isn't necessary, it looks like exotification. But I'm not sure it always is. Sometimes it is, yes. I wince whenever I see girls squeeing over some attractive J-pop idol and saying things like, "I just love Japanese men, they're so pretty!" That's essentialism, and I'd agree that it's fucked up. But if they squee over a J-pop idol and say, "I just love [Gackt, whoever], he's so pretty!" then what's wrong with that? He's an idol; he's supposed to provoke that sort of reaction, so that you will then run out and buy his music. But viewed through the Western lens, these two "squeeages" look much the same.

And the issue of women's objectification -- here, more than anything else, is where I think you can see the non-western roots of animangame fandom. Most animangame fans I know understand that Japanese feminism is not the same thing as Western feminism. Feminism has never been a one-size-fits-all panacea; speaking as an African American woman here, most of the stuff that Gloria Steinem et al advocated for really has no value to me. Secondwave Western feminism was centered on the needs of middle-class white American women, and even thirdwave stuff tends to lean toward that center, and it simply doesn't fit women in other nations sometimes -- or Western fans who choose to consume those nations' media, if they choose to adhere to that nation's standard of feminism rather than our own.

To illustrate: shoujo fandoms don't usually talk about the hypersexualization of women, mostly because shoujo manga is made by women for women (and girls). So if hypersexualization occurs, it has an entirely different meaning than if it were being done for a male audience, through the male gaze. IMO, it ceases to be sexist at that point, and becomes a mechanism of female empowerment. To insist that it's sexist because that's how it looks to Westerners -- keeping in mind that Western animangame fandom skews far more male than it does in Japan -- is to impose Western values on another culture in a way that I find pretty skeevy in itself.

Which brings me to my biggest problem with the OP, which is that it's drastically oversimplifying animangame fandom. Again, leaving aside the AO3 issue -- classification for database purposes is entirely different from characterization for discussion purposes -- you really can't treat this fandom as a single entity. First off, mangawise, are you talking about shoujo, shounen, seinen, ladies, or kids' stuff? These genres each have different cultural standards. (Hypersexualization in shounen/seinen/kids is a whole other issue, for example.) And are you talking about commercial properties, which must suit certain community-propriety standards (Japanese community propriety, note), or doujinshi, which is an Anything-Goes reaction against those standards of propriety? Are you talking about fans who treat their work as Western fanfic, or as textual English doujinshi? Because there's a massive cultural difference right there: doujinshi isn't supposed to be realistic; the whole point is that there's no point (as in yaoi's "no point, no resolution, no meaning" philosophy). To portray a m/m couple as realistic gay men would be totally inappropriate for that genre, for example; most fans used to Japanese yaoi would reject it. But fans trained by Western fanfic would expect at least an attempt at realism -- even in the midst of an AU crossover gonzo epic turning all the characters into shrimp.

And then there's the generational divide. I and many other animangame fans who've been in fandom longer than the last 5-10 years started reading it when it wasn't readily available in English; when the only commercially-translated animanga was shounen/seinen stuff. We had to either teach ourselves Japanese or latch onto folks who knew it in order to share the love. (Walk barefoot to school in the snow, uphill... you kids get off my lawn.) I can guarantee you that we talked about all the issues you name and more, because I was there and asking questions about feminism and racism and so on -- but we didn't do it on LJ, because LJ wasn't around then. They did it in places like Aestheticism.com (now defunct, alas) and its attached mailing list (which has gone mostly silent since Web 2.0), and at cons like Shoujocon (also defunct, sob) and Yaoicon (still going! But different now). There have been a lot of new fans since then, but they tend to run more in Western-fandom circles than the extant animangame circles, so the result has been a huge cultural divide within the fandom itself. A lot of the old-school fans like me are still around, and maybe even still participating in fandom, but we just don't see any value in rehashing the old discussions. Or in trying to explain, again, to Western-lens fans why the Western lens is inappropriate.

So to make a long story short -- too late, I know -- I think this attempt to characterize manga vs comics fandom is drastically oversimplified, and suffers from a mismatch of cultural standards. You're trying to force Western standards of correctness onto fans who may have already adopted Japanese standards of correctness, in other words. Granted, they're English-speaking fans -- but they're consuming a Japanese product, so whose cultural lens should really dominate here? IMO, most of animangame fandom has chosen the Japanese lens, and you will have to do the same in order to characterize them properly.

