5by8, #11: Anime and Manga II
originally written for and posted on Comicsnob.com [Dec ’06 – May ’08]
I think it’s about time to go back a revisit some of the earlier columns, and expand on previous points or take a look at the topic from a new angle. Column #2 way back in mid-December was “Watching Anime, Reading Manga” where I talked about how my manga habit was at least initially a by-product of my anime addiction.Well, I can safely say now that I spend more on manga than I do on DVDs (with the increased consumption due to this gig, it’s now something like 4 to 1 in manga’s favour)
In that previous column, however, I didn’t mention why I prefer manga to anime.
Part of it, of course, is that even before I could call myself a manga geek or an otaku (long before any of us knew what that word meant) I was still a nerd. This was back in the 80s, and we didn’t have nearly as many subspecies of geeks back then, but I was the sort of geek who read books. A lot of books. Now, in my 30s, I’m a manager at a bookstore. (Funny how things work out.)
Well, we also sell DVDs and music here, but that’s par for the course for a major chain bookstore these days. And I know quite a bit about CDs and movies, because I ran our music department for two years, before my most recent promotion. While I enjoyed that gig as well (and ended up buying most of my current anime collection while working amidst all the DVDs–something about actually seeing the item in the store everyday) my first love and biggest budget item are the books.
Enough about me. Let’s get back to the topic:
If we were to consider both the anime and the manga versions of a particular property, in some ways the anime would be better. First, it’s in color. It has a full soundtrack. There is a lot more bang and flash to the action scenes. But a TV show or movie, no matter how good, is still just passive entertainment. You sit in a comfy chair, maybe with a beer or five, and watch.
Books are participatory. You have to take the printed word, and play the story out in your head. A good author will provide quite a bit of the right kind of details, but we the readers still have to back that up with many other things from our own imagination.
One might think that reading comics, since they are illustrated, would be more like watching a movie than reading a novel. In some ways yes, but there is still a vital element of audience participation. I’ll point you to the chapter in Scott McClouds Understanding Comics, “Blood in the Gutters” for a more thorough explanation, but the gist of it is that while comics often give us a lot of detail (words and pictures) in each panel, the story is still told in a series of snapshots, and we have to fill in the gaps as we read. We still have to use a little imagination to get from front cover to back, and a skilled writer/artist will make use of this by having events play “off camera”.
Reading comics can be just as satisfying as reading novels, when they are well done. For some aspects of story–characterisation, emotion, the inner thoughts and feelings–I prefer the written or illustrated word, over the animated image.
Action is done differently but equally well in either medium, in my opinion. That may be a matter of taste. Skilful art can do a very good job of providing the illusion of speed and motion, and a single image can certainly show the pain of impact very effectively. If you need to see jumping ninjas and samurai and hear the pilots call out their robot’s special attacks, maybe anime has the upper hand– but for the occasional fist fight in a high-school based manga, a few good panels are enough to carry the scene and let us get back to teenage angst and the comedy of errors.
Anime is good, but I think once again the real trump card that manga has, is a matter of length. There is just more room in manga (since the production costs are lower) to tell longer stories. Even comparing a run of say 28 volumes compared to 90-some episodes (Rurouni Kenshin)– the manga has the advantage. An interesting thing about Kenshin (that you also hear repeated for things like Naruto or One Piece, which are also long running properties based on manga) is that the fans complain of “filler” episodes that the TV writers were forced to employ when they ran out of manga plots, while they waited for the writer to catch up and release additional books.
Watching Kenshin (via rentals) took me a little over three weeks. Reading Kenshin (also via rental) may take me six. We’ll see how fast I can plow through those books while also keeping up with the required reading for my reviews. (When I’m done, I’ll see about posting a write up as well.)
But even just a few volumes in, I’m finding I enjoy the manga more.
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When I next visit this topic, I’ll take a stab at more specific points of adaptation– both manga to anime, and also anime to manga. That’ll require a bit of research though.
