Arts in New York City

Is Manga Art?

When I was younger I used to have a huge obsession with manga and anime. The story usually went like this: I watch an anime that I particularly love; I head to the bookstore and buy the entire series; I become broke. Or like this: I read awesome reviews on a new series that just came out; I head to the bookstore and buy the entire series; I become broke. Actually these are only some of the remnants of my manga craze; I don’t own all of what I used to own because the majority of them I either sold on eBay or gave to friends. I think part of my huge love for anime partly came from the interest in the Japanese language. I was just getting into learning Japanese, and it was so fun and encouraging at the same time when I could even vaguely understand what was going on in the story. Fortunately now I’ve grown out of that joy and decided to spend my money on better things, but I am ready to take the adolescent obsession to the next level. Recently I have been encouraged to perceive art in a not as restrictive way as it could come across as, and that eventually leads to my ultimate question; WHAT IS MANGA? IS IT ART? AND WHY AM I SO INTERESTED IN IT??

In the most basic sense, manga are printed comics written in Japanese style – certain common story lines, specific drawing styles, text reading from right to left, etc. It is safe to say that manga is a very firm medium connecting the Japanese population of all ages, made possible by the variety in the genre and theme of manga – everything from action-adventure, romance, and comedy to horror, sexuality, and science fiction.

To the non-comprehender of manga, it might seem childlike and unrealistic, which is true – not all mangas bring the greatest fun or contain the deepest ideas, my own mother had a hard time trying to rationalize my obsessive behavior, and she would sometimes blandly put it in her most extreme way – as “useless picture books.” Of course I tried arguing with her about it, and my opinion on this matter still stays safe and firm; by no means does manga deserve to be underestimated as some children’s picture books. Wikipedia defines art as “the product or process of deliberately arranging symbolic elements in a way that influences and affects the senses, emotions, and/or intellect.” People including myself smile, frown, laugh, and cry over manga. It works as though it has some magical sense in altering people’s emotions; it allows you to first get just a taste of the world presented in the series you are reading, and then slowly pulls you deeply into the character’s emotions so that you end up either truly loving or hating them.

Then the non-comprehender might argue, is it safe to say that all things that bring changes to our emotions can be considered art? I am not the one to assert a strong yes or no to this question, but one thing I am certain of is that manga, just like much of the art we see in museums or galleries, contain deeper meanings than what is seen on the surface level. For example, I just did an assignment related to the relationship between the nature and the industry depicted in Chris Doyle’s work “Waste_Generation,” which reminded me of an anime/manga that I watched/read a few years ago, called “Wolf’s Rain.” The underlying theme of this anime was much like that of Doyle’s piece – the silent battle between the wolves(nature) and the humans(manipulators), both sides striving to discover Paradise, which is thought to bring an end of the dirty, corrupt, current world and bring about an idyllic society, where both the wolves and humans would live together in harmony.

Manga also allows you to imagine freely. You are by no means restricted to only what is happening on paper. One reason I generally preferred reading manga to watching anime was that I liked to imagine voices on my own, color the scenes in my own way, and bring life to each still motion the way I would like to see it. You have plenty of room to make your manga series “your own” rather than have somebody paint the whole thing for you.

Art and manga have much in common. In fact, manga is art. It features all the qualities one might look for in a more formal or traditional or even more “artistic” artworks (in their opinion). At this point I can safely conclude that my teen allowances weren’t vainly spent. They were spent for a healthy cause and greatly enhanced my emotional development and stability. And they are also making me consider reopening Pandora’s Box!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 9th, 2010 at 4:33 AM and is filed under Others. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.