...you know, if you're gonna talk about me in the third person, you could maybe put this on your journal instead of in a direct reply to me?

As to content, though:

I disagree. (Well, that was probably obvious already.) In particular, I very much consider Western manga and anime fandom to be, by and large, very distinct from Japanese fandoms. The roots, as you say, of anime and manga fandom in the US, to be still more specific, can only be considered based in Japan if you consider only the source text. I think we must also consider the fans themselves, who are firmly based in their own experience of living here in the US.

Your comments strike me as an unfortunate example of cultural relativism. Of course feminism, for example, isn't the same thing in Japan. The permutation of the word itself in Japanese usage is a stunning example of that, if one is needed. That does not mean that the overall question of "is there objectification here and how is it occurring" should not or cannot be asked. It is good to keep in mind that the querent's subject position is one from a different culture, but that's something I consider a given in any decent analysis.

It's also kind of the root of the problem, here. The US fans of anime and manga, who have grown up and lived here in the US, are not Japanese. They will not view the text through a Japanese lens, no matter how assimilated they attempt to become. And I refuse to contribute to the illusion that they have.

I think we must also consider the fans themselves, who are firmly based in their own experience of living here in the US.

Hmm...I just want to jump in here and make a tangential point, which is that you are talking about English-language animanga Internet fandoms while describing mostly U.S. fans. But the difference that has always stood out to me in terms of differences between animanga and Western media fandom culture is that English-language animanga fandoms have a significant proportion of fans who are either Asian diaspora or Asians living in Asian countries (particularly those countries where English is an official language, like Malaysia or Singapore or the Philippines). I'm sure you're already well-aware of this phenomenon yourself, since our fandom circles overlap, but it always really bothers me how their presence seems to be erased whenever these sorts of fandom culture discussions pop up. And well, Japanophilia in Asia is not the same as Western Japanophilia though it can be problematic in a completely different way. I feel this keenly on a personal level because as a Korean-American, my consumption of Japanese media involves both the legacy of Japanese colonization in Korea and the Western exoticization of Japan, and both are reasons for self-examination.

That being said, I do recognize many of the trends that you've mentioned in your post above, and I agree that there are fan cultural differences at a local level on LJ/related platforms. (Though personally AO3-wise, I support categorizing by media and putting together comics and animanga, if subcategories can't be implemented.)

(Sorry for the multiple edits; I typed the initial comment up too quickly.)

Edited (Minor edits for clarification) 2010-01-07 20:05 (UTC)

You're very right, and I should have made that clearer. *rueful* The pitfalls of trying to hold to my own experience because I don't feel in the least qualified to speak to the experience of Asian diaspora fans of anime and manga who grew up in the US, far less to East Asian fans. That certainly does not mean said experience does not exist or should not also be considered in the equation.

Though I have been fascinated by the tiny bits I've heard about East Asian fandoms in general, and anime/manga fandoms in particular. I've just never found much information about them (not that I could read, at any rate).

It occurs to me that quite often I get things through a double lens - the Japanese lens of the original writer and then the (very likely) US lens of the translator. It would be very interesting to know the backgrounds of the people doing the translating - I know that I find reading the official translations difficult at times because I sometimes find the Americanisms jarring. Fan translations lie somewhere in between that and native British English to my mental ear.

I know I've mentioned to Lynn that I find HP fic easier to write in many ways. I wonder if it's something to do with being less confused that way. I almost wish I'd spent time in a US fandom so as to have something useful for halfway-house comparison.

*nod* The layering of source-culture that translation (and especially some editors' tendency to localize to the US) gives is a fascinating topic all its own. *wry* And as a legacy of the early efforts, I tend not to trust US translations not to have drastically changed the dialogue! (*remembers Petshop of Horrors and Getbackers with pain*)

I think we all need to be very, very careful about saying that the "Western lens" or the "Western standards of feminism" are always going to be different from Japanese (or Korean, or Chinese, or Malay, etc.) standards of feminism. It is not always inappropriate to apply quote-unquote "Western" feminist analysis to anime and manga, because there is a surprisingly large amount of overlap between feminism in the East and the West, at least as far as feminism in media studies are concerned.

