Original English-language manga or OEL manga is a term commonly used to describe comic books or graphic novels whose language of original publication is English and which are created by comic artists and writers heavily influenced by Japanese anime and manga trends.
The validity of the term is contentious, since manga is by definition a loan word referring to Japanese-produced comics and most series marketed as OEL manga are produced in the west. Though some manga have in fact been first published in English, these series are few and far between. Comics sold as OEL manga generally feature an artistic style characterized by large, expressive eyes, exaggerated hairstyles and body types, and other stylistic features found in popular manga, as well as usage of methods of storytelling and visual mores heavily influenced by Japanese culture and expression.
Manga, literally translated, means "whimsical pictures". The word first came into common usage in the late 18th century with the publication of such works as Suzuki Kankei's "Mankaku zuihitsu" (1771) and Santo Kyoden's picturebook "Shiji no yukikai" (179 cool , and in the early 19th century with " (1814) and the celebrated Hokusai manga containing assorted drawings from the sketchbook of the famous ukiyo-e artist Hokusai.[2] However, giga (literally "funny pictures" wink , especially chōjū jinbutsu giga (鳥獣人物戯画,, chōjū jinbutsu giga? literally "funny pictures of animals and humans" wink , drawn in the 12th century by various artists, contain many manga-like qualities such as emphasis on story and simple, artistic lines.
Japanese wood block illustration from 19th centuryModern manga developed from a mixture of woodblock printed books and pictures with foreign art movements. When the United States began trading with Japan, Japan entered a period of rapid modernization and globalization. Thus, they imported foreign artists to teach their students things such as line, form and color, which were never concentrated on in ukiyo-e as the idea behind the picture was normally considered more important[citation needed]. Manga in this period was known as Ponchi-e (Punch-picture) and, like its British counterpart Punch magazine, mainly depicted humor and political satire in a short, 1- or 4-picture format.
During the late Meiji period to the period before WW II, notable mangaka include Rakuten Kitazawa and Ippei Okamoto. Rakuten Kitazawa trained under Frank A. Nankivell, an Australian artist, and joined Jiji Shimpo newspaper company after being invited by Yukichi Fukuzawa. After that, Rakuten published such famous comic strips as Tagosaku to Mokubē no Tōkyō-Kenbutsu (田吾作と杢兵衛の東京見物,, Tagosaku to Mokubē no Tōkyō-Kenbutsu? "Tagosaku and Mokube's Sightseeing in Tokyo" wink (1902) and Haikara Kidorō no Shippai (灰殻木戸郎の失敗,, Haikara Kidorō no Shippai? "The Failures of Kidoro Haikara" wink (1902). Ippei Okamoto is the founder of Nippon Mangakai, the first cartoonist's association in Japan. His manga manbun works, such as Hito no Isshō (人の一生,, Hito no Isshō? "A life of a man" wink (1921), had a major influence on contemporary mangaka and became prototypes of later fiction-based manga.[3]
[edit] Osamu Tezuka
Osamu Tezuka's manga show influence of American comicsManga spread by the Showa Modan culture in around 1930. Manga in this era was made from low-priced paper and ink. It was sold not in bookstores, but in toy shops for children. The Imperial Japanese Army came to influence Manga strongly when the militarism of Japan strengthened in around 1940. (For instance, Norakuro is a popular poetic justice manga written by Suihō Tagawa in 1931.) When World War II ended, the United States culture was introduced into Japan again. Osamu Tezuka was influenced by Fleischer Studios and Walt Disney's styles, and developed the cartoon to Manga. The story and the tragedy were introduced by Tezuka Osamu. [4] He had a strong influence on a lot of Mangaka. In around 1950, many young Mangaka came to the apartment Tokiwa-sō where Tezuka lived. The residents included Ishinomori Shōtarō, Akatsuka Fujio, and Fujiko Fujio.
