What Are Anime & Manga?

Okay, this seems like a very sensitive topic, so as usual I’m going wrestle it until it dies…
Manga and anime are well established and massive cultural phenomena in Japan, and they’re now booming phenomena in the west. There are many artists who are being influenced by manga and anime, which are popularly mediums confined to (or at least originating from)  Japan. Companies such as Tokyopop and Seven Seas have appropriated the terms, and are using them to describe original work from the west, and art communities such as DevinatArt are teeming with artists from all over the world claiming to be drawing ‘manga’ …including yours truly.
Consequently, the authenticity of ‘western mangaka’ or ‘OEL manga’ (Original English Language) or ‘OGM’ (Original Global Manga) are constantly coming under fire.

It’s a massive debate, so I’ll try to be as objective as possible to start off with at least. What follows are what I’ve found to be the most popular opinions on what Manga and Anime are, in order from the most extreme/narrow definitions, to the most general and relaxed…

1) Awesome!!!!1111
2) Shit!!!11
3) Animation or Comics in a specific ‘manga’ style.
4) Anime: exclusively animation produced in Japan by Japanese people. Manga: exclusively comics produced in Japan by Japanese people.
5) Animation and Comics created within or inspired by Japanese culture.
6) Animation and Comics created in Japan, or inspired by material from Japan.
7) A vague ethos to narrative illustration with its roots in contemporary Japanese culture.

In retrospect, a lot of different ways to describe what amount to two simple words, and I’m sure most people reading will already have picked the definition that fits their idea best. In an effort to ground ourselves in some sort of factual truth, here’s the most official evolution of the words themselves that I can compile. (I can find no primary sources to back this information, so it is informed by a very long list of secondary sources… if anyone can point me towards primary sources then I’d be particularly grateful)

Manga

The word ‘manga’ began life over a centaury ago, with a Japanese printmaker named ‘Hokusai’. He coined the phrase in order to describe a collection of prints that he published, named ‘Hokusai Manga’. The word is literally translated from it’s two constituent Kanji like so:

- Man (漫) has a meaning that seems to defy concise translation, and has been translated as many different things depending on the source. These translations include ‘involuntary’, ‘in spite of one’s self’, ‘irresponsible’, ‘random’, ‘subversive’, ‘desultory’ or ‘immoral’. The true meaning probably lies somewhere between all of these words.
- Ga (画) literally translates to ‘pictures’ or ‘images’.


From this, the company Manga Entertainment first lifted the popular translation of ‘irresponsible pictures’, which isn’t too far from the mark. Hokusai himself wanted to infer a certain moral irresponsibility upon his publication, maybe in a snide attempt to beat the critics to the mark.

Whilst being useful to know, I personally think this definition bears little relevance to what manga is today. Quite obviously, not all manga are irresponsible, or whimsical or any of the above. However, it does shed light on how the idea of manga was originally conceived, and where it developed from. What’s important is that manga at this point was a deliberate move away from the high-brow, to a more carefree and accessible form of storytelling. That accessibility and popular appeal remain very important features of the manga we see today.

One of the things that marked out the Ukiyo-e period of the 19th centaury that Hokusai operated within, was it’s massive influence on western art. Around this time, Japan was finally becoming accessible to foreign trade, and amongst that trade was a large amount of art. We see within Art Nouveau the impact that Japanese print making had (especially upon the composition of images which had traditionally been very constrained and central). So, influence across seas is not a new thing at all, as any historian of illustration would probably confirm.

The next big event to catalyze cross-cultural pollination was the Second World war, and America’s occupation of Japan. With GIs parading towns and cities, American popular culture flooded into Japan like never before. They brought newspapers, magazines, food, and most importantly (for our discussion at least), comics and film. At that time, comics were actually a rapidly booming industry in America, and weekly strips were published regularly in newspapers. Along with this, Disney was staring to make his mark on the history of animation, and his films were truly stunning to behold for the time.
Growing up at that time was a person whose influence on the growth of Japanese comics is undeniable, Osamu Tezuka. Whilst Tezuka’s influence was not the only that existed, it was a very strong one and as such makes a good example.

Tezuka was endlessly inspired by American comics, Disney’s animations, and other western culture, and putting what he saw into practice a hybrid style occurred that was informed by Tezuka’s native culture, and the influx of American culture. I doubt anyone who has seen his early work (or any of his work in fact) would be able to deny the obviously western-cartoon influenced look. Tezuka produced hundreds of comics and scores of animations during his life time, in his turn inspiring the creation of more of the same. With each step down the line, and with Japan’s slowly recovering cultural identity, the American influence became diluted. In time, it transformed into a uniquely Japanese set of archetypes, genres, clichés and popular subject matters.

This is where manga really began to take on the form in which we see it today. Hokusai’s carefree ethic, and often adult material merged with Tezuka’s re-imagination of American comics and animation, producing a medium that is as accessible as it is diverse.
To describe manga as a cultural phenomenon in Japan maybe places too much emphasis upon it. It’s more that it’s simply a part of life, as accepted and unquestioned as magazines and newspapers are over here, and with all the associated target audiences and the same unlimited range of subjects.

Anime

The word Anime was introduced to Japan during this time, and is from the term ‘Animēshon’ (アニメーション ). This is a direct transliteration of the English term ‘Animation’, which in Japan is often abbreviated to ‘Anime’ (アニメ). It’s worth noting that the word anime is also part of the French phrase ‘dessin animé’ meaning ‘animated cartoon’.