So here I am speaking from personal experience again. ;) I lived in Japan for three years, I have a limited amount of experience participating in Japanese-language fandom, and I also have some experience geeking out with Japanese nerds like me in meatspace, both in Japan and in the United States. Many of the critiques that English-speaking fans are bringing to manga are the exact same issues that some Japanese fans are discussing, too. I.E.: Why is it always the girl who has healing powers? Why does Kagome always hang back and shout "Inu-Yasha, Inu-Yasah!" instead of, you know, shooting the Monster of the Day with her freakin' arrows? If Gonzo's anime version of Juliet is supposed to be a feminist role model, why does she keep having to be saved by men?

Japanese fans wrung their hands over the existence of Queen's Blade, widely criticized Yoshiyuki Sadamoto's statement that he "couldn't imagine" a girl wanting to pilot a giant robot (this from the guy who did the character designs for Evangelion!!), and literally went up in arms around 2006-ish when there was that big hubub about Shoujo Comic's romance manga being sexist. There's also that fantastic Japanese blogger's feminist smackdown of moe that got translated into English and widely linked a while back; of course I'm a dumbass and didn't bookmark it, although I remember that I was linked through

eisen's dreamwidth journal. Not helpful, I know. The point is, though: If I could find and link the translation right here, it really does illustrate that there is much that is of shared concern between Western and Eastern feminists.

Therefore, again, I think we need to be careful about saying that a "Western" feminist lens is inappropriate to apply to Japanese source material; that idea assumes that Japanese feminist concerns are always different from non-Japanese feminist concerns (they aren't), it assumes that "Japan's standard of feminism" is like this alien thing that stands alone and never interacts with or adopts ideas from non-Japanese brands of feminism; and it also assumes that "Japan's standard of feminism" is this monolithic thing that all Japanese feminists agree upon. Again speaking from limited personal experience, I want to say that Japanese feminism is just as fragmented and contentious as feminism in any other country. ;)

I don't want to sound like I'm downplaying cultural differences here. I'm going to wave the "I lived in Japan!" flag again and say, believe me, I understand that there are very important differences between Japanese feminism and feminism from other cultures. But I also think it's important to recognize the common ground as well. Saying that Japanese source material should only be judged by Japanese standards (whatever those are) and that those standards are always drastically different than Western standards strikes me as skeevily exoticizing.

It's always a delicate balancing act, though - being able to address the similarities without downplaying the differences.

But I also think it's important to recognize the common ground as well.

A good point, and I agree.

Saying that Japanese source material should only be judged by Japanese standards (whatever those are) and that those standards are always drastically different than Western standards strikes me as skeevily exoticizing.

I'm not saying they're "always drastically different". You're right to note the overlap. But I am saying that any analysis needs to note the differences, and not just blow them off with a blithe "whatever those are". Especially when you're writing an article about that fandom for people who don't necessarily understand it -- e.g. the Western media fans who frequent Metafandom, and may not even realize that J-media fandom exists. Basically, Western animangame fandom is a bicultural (really, multicultural, but trying to be clear here) fandom, so I think it needs bicultural analysis. And the OP feels very monocultural to me.

Hope I'm explaining that well.

But I am saying that any analysis needs to note the differences, and not just blow them off with a blithe "whatever those are".

Crapola, that was poorly-worded on my part. I apologize. I didn't mean for "whatever those are" to be dismissive; I was trying to repeat my point that there isn't just *one* set of agreed-upon standards for Japanese feminism or Japanese media analysis. That's what the "whatever those are" was supposed to mean. Clearly I am failing at wording today.

And I agree, it is always important to note the differences.

Makes sense to me. I really appreciate this thread.

I'll have more attentive comments for elsewhere in the post (I hope; I mean to!), but as I have this easily to hand (or rather, I keep it bookmarked for smackdown purposes just in case), chiming in to say the essay you're talking about is here. (Translator notes/commentary are here, too, for the curious.)

Not disagreeing here, I appreciate your comment, but as I was reading I was thinking of how games production and consumption is even much more complicated than animanga, in a way -- because unlike those, a franchise like, say, Silent Hill or Final Fantasy are very clearly produced & marketed with Western gamers as a secondary target audience in mind. (Always Japan first, yes, but in terms of sales, IIRC, some game franchises are at 50 home/50 abroad sales at the least.)