Tezuka introduced film-like storytelling and characters in comic format in which each short film-like episode is part of a larger story arc. The only text in Tezuka's comics was the characters' dialogue and this lent the comics a cinematic quality. Tezuka also adopted Disney-like facial features where a character's eyes, mouth, eyebrows and nose are drawn in a very exaggerated manner to add more distinct characterization with fewer lines, which made his work popular. This somewhat revived the old ukiyo-e-like tradition where the picture is a projection of an idea rather than actual physical reality.[citation needed] Initially, his comic was published in a children's magazine. Soon, it became a specialized weekly or monthly comic magazine of its own, which is now the foundation of the Japanese comic industry.[citation needed] Tezuka adapted his comic to almost all film genres of the time; his manga series range from action adventure (e.g. Kimba the White Lion, also known as Jungle Emperor Leo) to serious drama (e.g. Black Jack) to science fiction (e.g. Astro Boy, Ambassador Magma), horror (e.g. Dororo, The Three-eyed One.) Though he is known in the West as a creator of the children's animation Astro Boy, Many of his comics had some very mature and sometimes dark undertones. Most of his comics' central characters had a tragic background. Some criticize Tezuka's extensive use of tragic dramatization in his stories.[citation needed] As the manga generation of children grew up, the market for comics expanded accordingly and manga soon became a major cultural force of Japan. Tezuka also contributed to the social acceptance of manga. His qualification as a medical doctor as well as the holder of Ph.D in medical science and his serious storylines were used to deflect criticism that manga was vulgar and undesirable for children.
[edit] Gekiga
A page from the Marmalade Boy manga, volume 1 (Japanese version)Another important trend in manga was gekiga ("Dramatic Pictures" wink . Between the 1960s and the 1970s, there were two forms of comic serialization. One, the manga format, was based on the sales of anthology magazines which contained dozens of titles. The other, gekiga, was based on a rental format of an individual manga "book" of single title. Manga was based on weekly or biweekly magazine publications, so production was prompt, and the deadline was paramount. Consequently, most manga artists adopted Tezuka's style of drawing, where characters are drawn in a simpler but exaggerated manner, typified by the large round eyes regarded abroad as a defining feature of Japanese comics. In contrast, gekiga typically had more complex and mature story lines, with higher production value per page. For this reason, gekiga was considered to be artistically superior. However, gekiga's rental business model eventually died out in the 1970s, while manga artists significantly improved their graphic quality. Eventually, gekiga was absorbed into manga and now is used to describe a manga style which does not use cartoon-like drawing. Some examples of the gekiga-style manga are Kamui-den by Shirato Sanpei, Kyojin-no Hoshi by Kawasaki Noboru, Gorgo 13 by Saito Takao, and probably most famous abroad Akira by Ōtomo Katsuhiro.
However, gekiga did not only influence the art style of manga: after the 1970s, more mature-themed pictures and plot lines were used in manga. Many had significant depictions of violence and sexual activity, and were marketed at teenagers: unlike in Tezuka's time, children in the 1970s had more disposable income, so they could directly purchase manga without asking their parents to buy it for them. Thus, manga publishers did not need to justify their products to the parents. Moreover, the dominance of the serialized manga format on a weekly basis meant that manga was increasingly becoming "pulp fiction", with large amounts of violent content and some nudity (especially, although not exclusively, in manga aimed at boys). Representative titles of this genre were Harenchi Gakuen by Gō Nagai and Makoto-chan by Kazuo Umezu, both of which had copious amounts of gore, nudity, and vulgar (often scatological) jokes. Much like in the United States during the Comic book scare in the 40's and 50's, teachers and parents had objections to the content of manga, but unlike the U.S. no attempt was made to create an oversight board like the Comics Code Authority. Interestingly, manga magazines "for children" in the 1970s arguably had more vulgar themes (due to the fact that it was the only major publishing format available), but by the 1980s and 1990s, new magazines catering to teenagers and young adults had come into play.
