silence is deafening...

[Wp]

Whoa, it is *quiet* in here. I'm planning on making a manga-ish comic sometime in the near future (I hope) and was hoping the community would be a little more... lively... Anyway, I was just wondering where everyone was.

[Resolve]

on the 'space no one can hear you scream...

[JexKerome]

I have a theory this forum was created because once a bunch of spacer anime geeks kept the GD forum cluttered with anime threads. Then they got this one, and, of course, they left...

As it is, it's almost as useless as the CCAs forum.

[Wp]

Yes, I also noticed that they have failed to fix the description for this board. "Magna" indeed.

So, how about it? Do we start something back up besides "Akira is teh R0XX0RZ" threads? Make this board into something useful? Or do we just let sleeping dogs lie?

Although I can see a manga-ish style to your comic, I never really knew if you intended it to be manga, JexKerome. So, do you?

[JexKerome]

Yes, I also noticed that they have failed to fix the description for this board. "Magna" indeed.

So, how about it? Do we start something back up besides "Akira is teh R0XX0RZ" threads? Make this board into something useful? Or do we just let sleeping dogs lie?

Although I can see a manga-ish style to your comic, I never really knew if you intended it to be manga, JexKerome. So, do you?

I SO totally blame Rumiko Takahashi for my comic. SHE made me do it: change my style, learn new tricks, buy new tools, spend my money in anime and manga... and then when she came to the Comic Con on 2000 I couldn't get her autgraph. That sucked.

As for my comic being manga: I sincerely believe manga can only come from Japan. Why? because manga's full of cultural references, viewpoints and stories unique to the japanese psyche. You can make a great comic in japanese style, add familiar trappings and situations to it (Ninja HighSchool, anyone?) and STILL not get there. "American Manga" is as phony to me as "Japanese Mariachis": the technique may be there, but the cultural subtext that makes it unique is totally missing.

So my comic has japanese-style art, I more or less try for a mix of romantic and wacky situations, and I consciously try to stay away from japanese mannerism and references, like the pinky/thumb thing for boyfriend/girlfriend, speaking in japanese or eating japanese snacks like Pocky. But it is NOT manga. Even though, you know, my Guide entry says it is .

Which reminds me, somewhere I read that the "hand on the back of the head" posture for when one is embarrased (like the one I did on the Cluedo strip where I'm a ghost) is actually japanese; I haven't found the reference again, though, so I'm curious. Is it? And what other postures/gestures in manga are uniquely japanese? Anyone know? NiChiShi, I'm looking in your direction...

[Wp]

I completely understand where you're coming from. I refer to manga as an art style, however. I wouldn't try to touch Japanese culture because, quite frankly, I know nothing except stereotypes. So no Japanese school girls and such for me. Using Japanese phrases in an English comic is also one of my pet peeves. If you're not Japanese and don't even live in Japan, don't even try it. I adapt the art for my own uses, but in the end, I choose the art style because I like it. But only the art.

As far as the embarrassed hand-behind-the-head posture, I always thought it was a generic gesture. I think I've seen a couple of people rub the back of their necks when embarrassed, and I'm from the USA.

[JexKerome]

Glad you get it's only the art. I hate it when people say things like "sweat drops and big eyes are a cliche" when they're just part of the style. Why can't they get that? It's like saying "musclebound males and disproportionate females are a cliche" when talking about superhero comics!

As for these forums, I'd personally like to see them die. Another reason I think they're abandoned is that anime and manga are everywhere nowadays and communities that are more hardcore about them have arisen. It would be best to have the mods kill them off and use the space for either more "personal" forums or to give the general forums more breathing space.

After all, if we want to discuss how "Ultraman is teh roxxors" we can always go to the OT forum...

[ManyWorlds]

What bugs me is when people see something from America that has a style vaguely Japanese and call it anime or manga. I hate being anal, but anime and manga can, by definition, only come from Japan.

[Wp]

Well, I guess killing this forum would be a good idea seeing as how little attention it gets. But if we really want to use it, we wouldn't necessarily be talking about actual commercial series and stuff like that. It would be more a mishmash of discussing Keenspace-specific manga-style comics (like yours, if you want to be categorized as such, and Soap's Deity Permit) and drawing techniques related to anime (cell-shading, guides), etc.... Cuz people get annoyed even when posting anime stuff in Off-Topic.

[JexKerome]

Let them be annoyed!

And the manga technique discussion SHOULD go in the T&T forum. God knows cross-polinization is a good thing, so having such a discussion in a place where tons of non-japanese-style-drawing people can see it would allow for that.