So it's a context of [for lack of a better word, sorry!] monocultural production for a multicultural audience, and that's super-fascinating (...what do Japanese producers assume that both their primary Japanese audience(a) and their secondary Western audience(b) want? Or do they assume that well, what's good enough for (a) will be alright for (b), no changes necessary? ... ... ??? Nevermind that American and European audiences are different enough already.)

But it makes me cross-eyed and dizzy more often than not -- like, perceptions of sexism or racism - say, the RE 5 controversy; Japanese producers of Resident Evil 5 seemed oblivious about the outrageousness of a white hero slaughtering hordes of dehumanized black people; and I don't even want to start about Vanille, that laughably hyper-feminized lily-white girl in africanized ethno gear from Final Fantasy 13 (interesting intersection, that.)

I have lots of thoughts on this topic. Maybe I will think about writing my own post, but one(/two?) I just want to throw out there is a difference in secrecy/privacy norms, norms of public embodied interaction with other fans, modes of marginalization by non-fans, and gender of fancreators (which might be different but I see as related).

Basically what I mean is that, while anime/manga/(Japanese)videogames fans do experience marginalization by non-fans, I believe it happens in a different way. I'll have to think about how to phrase it but basically I mean that anime fans are looked on with disgust but not bafflement. Anime is weird to people but writing fic or making fanart or amvs of anime is just part of the weirdness and people mostly don't seem to really care beyond a pretty passive distaste. What I have encountered and heard of more in relation to live-action fandoms is that people get that we like Star Trek or Stargate or Glee or Dexter or whatever but they are utterly and completely baffled at the idea of expressing that fan passion through fanfiction (or other transformative works).

Strongly related to this (I'm not going to say which is the chicken and which is the egg - maybe they're mutually constitutive), it seems like fans who are strictly interested in anime/manga seem more likely to meet up in person (not that the others of us don't also do that) and go to conventions, etc. This also of course involves different privacy norms. And I also think it may have created different gendered communities, which is basically to say that I know probably 100 times more dudez writing fic in anime fandoms (a lot not on LJ/DW but some on here to be sure).

Do you have any thoughts on this?

((also I'm not sure I agree with what you said about the treatment of women and LGBT people in anime vs. western media fandoms, but it looks like people are picking fights with you about those things and I don't want to add to that by any means : / plus having been in both kinds of fandom, I know that my knee jerk reaction to things like that is just to think, wait, I'm not sexist/homophobic [i'm a gay dude incidentally - and actually the most gay bashing I've ever personally seen in fandom online space was in Harry Potter which is perhaps its own beast altogether] so my fandom's not but I'd have to do some serious soul searching to really think through that))

*nods* I do think that, from outside, the thing that may identify anime/manga fans most is cosplay. And cons have always had costuming, for any fandom at all, but it does seem more common at a/m cons and I think that may have become the Most Visible thing. Which leads to a lot of "what? what are you weirdos?" by outsiders, and they never get as far as the actual "oh, so you like to read...". And (chicken-egg, as you say) a/m fandom cons certainly are growing! It's kind of astonishing, how fast that's happened.

My best guess, just from general impressions, is that the urge to congregate is from the early days of the a/m explosion (you know, ten or so years ago, when the dinosaurs roamed) when it was really hard to find other a/m fans, and so people started looking for someone, anyone in their area with even vaguely similar interests. Not even in the same fandom! I think there's still a lot of that momentum at work, even now there are a whole lot more fans. Someone above mentioned the age demographic, and I wonder if that's part of it, too, this drive to meet face to face.

(The women and LGBT, that's referring to the source, more than the fandom. The fandoms react to the appalling exploitation shown in the source, but indirectly in most cases. It's really one of the more peculiar things I've ever witnessed.)

I got pretty tired of standard anime/manga fandom discussions/flamewars/meta years ago (while I usually still read the same stuff in Western fandoms), so maybe I'm not the best person to be analyzing this, but my impression is that you do see a lot of the same split in video game fandoms, band fandoms, etc. However, I tend to think it's because a lot of fans who write fanfiction of or have fandom culture debates about Japanese video games (or whatever) were previously in anime/manga fandoms.

