Illustration of Taiyo Matsumoto's Sunny
This week we discussed manga, the blanket term for Japanese comics. I've read manga since I was in middle school, and I credit it for getting me back into comics for the first time since I was a young kid, as well as getting me so deeply into comics that I now make comics myself. Since then I've started reading many more contemporary American and European indie and small-press comics, but I know it all started in manga.
Manga has an interesting stigma in the US. Even though many, many people in my generation who are now interested in comics grew up reading manga, many people belonging to older generations consider it immature or just a bad form of art, especially in the art school community. I remember one of the times when I was first visiting Ringling, I mentioned to an instructor that I really liked comics, and when he asked me which comics I liked I couldn't bring myself to give an answer, because all I would have listed were manga and even though they were great comics, I knew that he would have either laughed at me or told me that if I wanted to be serious, I'd better drop the manga. Others had already mentioned this to me, and I was well aware. Nobody took you seriously if you drew manga.
Something was mentioned earlier in the semester that I found really interesting. It was pointed out that, unlike American comics, in Japanese comics there are huge, entire genres of comics made solely for women and girls of all ages. In America, the most manga sold of any genre is shoujo manga, the genre of love stories targeted at girls. I think it's very telling of the audience that the American comic industry favors, and why manga is so overwhelmingly popular in today's upcoming generations-- woman want to read stories about women!
Some of my favorite creators making manga and anime today are comic artist Taiyo Matsumoto and animator & director Masaaki Yuasa. They both have a very unique but beautiful style that they like to create in, and at times have collaborated to create amazing works. Matsumoto has authored many successful stories, such as Sunny, GoGo Monster, and Tekkonkinkreet (now adapted into an animated movie). Yuasa has worked on different anime series and movies such as Kemonozume, Kaiba, Kick Heart, and Mind Game. Even with such unique styles, the visual languages of the two work together exceedingly well, and recently they collaborated on a show called Ping Pong the Animation. The show is based off of the 5-volume series by Matsumoto, and was adapted and directed by Yuasa. It's easily the best television show I've seen in a very long time. The two creators are very contemporary and I'm glad that their work is starting to get more popular. They're often my go-to examples for when people try and argue that manga and anime are super homogenous and never differ in style.
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