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My life. Read. Or whatever.
This is the Edward Gorey version of my blog. Miracles never cease.
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Michelle Thatcher
- Manga Junky
- Hikaru no Go
- Fruit Basket
- Count Cain
- DNAngel
- Card Captor Sakura
- Revolutionary Girl Utena
- Trigun
- Innuyasha
- Detective Conan
- Kodoma no Omocha
- Tokyo Babylon
- Ranma 1/2
- Please Save My Earth
- Web Comic Script Hack
- Delusional Fanfic Author
- Clan Toreador Apostate
- Founder and Dictator for Life Emmeritus of Utah's Largest Anime Club (weird but true)
- Misanthropic Drain on Society
- Friend of P-chan
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Friday, May 09, 2003
I like anime. I do. I go to club, and occasionally I find time even when I'm by myself to watch a new show or an old favorite. I know all the buzz words. The three sacred otaku terms 'neko' 'genki' and 'baka.' But anime doesn't really do it for me. Hasn't for years. I've moved 'beyond' anime and discovered that it's all well and good, but what I really love is MANGA. Long live MANGA. I love to read it. I read it raw or baked or steamed or fried or whatever. I get it raw from manga stores whenever I travel to a market bigger than Salt Lake, I download scanned/translated chapters from dedicated fans who sometimes even manage to get it out only days after the latest chapter is released in Japan, I borrow titles from like minded friends and drool over them and they yell at me for getting them wet. I LOVE manga.
It seems far and away better than anime. If I've seen both, in whatever order, I nearly always like the manga better. It just does it for me. I'd marry manga if I could. To me, this seems like a wonderful step up from anime. More variety, more subtlety, more freedom of expression for the artist ... What's not to love?
The problem?
Two years ago, if I found a title that looked intriguing and purchased it, it was easy to go online and find someone who had done a text translation of it and posted it for all to cut, paste, print, and enjoy. If the Japanese was too much for me, I could count on someone of greater experience and exposure guiding me through the troubled waters. That's how I was able to read and understand lots of titles which were obscure when I found them, but are now considered standards. Titles like "Card Captor Sakura," and "DNAngel."
Now, if someone is translating, they're usually doing it for a scans group like Toriyama's World or Aku Tenshi. Groups like that seem to work their translators like mules in a copper mine. But while they're doing scans, they don't want translations of chapters being released before their official versions. So even though I own volumes 19 and 20 of Hikaru no Go, I can't seem to find text translations of them anywhere. So I wait. And I wait. And I wait while they produce four hundred fansubs of the Naruto anime. Now, I love Naruto. I do. It's one of the coolest manga series I've seen in a long time. I bought the books. But the pacing of the anime is reminiscent of Dragon Ball Z. And it's the exact same story as the manga with only very minor differences. Why oh why oh why do they think that people want to see a new episode of the Naruto anime every week when instead they could go back to producing thirty chapters a week of other MANGA titles instead of the eight to ten they've been averaging over the last thirty weeks. A year ago there were three or four new chapters nearly every day, and at least two chapters of Hikaru no Go a week in particular. Now I'm lucky if I get a new chapter every three weeks. It's hard to see this as progress.
It's been annoying on Toriyama's World, but now, Aku Tenshi is doing the same thing. They're fansubbing the DNAngel anime. I love DNAngel. The manga. It's gorgeous and thought provoking. The three episodes of the anime that I've seen have been extremely ... silly. No subtlety, little foreshadowing, and none of the dark and angsty undertones that make the manga such a treat. Just lots of weird artifacts that the boys have to neutralize Kamikaze Kaitou Jean style. It makes me want to scream! Two years ago Offramp took down all their DNAngel text translations, and since then I've been waiting patiently for Aku Tenshi to catch up. Now it looks like that will happen four days from never.
I guess what I'm really frustrated about is that I became such a big anime fan ten years ago because I'd become disgusted by the lack of variety in American entertainment. Anime was a definite step up. Now, though, I'm getting a little disgusted by the lack of variety in anime. Manga is so much more diverse that I thought, at last, I'd found my true media junky niche. Maybe I'm a snob, but I thought that other manga fans had probably made the same journey at some point in their lives. To me, fansubbing seems like a giant step backward. I'm doing my best to become better at reading Japanese, but until then, I have to rely on the kindness of strangers. It's hard when people I admire as translators who share with the unfortunate starving masses seem to regress.
Yep. I'm a snob.
1:48 PM
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