mello hates you ([info]telophase) wrote in [info]manga_talk,
@ 2005-07-20 15:48:00
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Entry tags:analysis, essay, links

Some links, to start off the community
Now that I've got the community guidelines hammered at least somewhat into shape, although still dauntingly long because I try to cover every eventuality EVAR I guess I'll start off with a post that actually features content, of a sort, other than community guidelines.

Most of the members of this community already know about my series of manga essays and posts about manga, but in case you haven't run across them, there's an index here. I have links to other manga essays I've found on LJ in my memories, and in case LJ's memory function stops working again, I thought I'd list what I have so far here.

If there is a specific series named, there are potential spoilers for it in the text, but the authors are pretty good at mentioning that in the first couple of paragraphs.

coffee_and_ink: Reading manga

coffee_and_ink: [Manga] Time and Memory 1: Tsubasa

coffee_and_ink: [Manga] Time and Memory 1b: Tsubasa

coffee_and_ink: [Manga] Flipped vs. unflipped

coffee_and_ink: [Manga] Openings: Kazuya Minekura, Saiyuki (1/3)

coffee_and_ink: [Manga] Openings: Kazuya Minekura, Saiyuki (2/3)

coffee_and_ink: [Manga] Openings: Kazuya Minekura, Saiyuki (3/3)

coffee_and_ink: [Anime, Manga] Gender issues in Tite Kubo's Bleach

coffee_and_ink: Feminism and manga & anime: A personal history (1/3)

harlockhero: Why Comics are Comics, Pt. 1: Panelsmithing

louiselux: Saiyuki vol 7 : Gojyo and Sanzo

_ri: Part 01: Falling of the Angel (Berserk)

_ri: Part 02: Ice Queen (Monster) (2/5?)

snowyheart: Grid Structure Essay

scans_daily: FMA Manga, part two. (discussion on flipping manga in the comments)


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[info]hatchet_hands
2005-07-22 12:23 am UTC (link)
Those are some really intriguing essays. I was just reading through Flipped vs. Unflipped and I realised that, when Western artists create their own manga, they must be undure of whether to create left-to-right or right-to-left, since some manga publishers (i.e, Seven Seas) seem to be publishing right-to-left: even though their creations are American, written first in english, which you'd think would be better off the other way around. It's causing a confusing precedent.

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[info]telophase
2005-07-22 01:51 am UTC (link)
There's a lot of that online - I see amateur manga on DeviantArt and around the web originally in English that reads RtL, most of which with little arrows telling you which way it should read, and a few works I've put up have gathered comments of not being sure if they should read it RtL or LtR. (My thinking there is that if it takes more than a few seconds to figure out which direction they're supposed to be reading, then I haven't laid the page out correctly.)

I just did some poking about the Seven Seas website and found this thread on their forums that talks about why they chose to publish RtL - short version, is that manga is read RtL in almost every country out there and they wanted to sell works throughout the world. I don't agree that OEL manga should therefore be RtL, but hey - looks like a grand experiment and we'll see if it works.

As an odd aside - I've got a Japanese marker book, a reference book for hands, and a couple of photographic reference books form Japan, all pf which are in teh original Japanese and are published LtR, instead of the more usual RtL. I wodner why that is -- were they deliberately doing it to be able to translate and expand into LtR countries without a problem? Hm.

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[info]rachelmanija
2005-07-22 02:21 am UTC (link)
Wow, that first guy in the thread sounds like a real asshole. But I still think it's weird to publish OEL RtL.

Also, from what I hear about Seven Seas, I don't think they're likely to make much money overseas, because it sounds like their manga kind of sucks.

Finally, you do sometimes see LtR writing in Japan, and what with unflipped manga being published here, perhaps in a few generations everyone everywhere will read LtR, RtL, and up to down without even blinking. And then we'll have world peace and a big party with cotton candy.

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[info]telophase
2005-07-22 03:27 am UTC (link)
I didn't even really read that first guy's post after I established that he was asking about the RtL thing: my eyes glazed over and I went "tl;dr".*

I've flipped through some SS manga, but it didn't really strike me as anything that appealed to me.


*"too long; didn't read."

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[info]hatchet_hands
2005-07-22 04:03 am UTC (link)
I'm currently illustrating LtR, because...because I'm a westerner, I guess. I'd hate to think that my manga might be disadvantaged merely based on its orientation, though. Someohow, english speaking companies deliberately publishing RtL comes across as a bit too 'cute'.

I heard that Japan employed some LtR publishing practices depending on the distribution of the product, even though they were still in japanese. I've heard this in terms of chinese publishing, as well...some sort of aesthetic western influence, maybe? Must confuse the hell out of the readers in those countries...!

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[info]telophase
2005-07-22 04:08 am UTC (link)
That's true - I forgot that Korean reads LtR. With the manwha indutry, there's probably lots of potential for reference books like I've got. Not knowing how to read the language isn't much of a problem for the ref books - you just miss the intros and chapter titles and the rest is pictures.

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