that anime and manga rant
About a month ago, I had a talk with VG about these alleged “western mangaka”, which are people from America or Europe who want to become manga artists even if they’re not Japanese. Now, this could seem like a choice of life like any other, and I’d like to make clear that I’m not saying they shouldn’t be allowed to become mangaka if they want to; what I’m questioning is the whole line of thought behind this choice.
As one might expect, most of these people have been reading manga since their childhood or youth, liked a few select series and then wanted to emulate their favorite authors by drawing with their style. This clearly explains why these “artists” seldom to never come to develop their own style.
One could say it’s just their way to give credit to that particular artist, much like fan art, but fan artists are not going to get a living from their creations as long as they keep working on derivative art. These other ones have as their greatest aspiration to get paid for their work, and when they do they’re stealing someone else’s talent.
On this same line, I think that the whole western mangaka business is about stealing Japanese culture. In Japan, manga is not a recent fad; the first examples of manga can be traced back to the 19th century with Hokusai. As of now, manga is an essential part of their culture; think that the first examples of pizza are almost contemporary to Hokusai’s manga to get an idea of how important can 150 years be. But while pizza began spreading worldwide in the late 19th century, modern manga began to be translated and sold outside of Japan only about thirty years ago. Not only that, but manga is also strictly tied to Japanese culture and traditions, thus making impossible for westerners to make “real” manga as they lack the necessary references to appeal to the public in the first place. Then, if they only want to use a manga-like drawing style to make comics to be sold in America and Europe, they should reflect more about their choice.
For example, some weeks ago I saw the first number of this new comic drew by an Italian girl. It had this manga-like style with dull lineart and ugly drawings, and this cover which was made of a badly digital-colored picture with the title in Monotype Corsiva. As you can imagine, the fact someone actually thought of publishing her work felt like an insultment to me. Not only it had as much quality as a thirteen-years-old’s first attempt with comics, it was almost as if she was using a random manga style to be as hip and trendy as possible.
What I’m saying could work with anything, of course. If some Russian wrote a great comic and everybody started to emulate him it would really be the same, but since here we’re talking about manga, here’s it.
The worst thing is that these western mangaka could actually be decent comic artists if they bothered to think about their work and developed their own style, but no, they want to live in someone else’s shadow and in another culture’s shadow, unable to understand that what they’re actually doing is nothing short of insulting their pet authors.
Will post new artworks later.
I’ve never seen this matter by this point of view. If someone wants to draw emulating japanese manga style i don’t see the problem… but i’ve never thinked about publishing this kind of comics too.
Personally, when i draw, i tend to do it in manga and anime style… and actually i love do it in this way.
Yesterday i started drawing my personal comic, but after reading this post all my certainties vanished °A°
I don’t want to upset japanese culture D:
Kuroda_Taiki, February 7, 2009 - 9:43 pm
See, it’s really more of a fad than an actual choice. You see Japanese stuff, you think it’s cool, you end up drawing like that without thinking how you do want to draw. That’s ok if you’re thirteen or fourteen, but believe me, it’s not if you’re like twenty and the dream of your life keeps being becoming a mangaka only because you’re stuck with a style you’ve not had the chance to think about.
dubiousdisc, February 7, 2009 - 10:55 pm
Is ever the same…People prefere don’t think and copy things that other people have made, than do things by themselves.
ç_ç
SanBlue, February 8, 2009 - 3:44 pm
Hello, I’m a random visitor who sometimes is come here and on ATP too… I liked your talk, it is very similiar to what I think about Japanese art and artists, so I just want to expose my opinion. Before beginning I want you to know that 1-2 years ago I was like the people you talk about.
In my opinion, everybody is able to draw in Japanese-like style (I don’t like to call it manga, I often call manga “fumetto” in Italian, it’s the same thing…), it is simplier than the real human figure and you as artist surely know this. I study art too, but I realized how hard is not to draw the faces making them look all the same just one or two years ago, and I’m still having troubles to give to every person different traits.
Kids aren’t able to draw people different between themselves unless changing hair color, haircut, etc. … This is the same mistake of most of the Japanese artists who draws manga… But if you like that way to draw, go on, you’re the first one who have to feel ok with it
And, about the style I don’t totally agree with you. Emulate other people’s style is hard, everyone has his way to move the pencil, to press it, etc. (but is possible) so everybody at the end has is own style… Maybe they won’t try ever to draw in their spontaneous way, but with the time the style they try to emulate will become their natural style…
However isn’t strange see people copying style of other people they like, this happens not only in art and I don’t really see anything bad in this if just taking “ispiration”. Just, don’t emulate a people in everything.. this woul really be live in another people’s shadow
Clara, February 8, 2009 - 7:27 pm
Hi there :)
It’s not about how hard is to draw manga, also because usually manga artists come out of art schools and are perfectly able to make realistic drawings. It’s that behind their comics there’s a lot of artistic research and not just “woah this is cool I’m going to do it too”.
As a (wannabe?) artist, I know that emulating, especially when referring to comic styles, is thousands of times easier than developing your own way to draw. You say that it’s about how they draw them, but if you’ve been at it for long enough you will also be able to understand how a certain style was attained and emulate it with ease. Think of animated movies, there’s dozens of animators behind every movie and each one of them has to use the same style. Obviously this isn’t the only way they can draw with. In my opinion, drawing styles are but a medium in both comics and animation; you can either choose the one you think would be more suitable for your story, changing your way to draw throughout your works as your stories change, or stick to only one style and keep stylistic unity in all of your works.
As for the inspiration part I agree with you in that there’s nothing bad in taking something out from other people’s works, either in the drawing style or in the stories; just not in that way, being able to only use one style which is not even yours.
dubiousdisc, February 8, 2009 - 8:12 pm
Hmmm, maybe you don’t know this, but at the newsagent’s they’re selling a magazine which is about how to draw manga and anime .—-.
Stefano, February 10, 2009 - 6:16 pm
I knew that, and this doesn’t help either to disprove what I’ve said about that being a fad D:
dubiousdisc, February 10, 2009 - 8:56 pm
Concordo con te in quanto hai detto….penso comunque che se uno parte con la mentalità giusta, imitare gli altri può essere un modo per iniziare ad avere il proprio stile personale, basta non fissarsi e cercare di personalizzare un po’, no? (mi viene molto più comodo usare l’italiano eeeh XD)
Deoxys, February 11, 2009 - 4:13 pm
nessun problema :)
sì, l’imitazione all’inizio non è una cattiva idea, solo che appunto devi partire con “vediamo se ci riesco anche io” e non con “disegnerò per sempre così”. :B
dubiousdisc, February 11, 2009 - 4:35 pm