I suspect that if you looked at oldschool Eroica zine fandom, you'd find it had a lot in common with other zine fandoms of the same era and less in common with current anime/manga fandoms (since fans were getting into it through other zine fandoms).

(As for the comics/manga thing, I think "comics" can be a useful shorthand when talking about these two fandom communities as you're doing here. It's just that people often move from shorthand to forgetting that there are lots of other comics in the world, including all those manga that don't get translated, and plenty of other communities of comics fans that don't closely resemble the two under discussion here. I made a post recently basically arguing that I don't identify strongly with the comics/manga divide because I grew up reading Calvin and Hobbes, Tin Tin, and Archie Comics. It wasn't so much an argument against the description you've written above as a call for fans to stop living up to it quite so closely. :D)

Oh, and I thought your point about needing to have those discussions about why and how anime/manga are sexist and whathaveyou is very good. For myself, what I've done is to move on to reading manga that don't have those problems as intensely. Now, do I think every manga fan should read exactly what I'm reading? No. But I do wonder why more of the mature shoujo and josei is so unavailable. The same thing applies to a lot of older shoujo and current shoujo in older styles, some of which has quite strong heroines who don't show off their panties every five seconds. I get why it isn't translated professionally, but it isn't scanlated either.

My number one complaint about anime/manga fandom in English is that it tends to be smugly self-contratulatory about its grasp of the vast breadth of the Japanese industry... while consuming only the range of things between Harry Potter and Twilight. There's nothing wrong with liking things in that range, but if they're unsatisfying, I find it more effective to just look elsewhere than to critique those works while consuming nothing else.

*jumps up and down pointing at you* This! I suppose I can understand how those would be more challenging to scanlate since they seem, like the light novels, to use more advanced kanji and less furigana but still! I hear people complain about how we're running out of good artistic offerings, and I think "But! But!".

Thank goodness there are, at least, detailed summaries of Saiunkoku Monogatari, that's all I can say; I'd have gone nuts else.

And, really, I have to wonder about the commercial priorities too. Are the commercial houses taking their cue too closely from the loudest fandoms, or is there some lingering sense that "cartoons are for kids" keeping them to the mainstream shounen and shoujo material?

Well, if I had to guess...

Now, ok, everyone knows the old translations were "bad" in that they changed too much to make the manga accessible/acceptable/whatever. Blah blah blah, fanrant. On the other hand, a lot of them were very well-written and didn't require a lot of prior knowledge of Japanese or otaku culture to get into. A lot of them were also quite pleasant to read because they sounded like normal, literate English. (My views on translation, let me show you them. ;D)

But then the otaku won. (Yay. Woo.) Now, not only are manga much cheaper, but the translations reflect what otaku like! Unfortunately, what otaku like is crap.

Overly-literal, painful-to-read, otaku knowledge-requiring, original writing style-obscuring C.R.A.P.

And the choices of series follow the same pattern. I have no problem with Shounen Jump bestsellers, but one of the things that makes them sell so well is that they are all exactly the same. (I'm sure I'd get hugely flamed for that if I posted it some places, but a quick glance at any big manga store in Japan would show exactly what I mean.) Shoujo series aren't always from the same magazine, but they also tend very heavily towards the sf/f otaku love. When they aren't sf/f, they're usually the same few kinds of vaguely zany or extra emo school romance.

These things are fine and good, but it has created an atmosphere where manga in English really is a genre (or a couple of genres anyway), not an entire medium. And it's a genre designed to appeal to otaku in the first blush of their love affair with anime/manga. There's enough momentum right now and enough current fans are recent enough converts that the current industry is easily able to support itself.

But! The current style of translation and to some extent the subject matter are going to send a lot of non-otaku running for the hills. That means other types of manga aren't going to be even commercially viable in English, let alone successful... which means no new fans with new tastes... which means no new manga catering to those tastes... which means no new fans with new tastes... You get the idea.

So I don't think it's just that they're taking their cue from the loudest fandoms. I think it's that a habit of doing that somewhat in the past has led to a situation where they can't do anything else. Before, no one knew what manga were. Now, when snobby adults are finally getting into graphic novels (no, seriously, every Real Literature bookstore in NYC is overflowing with the likes of Persepolis), everyone "knows" that manga are for teenage sf/f fans with low standards for prose.

