[OT] Potter manga-fied, mangaka, fanfic cliches, etc.

[Firebolt]

No: HPFGUIDX 770

> -Ron decides he's gay, gets various parts of his body pierced, and 
has a boyfriend named Nicky. 

>Why Nicky? (btw, LOL.)

Er, the first one who did this was FuBar, an author who had a reputation for writing vulgar satire...somehow, she accumulated a bunch of FuBaresque authors who imitated her writing. And they all called Ron's boyfriend 'Nicky'. Oh, well...apparently, FuBar has reformed, but I was on vacation when it happened, so I don't know.

<So, fill me in: anime is the Japanese animation, but what is the comic book
equivalent called?  Is that also called anime?  Shouldn't it be called
illustre? What are the artists called?  Animartists?  Anime illustrators? >

<The "comic book" equivalents are called "manga".  However, unlike U.S.
comic books they aren't short fifteen page things and are rarely (if
ever) in color.  They're basically graphic novels.  As for what the
creators are called. . . I'm not sure.  I usually call them manga artists
or illustrators or something like that.  They might have a term in
Japanese that I don't know though.>

Manga (pronounced 'mahn-ga', and there is no plural so don't even try - sorry, touchy subject) are basically small, graphic paperbacks, if you will...200 pages is a good estimate. Each volume has anywhere from 5-7/8 chapters, which generally first come out in weekly installments in an anime magazine - Shounen Jump and Shoujo Jump are the most famous - before being collected into the manga. Manga artists are called Mangaka.

Or at least, they were. Last summer, my brother was manga-shopping in Tokyo (he's an otaku/manga expert even by Japanese standards - scary, no?), and when he asked a clerk where the manga were, the guy gave him a blank look for a second, and said, 'Manga?' in a sort of 'What are you talking about voice?'. Then he smiled, and said, 'Ah, Komiku!' and promptly led my bro to the manga section. 

<One of the interesting things about anime is there are so many different
genre's of anime.  There's the traditional shonen (guys) / shoujo (girls)
anime distinction, but there's also anime aimed at different age groups. 
Card Captor Sakura (now airing as Cardcaptors -- edited of course -- on
Kids WB) is shoujo but it's also more for children than adults (although,
that doesn't stop adults like me from adoring it).  An anime series like
Marmalade Boy is shoujo, but as it's a high school romance (rather soap
opera-ish) it's more for teenagers than children.  Pokemon is probably
considered shonen, but it's for younger kids, whereas a shonen title like
Ninja Scroll (one of the few anime's I absolutely despised) is for adults
(or maybe older teenage boys).  And then there's the "creators on crack"
type of metaphysical questioning anime's like Evangelion, Serial
Experiments Lain and Ghost in the Shell. . . . >

Incidentally, even if 'shounen' is for guys and 'shoujo' is for girls, each genre is perfectly cross-gender - I like both. Incidentally, I happen to be a very big fan of Card Captor Sakura, and it is not just for kids - the series is a lot lighter than, say, X/1999, done by the same mangaka team, and which was very good but very violent - but there are a bunch of homosexual characters from the start, people do get wounded with actual blood, I get the distinct impression that the story is getting progressively darker (I'm on manga volume 4 at the moment, so I'm sort of guessing), etc. Oh, and it has a bunch of rabid college-age fans, from what I can tell. Actually, this is beginning to sound a bit like HP - minus the homosexual part (although that's open to debate...).

<And of course, I must mention the *master* of Japanese animation: Hayao
Miyazaki.  He's frequently called the Disney of Japan (and his plots are
*far* superior to Disney's IMO) and until recently his work held the
Japanese box office record (inexplicably, Titanic beat it -- although,
Titanic surpassed many far superior works in the US too. . .).>

My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Princess Mononoke are his most famous movies in the States, I think. Actually, Disney bought the international rights to Mononoke so that they could shelve it for three years - they didn't want the competition.

~Firebolt



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