5by8, #14: Acceleration
Japanese comics and cartoons have been around for decades. The occasional anime even found its way to American TV, more than once and at least once a decade, going back to Astro Boy and Kimba in the 60s.
Japanese comics, in recent years, have become just as much an American phenomenon and are slowly transforming the business, not by being revolutionary (in my opinion; they’re still just comics) but by making the most of existing trends in the print industry, and riding a wave of popularity generated by other aspects of consumer culture.
And the supply is merely rising to meet demand: We want more manga, we’re buying it, so more and more shows up on the shelves.
But where did the demand come from? And why now?
(cue another rambling, random walk down pop culture history with a few attributions but also a fair amount of opinion; I do try to be consistent, if nothing else)
Where and why? Cable TV, the Internet, and DVDs.
(There are other factors to consider, like the popularity of a certain plumber in an ongoing series of his own video games, but I don’t know that Mario is generating a lot of manga …maybe some dojinshi, but I really don’t want to know if there is such a beast.)
Manga rides piggy-back on popular anime. A TV show gets the folks interested in the manga (usually because someone like me is out there telling folks that yeah, the show is good but the original manga is way better) and while sooner or later we’ll have converted the guy or gal over to a being a manga fan, and dare I say manga snob, it was the TV show coming on five days a week that got them hooked.
The success of anime properties like Pokemon is the obvious first place to start looking; in fact, Pokemon has been gracing kids’ TV sets since 1998, so it may in fact be the first exposure to the so-called Japanese Visual Aesthetic that many of us had. Pokemon aired on ‘regular’ TV, though (via WB affiliates from 1999-2006) and it’s been marketed to hell and back and is as “American” as pizza by this point.
Just a few years further down the time-line is the broadcast in 2001 (on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block) of Cowboy Bebop. Here’s a neat trick that some of you might not have been aware of:
Bandai first released the Cowboy Bebop DVDs back in 2000.
Immediately after seeing something cool on TV, the kids could watch it again (or catch up on missed episodes) right away. The availability of anime on DVD (…and the website of that name has been posting updates since 1998) combined with the healthy “mainstream” (read: Basic Cable) exposure of really good anime titles have done a lot to kick the industry into high gear. Manga benefits because long-running favourites like Dragonball and InuYasha also have long print runs, and once the kid gets a taste, she’ll likely want more.
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We all know I love to reference Bebop in these columns, but other anime on CN pre-dates Adult Swim by about three years, starting with DBZ in the Toonami block, like Pokemon débuting back in ’98. Following the success of that craptastic action schlocktacular (why no, I’m not a fan, though I can see the pre-adolescent appeal) they also broadcast G-force, Gundam Wing, Tenchi in at least three flavours, Blue Submarine no. 6, and Outlaw Star, and I know I saw at least a few of these because I was (and am) a big fan of Batman: The Animated Series and it was airing right alongside for many of those years
…But Bebop always sticks in my memory as the title where anime came of age. (DBZ probably had a bigger impact)
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Anyone who has bought anime on VHS knows deep to their marrow just how much better the DVD versions are. I tip my hat to the brave and hardy fans who were making do with tapes, but man, I don’t see how anyone managed in the days before the dual-language options. (And dubs — for all their current faults — are so much better as well)
The DVD experience has done a lot for movie collectors in general, and anime in particular, but for the poor kid stuck in Peoria in 2000 without access to a specialty shop, how did he get his anime fix?
Internet.
Well, maybe not a kid; but a smart young man in his late 20s with no girlfriend, a decent tech job, a correspondingly large disposable income, and fond memories of Robotech? Behold the birth of the North American Otaku. The same web sites that carry anime DVDs also began stocking manga, so there you go. Anyone looking for info on his favourite titles would turn to Fan sites and semi-professional review sites, and all the DVD sites I’ve visit carry news and reviews on both. And if a story is really compelling, I know that I look for as many versions of the story as I can get my hands on.
Anime is merely the thing that opened the door for manga, since once the format took hold (and gained a foothold in the chain bookstores) it has taken off in leaps and bounds and is not only generated more and more licensed and translated Japanese titles being released each year, but also Korean manhwa and OEL titles. But I think that the existence of anime on cable and DVDs, along with the influence of both on-line shopping and on-line fan communities are the reason we see the revolution now, as opposed to 10 or 20 years ago.