(Rant rant rant rant! ;D)

My personal view is that the solution is for scanlators to stop ripping off Shounen Jump authors (whose work is totally going to get translated anyway) and start cultivating new English speaking audiences for manga. Unfortunately, my impression is that most scanlators really only do it for a couple of years and are all the same kind of new fans who are desperate to fit into the otaku community by doing the most impressive Naruto speed scan or some BL too porny even for the publishers that specialize in translating that.

Scanlating older series would require a few hundred bucks of shipping and yahoo auctions fees if they're out of print and a still pretty decent outlay of cash even if they aren't. Josei tends to cost more in the first place because it's published in larger volumes on nicer paper, and places that carry Japanese language manga in the US don't tend to have it (or anything weird or from a non-standard publisher, actually). And if you do scanlate these things, you get very little attention, very little financial support, very few offers of help... I guess I can't entirely blame people for their lack of interest.

But I think the number one culprit is that most scanlating is done by people whose language skills aren't so hot. They may or may not produce a good product in English, but they're not fluent enough to easily deal with importing manga themselves or reading the kind of blogs/magazines/books/whatever they'd need to to figure out what less mainstream authors they should check out. Lots of them could probably translate harder, weirder series, but someone would have to select the series for them and send them scans. (Most of the scanlation groups that do cover older series, especially older shoujo series, seem to have decided on the project because they found scans online. It's rarely a matter of actively going out and looking for a classic series they already know they want to do.)

Maybe, now that I think about it, what's really missing from manga fandom is manga blogs written by bilingual fans who could read a wide range of manga in Japanese, write beautifully in English, and let everyone else know what they're missing.

(The manga blogs I've looked at are great, but they are often written by monolingual English speakers reviewing new US releases. The blogs I've seen by native Japanese speakers who read really interesting stuff usually have about one post a year because it's that hard for the blogger to compose nice-sounding prose in English.)

I keep thinking I should scan some samples of my collection and do a blog on just how diverse manga are or something. (Or post somewhere like scans_daily? Do they have much manga?) My Japanese isn't anywhere near good enough for the type of blog I'd like to see, but it would be a start.

***

Oh, and the difficulty thing specifically: I've seen a few series that people are interested in but don't attempt to scanlate because they're freakin' hard. I don't think that's most of it though. There are whole magazines full of easy stories that no one ever touches. (Mystery Bonita!) I think it's lack of access to the physical volumes, lack of access to scans, and lack of knowledge about what's out there that determines what projects people take on. (I'm sure someone has attempted Hellsing, for example, and that's a pain in the ass to read. No furigana. Lots of gazillion-kanji Christian jargon. But it's also famous and popular.)

*cough* But enough of my ranting.

*grins* No, go on, tell me what you really think.

That's definitely a thought I've had before, though, about the cookie-cutter genres. And I do have to wonder what will happen when this fandom wave collapses. *envisions a scrabbling, eleventh hour rush for alternatives, kind of like the alternative-fuel scrabbling*

That's also a really good point about the basic availability. It feels like the pipeline is less tenuous, now, but it isn't really is it? We all still rely on world of mouth, and those comparatively few fans who have acquired enough reading skill in Japanese to go looking for the Next Big Thing, and the charity of strangers with scanners.

:D *cough* Yes, well.

I think there may already be a bit of that going on. Matt Thorn's blog post from a while ago was commenting on the perception that manga publishers are having a harder time than before.

Yeah, pretty much. The few really old series I've seen serious interest in are all things like Rose of Versailles that were written up quite a while ago in Manga, Manga and Dreamland Japan and other influential English language books on manga. I think people would be perfectly happy to read other sorts of series (though someone who's currently into Fushigi Yuugi probably isn't going to go for a 4koma comic strip about being a middle-aged office lady or that Jeeves & Wooster manga adaptation--I know I wouldn't have), but it's hard to find those things. If they're commercially translated, they probably cost twice as much as the standard stuff without being obviously 10 times better. If they're scanlated, they get lost among all the zillions of other scanlations. The total volume of translation is really high, but it still tends to sort itself into these narrow little genres.

