US, Japan take different approaches to animated storytelling
At their core, American comics have always been fundamentally different from Japan’s manga, but both struggle and succeed when it comes to various aspects of storytelling.
“The cultures are just so different,” said Topham Hayes, manager of Big Planet Comics. “They are pretty dissimilar in the way that they approach story and the way they approach character. I don’t care where it comes from, I just want a good story and good art.”
Hayes has been a Big Planet Comics’ employee for 23 years now, and in that time he has seen traditional American comics and manga evolve side by side.
“There’s [still] the obvious stereotypes of a lot of manga,” said Hayes. “The big eyes, the speed lines, the black and white artwork. Most of it reads from right to left.”
He remembers picking up his first manga back in the early 80s. Even then, he was intrigued by the drawing styles and the different approaches that authors and illustrators would take with their books.
“One of my favorite comics ever happens to be a manga,” said Hayes. “A Bride’s Story is one of the best comics of any kind.”
Character development found in manga is often at a much more detailed level than in American comic stories.
“The Japanese have a huge advantage in that because many of their stories run in long form,” said Hayes. “They can focus on the aspects of a story a lot more than a monthly comic can.”
[caption id=”attachment_4278" align=”aligncenter” width=”300"]
Katsuhiro Otomo’s “Akira” is still one of the most popular manga series in the U.S.
(Photo by Ulysses Munoz for the Public Asian)[/caption]
Manga has also been especially good about creating a wide variety of characters that includes well developed female roles, which is still not found as frequently in American comics, said Peter Casazza, the owner of Big Planet Comics.
“There’s a lot of girl manga,” he said. “There weren’t a lot of female characters and superheroes in American comics in general until the last 20 years. In Europe and in Japan, everyone would read manga. It wasn’t like in the United States where it just became about superheroes and about boys.”
In the early 2000s, manga became more popular in the U.S., and publishers rushed to recruit female artists and writers to capitalize on a market that had never before been a priority, according to Casazza.
“Now you see a lot of girl creators doing stuff about high school, doing stuff about their lives and doing stuff that they would want to read,” he said. “[Guys] are still kind of sexist about what they read. You still aren’t going to see a guy reading a Wonder Woman comic on the subway.”
Though manga has offered a greater diversity of female characters compared to American comics, minority characters are still rarely seen.
When they are, “usually it’s done pretty badly, and still kind of racist to a certain degree,” said Casazza.
“If you just write comics for white boys, you’re not reaching everyone who’s interested in them,” he said. “If you bring in characters from different backgrounds, and more importantly, writers who have that experience who can write in a realistic way, it’s better for everybody.”
