Etruscan pointing me at this documentary, Manga Mad (fairly NSFW):

Ah, manga.

I suppose, after writing way too many posts about comics in a row, it may have been remiss of me not to mention it.
I’ve always viewed it a little nervously over my shoulder. Why? Because usually it’s what’s at my back when I’m trying to find a trade paperback. For several rows. Of coyly grinning lady-men reclined in draped repose. Lurid, big-eyed, cotton-candy-haired women with cat ears and maid’s outfits.
Why so much of it? Just ask former Waldenbook’s employee and thieving liability (and thank you for the spoils, SIR!), Franklin Mint: “Shit sells, son!”

In Japan, a manga is generally published serially in fat weekly editions with many other manga serials in a predominately black and white pulp form as opposed to American comics series which are generally printed monthly (this “generally” brought to you by Frank Miller, you DOPE!) in color, sometimes on glossy stock that is usually on 8.5” x 11”.

As a decidedly American-style comics fan, I’ve generally stayed away from those aisles. Don’t get me wrong, though! I certainly like me my Sandland, I buy me my one edition of Lone Wolf and Cub a year, and I certainly treasure my copy of Project X: Nissin Cup Noodle!

Hell, you shoulda seen me standing in the middle one of the biggest “boy love” manga sections in Aomori City.

Mizuki: “What is that baka gaijin, doing, Riko?”
Riko: “I don’t know. He’s just been standing there giggling like a schoolgirl for over an hour.”
Mizuki: “Should we make out?”
Riko: “OK!”

[hot girl-on-girl snogging]

Keep in mind, this was the same day that I gifted my host family’s 10-year-old son with a copy of Batman #608. I was told that he was a big fan of comics and, as it turns out, he was decidedly not thrilled by my hokey, dinky 30 pages of glossy left-to-right American bullshit. I mean, come ON, that was the first episode of the Hush series! Jeff Loeb writing, Jim Lee drawing – are you kidding me? Come on, kid, that’s the best we GOT! Come on! COME ON!

Well, it’s pretty understandable, really: manga it ain’t, and manga he loved. Well, he liked it. There are people in Japan who LOVE their comics. And I think this is one of the reasons that America, by and large, views manga a bit… askance.

Love, it seems, turns to obsession very quickly in Japan. Obsession is certainly one point where I think American comics and Japanese comics vary but I think it’s because Japan is just more obsession friendly. For every subculture and fad from America, there is a vibrant revitalization of it in Japan by people who apparently have a lot of money, a lot of free time, and also, not a lot of inhibition.
Manga has the Otaku, an entire subculture of men (mostly) that even Japanese accuse of “living in mom’s basement and having racy sexual obsessions.” They eat, breathe, and sleep manga, anime, and similar hoohah. At the same time, there’s the cosplayers, women (mostly) who dress up in elaborate and labor-intensive handmade costumes of their favorite manga characters. How can a society so terrified of “losing face in public” be so willing to dress up as a prepubescent-cat-schoolgirl-hooker-witch and pose for the camera phones of horny pervs? A mystery!

One interesting point that Manga Mad brings up is that western comics are often a counter-culture while manga is very much in the mainstream in Japan and that there is a genre and style for everyone from little kid to a teenager who wants to see a motherfucker get chopped in half with a katana to a businessman. A businessman who might work all week long. With no family. And not real time for dating. Who has… needs.
Enter the tentacles.
Manga, as a medium, has a much more liberal stance on what would be considered pornography -nay, child pornography– than here in Da States. These porno/erotic comics known vaguely as “eros comics” come in every shade of the rainbow and so to lump them all in with tentacle rape, well, that would just be unconscionable.

I think, if there were one sticking point in the craw of the western comics reader, it is the kiddie porn aspect of manga. The 12 year old schoolgirl shit. Yeah. We’ve got… a… a thing… about that stuff  ’round these here parts. And apparently the Japanese have a thing for it too… a big, throbbing, turgid… thing.

It does occur to a ‘body who is mulling over this eros manga thing: considering the popularity of cos-play, it’s  ironic that you’ve got a nation full of women demanding to be fetishized and a nation full of men wanting to festishize them… what’s the problem here folks?

Now, look, fair’s fair: American comics have a, shall we say, skewed, view of women as well.

However, over here we have the common decency to simply KILL THEM AND STUFF THEM IN REFRIGERATORS OH GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH US WE HAVE NO WAY OF COPING WITH OUR INNER MISOGYNIST!

[ahem]

Now, one of the main points of Manga Mad is that there is a huge gap in what the Japanese are holding inside and their actual behavior and by venting their violent or sexually voracious and/or deviant tendencies “into” manga, they keep it out of society at large and thus keep their crime rate down.

To quote KahrlZero: “Maaayyyybe. Protection from the real world is big medicine over there.”

Says who? Says this guy pitchin’ a book on The Daily Show yesterday, serendipity:

There is no mention, of course, in Manga Mad of Japan’s stupendous suicide rate.

But, all this hooting and hollerin’ aside, at the end of the day? Manga? It’s OK. I’ve personally got no really beef with it. I don’t read Superman comics, I don’t read Naruto. I don’t read Spiderman, I don’t read Binbou Shimai Monogatari. It’s no big political issue with me; it’s just not my cup of tea with a tentacle shaped like a penis in it.

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