The Unique Issues of Manga
Or why I don’t see Manga as an alternative for fixing the American comics industry.
For those who don’t know, I’ve been more interested in manga for a very long time. This has been the thing I’ve been most drawn to before I started welcoming into my life American comic strips, which possibly come the closest to the Manga Magazine model. However to me the Manga has some serious issues, and this is why I don’t see it as an improvement over the situation in American comics.
In Manga, it has most of the issues that people complain about American comics covered: even in Shounen Jump the rights to the property are owned by the creator, although the magazine does have the power to Cancel properties that are not selling, making it impossible to continue the series. There is also an extremely large self-publishing community known as Doujinshi, although several popular ones went on to be published in some prominent magazines.
It also has the price issue under control, because you can find a magazine that is the size of a phone book for the equivalent of 3-4 dollars over here. However in the US they mainly do an electronic version. Some of us hold onto print versions, because of fears about disaster scenarios where a large portion of societies devices are broken, and thus we are limited to reading print versions. Which means some of us still have to contend with the cost of print.
If you are a foreigner in the industry, unless you know Japanese, then it is almost impossible to actually find work in the manga community in Japan, limiting you to less authentic places to place Manga. A bit like trying to get the Chinese or Japanese food experience in an American restaurant. This creates a bit of a problem, because the publishers that have the most to gain by making sure foreigners do know enough Japanese, are unwilling or unable to teach them the language. There is also a strong perception that they will remain foreigners. This is despite someone like myself wanting to integrate into Japanese and French society. Although presently French is looking more possible.
There is also an emerging phenominon of American style Cancel culture intruding into the Japanese market place through the influence of companies like Amazon, who is currently ask to be seen in court by the US government, for possible monopoly proceedings. I have long seen Manga as being more progressive than American comics in certain ways, do the amount of genres and creative freedom Manga has historically had over American comics. However there are more subtle but equally serious issues regarding the fact that creators frequently use a number of assistance, do to time constraints.
And yet me becoming someone’s assistant is the only way I could maybe get a job in the Manga industry, even after integrating into Japanese society from America. Now people might ask, “why not just try to be published in the US by a company that respects your creative freedom.” Fair point, except that most companies have a covert disdain for the Manga medium, despite the fact that many American comics are equally if not more “unrealistic” in appearance, such as well known classics like Charlie Brown and Get Fuzzy. To me I shouldn’t have to compromise with my own creative vision just to be published in an American newspaper, which I would see as a temporary solution anyway if I moved to Japan.
Again, this is one of the many non solutions that seem to often be proposed by CG adjacent Publishers on youtube. A lot of them seem to superficially prefer manga, without really understanding the unique issues that are present in Manga, that are just as severe.
This is why I’m MangaExit.