I'm actually quite serious about this closing thing; maybe I should contact Wolf.

Plus, I do not read than a handful of webcomics, so discussing comics just on account of their japanese-style is not my cup of tea.

[Wp]

Yeah, let's just put it out of its misery. I mean, this forum gets almost literally one post per week.

[JexKerome]

I just got word that this forum's gonna be spared the impending demolition...

So... new paint, a throw rug over there, some puffy cushions by the wall... what do you think?

[Wp]

Er... why??? It seems we are the only ones posting in the forum for the last week. Previous weeks have been virtually silent. Isn't it easier to destroy than to create and maintain?

[JexKerome]

Don't ask me, that's the reply I got from the admins: that this forum's gonna be spared.

And I really hate to see such resources go to waste...

We need to brainstorm.

How do we inject life back in these forums?

[Brockway]

*injects boiling hot life into Jex's rectum*

[Wp]

There doesn't seem to be anything you want to talk about though, unless you want to continue our little discussion that "manga isn't manga unless it comes from Japan" deal. But then we really haven't found anyone to disagree with us, so there goes that discussion.

The only thing I can think of is to discuss topics that should belong in other forums, like the aforementioned manga techniques and tips. Otherwise we can talk about how <random show> is teh roxxorz, and I really don't want to do that either. If you want to gab about Kenshin, Macross, or Sailor Moon, there's really much better forums out there for these kind of things.

[Brockway]

OOoH! SAYLR M00N IZ TEH R0xx0RS!!! WAZNT THAT HAWT ON LAZ WIKS EP?



I agree manga is only manga if it comes from japan. From anywhere else, its by definition something else. Like whatever they call Korean manga style comics. Can't exactly remember the term though.

[JexKerome]

I've seen the term, but don't remember it. I've seen some ads from a chinese studio, though, and they're calling their work "chinamation", kinda like the american's "japanimation". Seems like everyone wants to have their own brand.

One of my friends' always thinking up terms for mexican animation, though I tell him it would be pointless unless he managed to impose a standard style on ALL mexican animators. I mean, there's no such thing as "americanimation", since there's no standard; at most you come up with "Disney animation" and "Don Bluth animation", which doesn't say much since Don Bluth originally hails from Disney; the fact that now animation also includes 3D adds Pixar and Dreamworks to the pot, making it more difficult to dump them together. No, it just makes the japanese style ven more unique, in that it is instantly recognizable and yet allow for limitless variations and permutations. I remember someone posting on the KS yahoo list that Antartic press was "the leading edge in american manga". That made snort. Antartic's work is good, but it is NOT manga.

[Wp]

Korean "Manga": Manwha

You know all that filth is for advertising. They caught wind of the Anime craze and are trying to establish their own craze. Like after Pokemon there were Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh and all that stuff.

Anyway, it's interesting to note the differences between American animation and Japanese animation. For one, Americans have cartoons that are "lower" quality art. This is because Americans are more action oriented. They would rather have solid colors with few shades and more motion than the still-frame, high-detail action shots in Anime (you know, the character in a pose with the rapidly scrolling lines in the background).

Well, I think I have a clue as to why this forum is being spared. Kisai mentioned elsewhere that deleting an entire thread takes a lot of forum resources and could cause lagging and connection problems. Think what deleting an entire forum would do.

[JexKerome]

So, lucky forum, huh?

As for the quality of American vs. Japanese animation, it actually started the othwe way around. Reading some articles about the beginning of some animation studios in Japan (Tesuka's Mushi, Tatsunoko) they all mention the limited resources and need to move away from Disney's style, which used a lot of cells for things like mouth movement (Snow White's infamous for the fact that the in the rain scenes each drop was animated separately). Mushi went for the smaller cell run that characterizes Astro Boy and Princess Knight, while Tatsunoko added manga motion lines and effect to the cells so each could be shown for a longer period and thus less cells were needed. Of particular mention, some cells of "Battle of the Planets" could hold for as long as three seconds!

Eventually the resource limitation ended and the japanese began to output higher quality animation, which the americans ignored until last decade. You can clearly see it, as they try to imitate anime details like adding shading to the characters, which in cases like the latest Godzilla cartoon look right down hideous.

Nowadays, you have shows that make good use of japanese tricks while trying to remain original (like Teen Titans, though it still looks too much japanese), and some that blatantly rip-off anime and totally fail at it (Martin Mystery and Megas XLR, two cite two examples).

The one to keep an eye out for, though, is the legendary Robotech sequel, Robotech Shadow Force, which we SHOULD be seeing sometime around winter 2005.