...It probably also doesn't hurt that a lot of scanlation groups demand that you debind in order to provide prettier scans. No one is going to debind some out-of-print 70s shoujo title, especially if they had to import it from Japan.

The other thing is that I think we do get a lot of the Next Big Thing series now, which gives this false sense that you can get "anything" now where you could get "nothing" ten years ago. The stuff we really miss out on is niche market manga, the midlist, and classics from the 70s and 80s. (And unfortunately, that covers all josei, good and bad, and basically everything that deals with adult women in an interesting way.)

I do see a little bit of interest in less standard things from the BL fans, but aestheticism seems to be mostly inactive right now (speaking of the sort of resources I think anime/manga fandom could use more of!), and the scanlation fandom is all about very recent titles or doujinshi of more famous things. There totally are series that have developed, three-dimensional characters, and there are even some series that have developed characters who are supposed to read as actual gay men (it's not common, but it certainly happens now and then). They're just not popular (or even known) among people doing scanlations.

Lots of people have attempted Hellsing. The complete series is available in scanlation, done by a patchwork of different groups, as one would give up or disband and another would step in (or, in a couple of cases, form out of thin air) to pick up where they left off.

/drive-by trivia

*claps hands* Yes, this! The influence fandoms have on each other fascinates me, and I've been watching, albeit from the outside, the current of anime/manga fans toward (East Asian) RPF and boy-band fandom. A lot of the fan-culture there is clearly coming from the original East Asian fandoms, and watching the re-negotiation of forms as fans from a Western context take it up has been very interesting.

And that living up to it is another area of inertia, isn't it? Kind of like what I was mentioning further down to someone about the drive among a/m fans to find each other and congregate. It got its urgency ten, fifteen years back from the dearth of fellow fans, but now there are tons of us all over and yet there's still that drive and assumption of insularity. I think people carry the definitions they learn when they're beginning fans for a long, long time.

It got its urgency ten, fifteen years back from the dearth of fellow fans, but now there are tons of us all over and yet there's still that drive and assumption of insularity.

That's a very interesting point. I keep seeing people worrying that the OTW isn't anime-fandom-friendly enough, and I wonder if that's part of the reason why. Not that we're perfect by any means, but I've seen a lot more complaints that people assumed we were unfriendly until they found out otherwise than that they were turned away by specific things we did. I wonder if maybe there's a sense that anybody who says they're "fans" or "fandom" and who doesn't clearly cater just to anime/manga fandom must be anti-anime/manga fandom by default.

I think there's definitely a dove-tailing of insularity and, among those who have broader fandom contacts, a degree of justified resentment, these two combining to produce a level of knee-jerk suspicion that may take some work to overcome. I think this is what I've been groping after, whenever I talk with Cathexys about the need to do outreach/publicizing *now* and why it isn't going to work if the OTW projects wait for the a/m connection to happen organically. There's such a blithe assumption of hermetically sealed fandom boundaries, coupled with a circle-the-wagons mentality, I think it will take active measures to overcome it.

You know, I was resistant in the past to the idea of doing a lot of aggressive outreach, but I think you've convinced me. I still have no idea of how to do outreach, of course...

*thoughtful* One of my dwircle had a suggestion a few weeks back, actually. She said that it would probably be useful to hit up the old single-fandom archives for the big gateway fandoms like Gundam Wing and Weiss Kreuz and Sailor Moon, and contact the high-output, big name writers to see if they'd like to maybe archive with AO3. A lot of those writers went on to be influential in other fandoms, and have a cross-fandom following. I know (from experience ^_^) that there's a warm, fuzzy feeling from being particularly invited to take part in something. That could lead to good publicity.

Gundam Wing might be an especially good candidate, seeing as the gwaddiction.com site was recently hacked and virused, and people might be looking for a more attentive place to archive their old stuff.

Now, this also depends on cleaning up the styling of the site to be IE compliant. I know Coyo (good target, big following all over the map, user name of ciceqi) was saying she'd be waiting to take a look until the site worked in her preferred browser. *rueful* Can't blame her. She doesn't want to be a beta-tester, and I imagine most people don't. But if that can be done, I think it would be useful to look for a few invite targets like that.

Mods of the big, central comms could be another.

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The difference between manga and comics

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