BW Media Spotlight

With the current discourse about manga outshining comics, one has to ask…aren’t manga  “comics”?

“Manga” essentially translates to “motionless pictures” last I heard. In other words, comics. It’s not used to describe storyboards. I think. It’s comics from Japan. My comic-making program used to be called Manga Studio, but called Comic Studio in Japan. (Once animation was added they changed it to Clip Studio.) The use of “manga” for “Japanese comics” by the same people who can’t translate the Japanese word for “plan” has come to grow on my nerves. The same for “anime” and car…well, that’s a whole other discussion since it involves Western animation fans who throw a fit if you call Don Bluth’s work a “cartoon”, so we’ll open that kettle of fish some other time. The same for “comic” and “graphic novel”. Some people “need to get over themselves. Also, “Trekkers” is the people who worked on the show and “Trekees” is only a bad term if your boring and want to be “sophisticated” to a group who looks down on science fiction. You don’t see the “Whovians” complaining! Okay, now I’m going off topic. Or just off.

I use “manga” on this site because it has become part of the discussion, and thus I kind of have to. However, it’s grown to having French and Korean comics referred to as the French and Korean word for “comics”, a shorthand that only works if you know what “manwah” means. I’m only going by context. The only Korean I ever learned is “Opa Gangnam Style” and I’m not even sure that’s right and only have a mild understanding of what it means. (Referring to the Korean answer to Beverly Hills, I think.) The video I’m building this article from is by a fan of AMERICAN comics though, deciding that manga shouldn’t be called comics, or at least explaining why he doesn’t. He makes the case that they are in fact so different that in his mind it’s wrong to refer to them as comics. I don’t think his perspective is wrong necessarily, but I will go over why I don’t agree with it.

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