Quote:
Originally Posted by MMM
It is a can of worms in that the definition of "manga" and "anime" (manga especially) remains a hot debate among the few that care about stuff like that. Japanophiles like myself do not call anything not written for a Japanese audience in Japanese "manga" where Western fans of the style want to be able to call the comics they make manga, too.
Simply put, I don't think it takes a Japanese "hand" to make Japanese-"style" artwork...obviously not. People from Korea to Oklahoma have spent a long time imitating and perfecting the "style" of manga.
(As an aside, I put "style" in quotes because there is this sense there is a singular manga "style", which couldn't be further from the truth. It would be like saying all American movies are in the same "style". Sure there are a lot of big-budget action movies that get a lot of attention, but the majority of American movies are not big-budget action features, just as the majority of Japanese manga is not big-eyed nymph sprite harems.)
But the artwork is only a part of manga. There is also the story...and the culture that makes that story work. I read manga to get that unadultrated peek into the window of Japanese culture.
Right now I am reading BLACK JACK, and so much of the short stories are dripping in culture. It's about a renegade doctor who actually tells his patients they are going to die. This is normal in the US, but in Japan is a taboo. He is lambasted by other doctors for doing so.
So you can say folklore follows the same universal themes, and that might be true, but I am talking about the details. Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and there is no reason for English-speakers to describe their English comics as "manga" in English.
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So it's purely semantics, a way of categorizing.