Talk:Manga/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

65.82.160.xxx changed the first sentence to the following:

Manga (漫画) is the ENGLISH equivalent of screensavers.

OK, I don't know much about Manga and Anime, but I have no clue what you're trying to say here. I've changed it back. --Carey Evans

• • • I detect it as a joke - are computer screen-savers 'irresponsible pictures?'

FIRST, are the Azumanga scanlations OK to link? I express some concern considering the questionable legitimacy of fansubs/scanlations. I know that scanlations are generally accepted as legitimate until a company announces that they've acquired the rights, but never the less, it might be unacceptable for Wikipedia to link to such material of questionable legality (it's certainly illegal in Japan, where the comics are copyrighted).

SECOND, what consists of an online manga (instead of a web comic)? Clearly General Protection Fault is not an online manga, and clearly Megatokyo is. Other currently unlinked manga such as Tsunami Channel and ElderStar are probably under the category of online manga (particularly the former, which I will probably link in the upcoming days), but what about such comics as Strange Candy and Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki?

Clearly there needs to be a standard set as to what is an online manga and what is not? Obviously the online manga must almost certainly not be in a strip format, but what about content or material inside the webcomic/online manga? What about such comics as Weirdism or Something Positive (warning, the latter is not for the easily offended) that aren't in a strip format, but might not be online manga?

(Note to the unobservant: all links, excepting Megatokyo, link to the site of the comic, as they don't have wikipedia entries, and it would be beneficial for other authors to see the comics to make their own decisions on the matter.)

Pipian 06:07 28 May 2003 (UTC)

What about Sinfest?

Lduperval 13:19 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Ideally it would be better to set some sort of standard instead of going right out and saying "This is online manga" and "This is not." I mean, my personal opinion is that Sinfest is one of those that is clearly NOT an online manga, and is rather a webcomic, but it would be nice to agree on a "standard" for what comic would be an online manga and what would not be, so we don't get people putting, for example, Sinfest on this page, when other people disagree on that classification.

Pipian 14:59 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

A view held by some manga fans is that comics that are not published in Japan and aren't produced by Japanese creators shouldn't be called "manga" - by that measure, the most that could be said about comics by western cartoonists, such as most of the webcomics linked from the article, is that they're manga-styled. I think this rule works quite well. I see only two edge cases: 1. comics by Japanese who live in a western country, such as Usagi Yojimbo, whose creator is Japanese-American and lives in USA. 2. comics by western creators which are first published in Japan. I think the label manga applies only to comics originally created for a Japanese audience, so only the latter should be called manga. Adia 19:41, 2003 Aug 10 (UTC)

This of course raises the curious case of Tsunami Channel. The artist is Japanese, lives and makes the comics in Japan, but started them while in college in the US, and he targets the American audience instead of the Japanese audience... Pipian 04:29, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I disagree -- we don't need a "standard" if there isn't one that most people already agree on. It would be better to note that such-and-such is sometimes considered a manga, or better yet, that the definition of "manga" as applies to non-Japanese comics isn't fully agreed on. I imagine there are people who wouldn't call Megatokyo a manga simply because it's not made in Nihon in Nihongo by Nihonjin for Nihonjin. --Aponar Kestrel 21:00, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)

HELP HELP HELP! The use of the word manga seems totally crazy in this article and others. I've seen it used as:

1. A substance noun -- Manga is important to Japanese society.
2. An adjective or noun modifier -- manga magazine, manga book, manga artist.
3. A discrete noun in singular -- His most famous manga is...
4. A discrete noun in plural -- She is the author of many manga.

Does manga mean the medium at large (like the word music), which the first two usages suggest? Or the individual product (like poem), as the second two do? Or both (like film or sculpture or painting)?

And if it does apply to the individual product -- I'm reading a manga, She's written many manga -- is it really anglicized to have the plural and singular of the noun be the same?

Lastly, is it enough of an anglicized term that it doesn't need italics, like pièce de résistance?

