50,000,000 Manga Fans Can't Be Illiterate
Still exhausted from the four-day wedding extravaganza of my
sister-in-law and her husband (congratulations, Fawn and Jim!). I
know I should be writing about
Bill
Jemas and his re-positioning, but I
really don't care: I don't read much Marvel (last Marvel book I
got was the second NXM hardcover), and I don't know that this
restructuring
will really change much. From all accounts, it
still sounds as though the movies will drive much of the content in the
comics.
I
do care about annoying stereotypes about comic books,
however.
Here's a
piece from Slate talking about "Japan's obsession with comics"
(or, "Japan Cliché No. 2: Manga"):
Of all Japan's cultural proclivities, the
ubiquity of manga
(comic books) perhaps puzzles me most. Japan's tightrope formality, its
crushing conformity, its really teeny consumer electronics—these all
make sense in geo-historical context. But I have yet to see an adequate
explanation for why a nation with one of the world's highest literacy
rates would become so obsessed with cartoons.
Yeah, because only illiterates read comics. Gah.
The rest of the article (part of the aptly-named "Tokyo on One
Cliché a Day" series) devotes most of its attention to Japanese
cartoon porn. Given the lazy manner in which the article
generalizes about topics (the author watches three
hentai
anime and concludes that all Japanese men harbor secret schoolgirl-rape
fantasies), I can imagine someone coming away from this piece with the impression
that all Japanese comics and animation are pornographic. From
there, it would only be a short leap to concluding that all Japanese
comics and animation should be banned. After all, everyone knows
that comics are only for children, right? Just ask
Jesus Castillo.