So, disregarding the current spread of influence back into the west, there’s the popularly accepted history… but where does this leave us? If anything, it complicates the question, introducing the idea that a cyclic process of influence has moved from east to west, then west to east, and now it seems is shifting back from east to west again. The question of cultural ownership becomes muddied and at the most extreme, meaningless. Let’s address our initial definitions of manga and anime again, with respect to the history that’s just been discussed:

1) Awesome!!!!1111

Well, that’s an opinion. It may be informed or misinformed, but by expressing it, nothing can be decided or resolved. It’s also meaningless to describe such a massive industry full of a vast amount of creative work as intrinsically amazing. Such a thing just isn’t possible.

2) Shit!!!11

Likewise. If you’re derisive of manga and anime, you’re dismissing the entire produce of a nation’s creative industry off hand. That can’t be described as anything but arrogant or ignorant.

This exclamation of extreme and absolute opinions on manga and anime are something I come across frequently. However, regardless of the stance taken, they can never be true or balanced opinions just because of the sheer volume of work that they describe.
Furthermore, I’ve come across people who go to an even greater extreme and claim that any truly good (or truly bad) comics or animation from Japan should not be defined as manga or anime. Because, they believe, those terms only describe crap (or great) work.

To be honest, either belief is just an absurd semantic confusion that boils down to the statements “good stuff is good!” and “bad stuff is bad!”. When you apply that kind of thinking to any creative industry, all you’re doing is singling out the material that you like or don’t like, and since it’s almost impossible to agree completely with another person on what’s good or bad, your personal definition of what the industry contains is meaningless to anyone but yourself.

3) Animation or Comics in a specific ‘manga’ style.

Okay, this one’s tricky. It’s true that there is a definable visual style to a lot of anime and manga, but it’s important to realise that this isn’t an exclusive style (or set of styles) even within Japan. There are many manga artists who work outside a recognisable ‘manga’ aesthetic, so if we use this definition, then we exclude many long standing manga artists, and that can’t be right. So we move on to the next definition…

4) Anime: exclusively animation produced in Japan by Japanese people. Manga: exclusively comics produced in Japan by Japanese people.

Here’s the real crux of the matter. Do we stop here? This definition implies a sort of Japanese ‘ownership’ over the words manga and anime, which seems to be the naturally correct opinion to take... they are after all, Japanese words, surely? Upon closer examination however, this isn’t the case. Were you to take this stance, you’d essentially be saying that a culture owns its own language, and words from that language cannot be appropriated by any other. But that’s a truly absurd idea for the following reasons…

English, to take one example, is a mishmash of French, Norse, Gallic, Latin, Spanish, and god knows what else. It’s a language appropriated from other languages. The word ‘vestibule’ was a French word originally, yet we use it to describe an entrance hall. Are French entrance halls fundamentally different to English entrance halls? The architecture and builder may vary, but they’re both the same thing, and we use both the word ‘vestibule’ and the word ‘hall’ in one language. So to say that the words like manga and anime can’t be adopted by the English language is to say that the English language shouldn’t exist in the first place. For a particularly strong argument, remember that anime is a word that originally comes from the English word animation (all the Japanese did was render it in their alphabet and abbreviate it). What possible logic insists that can’t we use the same abbreviation?

That deals with the words themselves, but what about the art behind the words? As far as this is concerned, we’ve already demonstrated that Ukiyo-e influenced western art, which then went on to influence eastern art again, and now we’re seeing western artist’s influenced by manga once again. Why stop the process? If you enforced an artistic embargo across cultures, then the world’s art would be stale and consumed by stagnant traditions.
And, if your viewpoint is an extreme one that claims that all such manga influenced art is intrinsically terrible (or amazing), then you’re simply wearing blinkers. There’s far too much of it to make such a sweeping statement about. Remember that in retrospect, a period such as this (containing millions of artists of all sorts of abilities and professionalisms) will only be remembered for the handful of outstanding examples.


So we come to the last 3 definitions, and my personal opinion on the matter:

5) Animation and Comics created within or inspired by Japanese culture.
6) Animation and Comics created in Japan, or inspired by material from Japan.
7) A vague ethos to narrative illustration with its roots in contemporary Japanese culture.

I believe that anyone can call their work ‘manga’ or ‘anime’, and they shouldn’t be ridiculed or criticised for it. Either way, the phrases have already been appropriated into English, so it’s quite useless to argue that such a thing shouldn’t happen. Even if they once meant exactly what a purist would want them to mean, general use has indelibly changed their meaning.

What’s more important than any ‘true’ meaning of the words, is what the person who uses them wants to imply. In my case, that is this:

Growing up, the only comics I ever read were the Beano, and the odd political cartoon. The only animations I’d ever seen were Disney, kids programs, and the odd super hero cartoon. In general, I really wasn’t remarkably interested. Then, when I was about 13, I had my first taste of anime, and I was entranced. I’d never seen anything like it, and I’d certainly never imagined that animation could tackle what I then perceived to be incredibly adult subjects. I then discovered manga and had a similar sort of shock. Since then, I’ve read and watched more manga and anime than I can remember. Far, far more than the number of non-Japanese comics and animations I’ve seen.

For me, it would be a strange kind of lie to not refer to my work as manga or anime. That is after all what I’ve grown up with artistically ever since I was 13. But surely that’s just being narrow minded? Personally, I don’t think my influences are narrow in the slightest.
I list my favourite artists as: Joshua Middleton, Taiyo Matsumoto, Jiro Taiguchi, Koji Morimoto, Hayao Miyazaki, Hiroki Mafuyu, Miou Takaya. With the exception of Middleton (whose work I have only known for a few years), these are all undeniably manga/anime artists from Japan. However, if you look up their work they are almost unrecognizably different from each other, and not easily categorizable in any way. With influences such as these, I personally feel proud to also call my work manga or anime, and I aspire to one day be with them on a list of someone’s favorite artists.