Thanks, -- ESP 14:00 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Can't say for sure what the exact definition is and how it can be used, but I've only thought of it as a noun, so the modifiers come into question, particularly "manga book" which I would rephrase (probably) as the Japanese term tankouban (though this would require explanation as the term for the style in which Japanese books are published in general. As for the other three, manga is regularly used in those ways (AFAIK). The word manga is derived from Japanese as well, so there is no plural form (both plural and singular are manga, likewise with anime).

As for how much of an anglicized term it is, I would hesitate on calling it a common word. People in manga fandom often use it, but outside of the subsection of anime fandom that collect the comic books, very few people know of it, so I don't believe it's that common. -- Pipian 16:31 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

For the record: tankoubon (単行本). --Aponar Kestrel 21:00, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)

Consider the word "sheep". Sheep farm. My sheep. I own many sheep. Nonetheless, I mostly agree with Pipian - manga isn't really something that has really captured the attention of the community at large. Not even anime is quite there yet. After all, English already has equivalent terms which don't have any real problems - comics and cartoons. The usage of manga/anime is really something that fans/companies try to utilise to distinguish works of a distinctly non-western style that generally come from Japan. Lenny-au

It is often used like the noun "beer". Like other nouns like "water" and "gold", it is an amount which cannot be divided into smaller parts and cannot be counted. However, you can treat it like a countable noun anyway, and add a different meaning. "Two beer" mean something like "Two glasses of beer", and "a tasty beer" means something like "a tasty beer sort". Similarily, "manga" generally means the medium at large (Manga is important to Japanese society.), but you may also use it to refer to an induvidual product (I'm reading a manga as in I'm reading a manga book).

I'm sorry, no. *Two beer is wrong in English, and doesn't occur; Two beers usually means Two glasses/bottles of beer but may mean Two types of beer. Likewise, A tasty beer may refer either to the type or an individual instantiation thereof -- distinguishing between these probably isn't usually necessary. Likewise, ??I'm reading a manga book sounds redundant to the point of incorrectness: I'd just say I'm reading a manga -- whether I mean I'm reading a [specific] manga I borrowed from my friend or I'm reading a manga [series] by Tanaka Fuyumi. As typically used in English, manga is both mass noun and countable noun, singular and plural. --Aponar Kestrel 21:00, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)

And it is the same in pluralis, because it follows japanese grammar which generally has no plurals of nouns. (Using sentences like "some x", "a-couple-of x", "different x" etc to denote plurals)

Yes, this is correct. "Manga" and "Anime" are both words that are used in English the same way they are used in Japanese. That is to say that all of their forms are the same word and plurality is inferred by context like in the examples above. Personally, I think this is great because it cuts down on having to have a bunch of special pluralized-forms of words and so forth, but that's just my opinion. --Xaliqen 09:52, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, the word 'manga' is used in Japanese to refer both to the art style and to individual instances of it. In fact, much like comics: Peanuts is a comic, and comics are said to have had a golden age around the end of WWII. As for the singular and plural forms being identical, that's a feature of the Japanese language that nouns do not inflect for number, so the plural of manga is, properly, manga.

-- Wtrmute 20:24, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC) That's not a feature; it's a flaw. lysdexia 13:34, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Linguistically, I guess it's a feature... =S Question of definition, anyway...

The list of manga-ka is sorted alphabetically by given name, not family name; is there a reason for this? -- Khym Chanur 08:40, Jan 1, 2004 (UTC)

Since there's been no response, I've gone ahead and re-sorted the manga-ka list by family name. -- Khym Chanur 05:18, Jan 4, 2004 (UTC)

Not everyone pronounces "manga" the same. I made a lil' alteration.