[edit] Cultural importance
Strip of the yonkoma manga series OL Shinkaron. Common to Japan but rarely localized for other countries, yonkoma closely resemble Western comic strips.Though roughly equivalent to the American comic book, manga holds more importance in Japanese culture than comics do in American culture. In economic terms, weekly sales of comics in Japan exceed the entire annual output of the American comic industry[citation needed]. Additionally, manga and comics in general are more widely consumed among the adult population of Japan than in America, where comic books and animation are traditionally seen as children's medium.[citation needed] Several major manga magazines which contain about a dozen episodes from different authors sell several million copies each per week. Manga is well respected both as an art form and as a form of popular literature, though it has not reached the acceptance level of historically higher art genres such as film or music. However, approval of Hayao Miyazaki's anime and other works of manga are gradually changing the perception of anime and manga, placing them closer to the status of "higher" arts (The film with the all-time highest box office gross in Japan is Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki, with 30.4 billion yen).
Like its American counterpart, some manga has been criticized for being violent or sexual. For example, a number of film adaptations of manga such as Fist of the North Star were rated Restricted or Mature in the United States. However, there have been no official inquiries or laws trying to limit what can be drawn in manga, except for vague decency laws applying to all published materials, stating that "overly indecent materials should not be sold." This freedom has allowed artists to draw manga for every age group and a wide selection of topics.
[edit] Manga format
Manga magazines usually have many series running concurrently with approximately 20–40 pages allocated to each series per issue. These manga magazines, or "anthology magazines", as they are also known (colloquially "phone books" wink , are usually printed on low-quality newsprint and can be anywhere from 200 to more than 850 pages long. Manga magazines also contain one-shot comics and various four-panel yonkoma (equivalent to comic strips). Manga series can run for many years if they are successful. Manga artists sometimes start out with a few "one-shot" manga projects just to try to get their name out. If these are successful and receive good reviews, they are continued.
When a series has been running for a while, the stories are usually collected together and printed in dedicated book-sized volumes, called tankōbon. These are the equivalent of American comic's trade paperbacks. These volumes use higher-quality paper, and are useful to those who want to "catch up" with a series so they can follow it in the magazines or if they find the cost of the weeklies or monthlies to be prohibitive. Recently, "deluxe" versions have also been printed as readers have gotten older and the need for something special grew. Old manga have also been reprinted using somewhat lesser quality paper and sold for 100 yen (about one US dollar) each to compete with the used book market.
Manga are primarily classified by the age and gender of the target audience. In particular, books and magazines sold to boys (shōnen) and girls (shōjo) have distinctive cover art and are placed on different shelves in most bookstores.
Japan also has manga cafés, or manga kissa (kissa is an abbreviation of kissaten). At a manga kissa, people drink coffee and read manga, and sometimes stay there overnight.
The reading direction in a traditional manga.Traditionally, manga are written from top to bottom and right to left, as this is the traditional reading pattern of the Japanese written language. Some publishers of translated manga keep this format, but other publishers flip the pages horizontally, changing the reading direction to left to right, so as not to confuse foreign audiences or traditional comics consumers. This practice is known as "flipping". For the most part, the criticisms suggest that flipping goes against the original intentions of the creator (for example, if a person wears a shirt that reads "MAY" on it, and gets flipped, then the word is altered to "YAM" wink . Another example includes the character Miroku from InuYasha, who has a black hole in his right hand: in the flipped and translated version, dialogue shows him having it in his right palm, but the drawings show it in his left hand. Flipping may also cause oddities with familiar asymmetrical objects or layouts, such as a car being depicted with gas pedal on the left and the brake on the right, or more astute readers may notice that all characters in manga may seem to be left-handed. It should be noted, however, that oddities and disparities between art and dialogue can usually be rectified by editing and proof-reading. The most obvious example of this in manga reproduced for a western audience is to be found in Dark Horse's reproductions of Hiroaki Samura's Blade of the Immortal, where the original sound effects, written text and page layouts are retained from the source material, with individual panels flipped horizontally. It is likely this was done to prevent offense to western readers - as the main character in the book sports a large manji (buddhist swastika, 卍), and simply flipping the book's pages would have resulted in him seeming to sport the nazi emblem.
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