- Drake

That doesn't make it correct, however... RadicalBender 14:14, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The pronunciation parts of this entry aren't even relevant to an Encyclopedia guide on "manga". Furthermore, the SAMPA spelling should provide sufficient pronunciation information if it is needed. Finally, once a word is imported into English, correct pronunciation becomes almost irrelevant. Please note the wide variety of "native speaker" accents around the world - not just USA/England, but India, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and several other countries have distinct accents that are NOT wrong. At any rate, this entry shouldn't devote whole sentences to discussing the "correct" pronunciation of its headword. Very few, if any, other entries do so. Lenny-au

... besides, the SAMPA's arguably wrong anyway. It's actually closer to /maNNa/ in Japanese (or is that just Tokyo-ben?) -- even though most Westerners, myself included, say /maNga/ in English. Removing, on the theory that people are going to mangle words however they please anyway (cf. carry-okie). --Aponar Kestrel 21:00, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)

Vowels should be preserved, pitch, however, not so much. lysdexia 13:34, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"In the 19th century a great many examples of Manga were brought to Europe and influenced popular European artists such as Degas, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec."

I was under the impression that manga in the modern sense got started in the 1960s with Osamu Tezuka, influenced by Western art like Disney's. If this is talking about the old "random pictures" definition mentioned earlier in the article then this sentence needs to be moved closer to it or qualified somehow, rather than after a paragraph on modern manga with no explanation. DopefishJustin

It was not "manga" (I suppose you mean the work Hokusai Manga by Katsushika Hokusai) that influenced them, but ukiyo-e. Katsushika Hokusai was one of the artists that became most influential and well-known, but not for the work Hokusai Manga but rather for all his woodblock-prints (ukiyo-e). Van Gogh even copied a famous work by the ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Hiroshige in a tribute painting, adding big japanese characters (for extra exotic feel?).

I figured it was something like that...would you mind editing the article to reflect this, since you seem to know about it? (And for the record it's not "me" who means it, but whoever put that sentence there in the first place) DopefishJustin 00:53, Apr 15, 2004 (UTC)

The best thing would be to just erase the comment alltogether since it really has nothing to do with manga, but rather ukiyo-e (and I think it is already on that page). But I'm not familiar with this kind of pages, is it really ok to just edit myself?

I erased it. For the record, it is OK to edit yourself, that's the whole point of Wikipedia. :) DopefishJustin 23:31, Apr 16, 2004 (UTC)

It is difficult to talk about "manga in its modern form" because there are different types of manga with different history. 4-panel manga started appearing in the beginning of the century, influenced by the american newspaper strips of the time, and have changed little since. Modern story manga, on the other hand, has evolved slower. Story manga started to appear in the thirties, but the thing usually mentioned as the birth of modern story manga was Tezuka Osamu's "Shin-Takarajima" 1947. Tezuka was inspired by films (especially european silent films and american cartoons) and used "camera angles", zooming, several panels to depict a single movement, and so on. The readers were amazed and felt as though they were watching a movie. But that was a long time ago, and story manga has evolved and diversified a lot since then.

I have added a line about the custom of grading manga magazines by the school year corresponding to the kanji rading level. I believe that was the case some 20 years ago, but I don't know whether the custom is still current. Can anyone confirm or deny? Thanks... Jorge Stolfi 01:03, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

There are many copyedit mistakes. Also, as said before, the use of the word "manga" is very confusing. Is the plural "manga" or "mangas?" RoseParks 16:43, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It is often used like the noun "beer". Like other nouns like "water" and "gold", it is an amount which cannot be divided into smaller parts and cannot be counted. However, you can treat it like a countable noun anyway, if you use it with a different meaning. "Two beers" means something like "Two glasses/bottles/cans of beer", and "a tasty beer" means something like "a tasty beer sort". Because of this there are two plural forms for "beer", with a semantic difference: "a lot of beer" (a large volume of beer), "a lot of beers" (a large number of glasses/bottles/cans of beer). Similarily, "manga" generally means the medium at large ("Manga is important to Japanese society."), but you may also use it to refer to an induvidual product ("I'm reading a manga" as in "I'm reading a manga book").

... why is this paragraph in here twice? (See above rebuttal.) --Aponar Kestrel 21:00, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)

I've made a suggestion on Talk:Anime to change kana spellings for long vowels (shoujo, doujinshi, bishounen, etc) to match the Wikipedia:Manual of Style for Japan-related articles, which recommends short vowels in titles and macrons in content (shōjo, dōjinshi, bishōnen, etc). Please contribute your opinions there. Jpatokal 06:43, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I can see potential confusion with Manga Entertainment, but do we really need to link to La Manga at the top (see guidelines)? Is anyone really going to link to Manga instead of La Manga? A quick Google search for manga Spain has "La" there every time. I don't know enough about Spain to know if people commonly leave the article off, so I haven't removed it, but it seems like a stretch to me. DopefishJustin (・∀・) 17:30, May 24, 2004 (UTC)

In general the article is not firmly attached to the noun, and many nouns that can take the article are entered without it. Someone who does not know what "La Manga" means will probably not know that the "La" is part of the name, and may look up Manga instead. So I think that the link (which was not my idea BTW) is more helpful than harmful. On the other hand, the article does not even exist yet...
Jorge Stolfi 22:47, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

To the anon who keeps taking out entries under "genre", stop it. I don't know what your beef is with not having those in there (especially since, 1. there are existing articles on those subjects and 2. there are absolutely plenty of shonen-ai and shoujo-ai titles out there). Perhaps you object to them being called "genres" - I don't know, but you haven't given any reasons other than just insulting people, so either quit it or explain why you keep changing things.

Secondly, hentai is the common usage in English for the pornographic anime or manga (or however you want to define it). Whether or not it's completely accurate re: the original Japanese doesn't change its usage in the English-speaking realm. If you have a problem with that, you'll have to take it up with the American (and non-Japanese world) fanbase and the anime distributors that use the term, etc., not me and not Wikipedia.

Finally, rather that get into a big snit about every little thing you find wrong (which is almost completely the bulk of your contributions, try being civil. Frankly, I don't care what your opinions are, but you will be civil about it. RADICALBENDER★ 17:56, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

His attitude may need work, but his points are basically valid. I've reworked the "types" section to separate out the pr0n categories (which aren't really "genres") without turfing useful content, and make the use of terminology more clear. DopefishJustin (・∀・) 05:10, May 28, 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps the words hentai and ecchi are NPOV in English, but in Japanese this genre is often referred as seinen manga (成年漫画, not to be confused with the homophone 青年漫画: young men's comics) or simply adaruto manga (アダルト漫画, from the English "adult"). This may not be relevant to the English page if hentai and/or ecchi are the accepted terms in English ... but still, be warned that if you go into a Japanese bookstore and ask for hentai manga you will likely cause the storeclerk to either blush or laugh profusely! CES 06:58, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Actually, the words hentai and ecchi in English are very subjective and vague, and could apply to both kinds of seinen manga (that is, both "young men's comics" and "adult comics"), since comics in normal seinen manga magazines can be quite erotic (although of course not as expicit as pure pornografic manga). In Japanese, the word hentai means 'perverted'. Asking for hentai manga in Japan therefore means that you ask for 'perverted manga', which will probably shock the storeclerk, as stated above. The Japanese word ecchi is much broader, with meanings varying from 'pervert' to 'sexy' depending on the situation.

I wonder if this sentence (in the last paragraph of International Influence) borders on peering into the crystal ball and is out of Wikipedia's realm:

As manga's popularity grows and the manga market continues to expand, it may still be difficult for these cartoonists to break out of fan circles, because of their lack of exposure to a broader view of comics beyond mainstream manga.

I didn't want to take it out without consulting the folks who've invested lots of time into this article.

cluth 01:19, May 5, 2005 (UTC) Your right this needs to be made NPOV or removed. I did it as a compromise rewrite of anotehr POV statment that was the other way and it didn't work out quite right.

--Neilworms 05:11, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)