Something Like a Short Bullet Point Autobio (71 posts)

Ha! Jeremy, that wasn't an April fool's joke-I only learned of 4chan recently, and the whole rickrolled thing....
...and it came from Achewood: http://achewood.com/

Cocoskyavitch (or is it just Coco?) - who or what is this 4chan of whom you speak?

I find that the best manga has a quality similar to the that which Charles Dickens novels had when serialized. Each chapter or volume, if you're reading them in collected form (tankoubon, if I've spelled that correctly), ends on a cliffhanger of sorts leaving you wanting more.

Most of the ones I like have some sort of sociological or psychological twist to them. One, which I haven't finished because the plot is so dense you can't leave gaps between reading but each volume is so mind-boggling you can't read more than one or two a day (I get headaches from reading it), is Death Note, which is a crime/supernatural drama (crime because it revolves around mass murder committed by a megalomaniac vigilante and the investigation thereof, supernatural because the crimes are committed by writing in a notebook dropped in the human world by a shinigami (death god), hence the title "Death Note".) You'll never say all manga is mindless or simple after reading even one volume of Death Note. Also, the art style is much more similar to the realistic style of American comics and graphic novels than is typical of manga.

When it comes to anime, I prefer anime originally made for film, like Miyazaki's stuff, or Satoshi Kon's. You should watch his Millennium Actress - it lightly plays with some of the concepts underlying Rashomon but in my opinion, much more effectively. (Then again, I prefer Sliding Doors to Memento, of two relatively recent movies influenced by Rashomon.) Some of the anime made for TV is good, but much of it is poor to dreadful and a poor representation of the manga from which it springs. The only advantage is that often fight scenes are easier to follow in anime form than in manga. For some reason, in manga fight scenes are drawn like stop action frames for a movie but with some of the frames missing, rather than the before and after (and possibly one frame during) typical of American comic book style.

Hi Lawless,
4Chan posts a lot of anime and manga; http://www.4chan.org/
I get a lot of students in love with both, and with video gaming, and generally with Japan and Japanese language and culture.

Hello Lawless.
Indeed, Death Note is one of those recent mangas which illustrate the fact that smart things can be achieved within this art.
Moreover, I found this one very interesting and ambiguous about death penalty, not ambiguous in itself, but in the various ways the readers or viewers react to this subject.
It reminds me that Japan has not yet gotten over this, and that Kurosawa's œuvre – in my point of view – goes in the opposite direction: individual highly valued, denial of sacrifice value…

I have yet to watch any Satochi Kon film, would you recommend Millenium Actress in particular for a start?

About 4chan, if you wander there, mind the fact that not all boards are work safe or family safe.
Some of the boards might even be an interesting observatory of human behaviors and excesses in this context.
And I would bet that Jeremy has a meme doctorate, by the way he talks about it. =)

Millennium Actress is the only Satochi Kon film I've seen. I don't remember the names of his others - I think the one just before is Perfect Blue, but don't quote me on it, and I know he's made at least one afterward but I don't remember the name of it.

I'd recommend Millennium Actriess, but keep in mind some scenes are ambiguous, and it's not always clear where the line between recreations of her movies and her actual life begins and ends. It's somewhat sad, melancholy, and romantic, but also fun and lively. The artwork is stunning - I'd say better than Miyazaki with one exception: Miyazaki makes everything look three-dimensional even though it's handdrawn; Kon's work is unambiguously two-dimensional. So Miyazaka has him beat on the realism of his architecture and persepctive.

Thanks for the head's up about 4chan but much of what I read/see on LiveJournal and a fanfic archive I frequent and write for isn't work or family safe either. It's an unfortunate side effect of reading yaoi - much of it is PWP (porn without purpose). I swear, I just started out reading mainstream shonen ai/BL (short for boy's love) manga and wind up reading manga with explicit sex scenes each chapter. (I'm thinking of Haru wo Daiteita, or Embracing Love, which is set in the entertainment/acting industry.)

I actually have all the Satoshi Kon films lined up, waiting to be watched. I've had them for almost a year now, but no progress has been made in this project.

The only Kon film I have seen was Perfect Blue, which I thought was really interesting. Having said that, it is now more than ten years since I last saw it, so it will be interesting to watch it again and see whether I still agree with my former self.

And stay away from 4chan, there be dragons. Not that I know too much about the place. I'm more of a Reddit addict, myself.

Lawless, is yaoi, aimed at women or is the market largely male?

The bit of yuri I've read/seen seemed geared just for the male, I assumed yaoi was the same.
Exploring the interest of some women, isn't nearly as easy as men. Hell, one needs to only peek into the unmarked shops aligning the dark allies of Akihabara.

I just never seen women in the book shops of Japan, checking out genres of hentai. Even in the very late hours when the questionable areas open up--it's only males.

4chan section "random" (/b/) tends to be best left unexplored.
As, what has been seen, can not be unseen.

I thought I'd addressed this, but....

Yaoi is definitely aimed at women. I think the mangaka (who are almost all women too) keep Japanese girls and women in mind when they create the manga and the international audience second.

I just read a good article on the meaning of the word "hentai", which means something different when used by American otaku than when used by Japanese. But in America, it means sexually oriented, not merely perverse - basically the same as "porn" (what in Japan would be called "ero") and is mostly, if not entirely, heterosexual in nature.

"Hentai" in Japan borders on fetishism.

"Yaoi" (called BL, or boy's love in Japan) are manga and doujinshi (self-published, sometimes amateur one-shots, often parody - this is where you see pairings of characters in non-yaoi manga such as Naruto and Sasuke (shudder)) revolving around male/male relationships. THey are a subset of shojou (aimed at teenage girls) and josei (aimed at adult women) manga.

The sweep of yaoi ranges from 16+ rated manga that concentrate on relationships (but usually make it clear that the characters are sexually active), such as Gravitation (set in the music and publishing industries) or Fake (set in the NYPD, of all things) to manga of varying degress of explicitness that is rated 18+, examples being Yellow, Haru wo Daiteita (Embracing Love), and Gravitation Remixes and Megamixes,the last of which are so graphic they're almost clinical in nature, not erotic, and are penned by the same mangaka as Gravitation is.

The men in yaoi are generally androgynous looking (other than their genitals - that looks typically male, LOL), or at least one male in a couple is. There's also a lot of extraneous flowers and sparkles, particularly around romantic scenes, whehter they're a confession of feelings or a sex scene.

In the US, the 18+ stuff (which is most of it) is most easily obtained either via scanlations (scans of material from Japan with amateur translations) or mail/Internet order. They're not likely to be carried in your local bookstore, although I suppose you could order them there. I don't know where Japanese women buy them. I expect they're displayed and sold more openly in bookstores than in the US, but even so doujinshi like the Gravitation Remixes/Megamixes are mostly sold at conventions and over the Internet.

There's another genre of manga showing male/male relationships that's even more likely to be one-volume, oneshot that is called bara (variously explained as "rose" or "bear"; take your pick) where the men are more muscular and "masculine" and which appeals more to gay men. There is some crossover, though, with regard to appeal.

If you want to sample, try some of the file sharing communities. 4shared, Megaupload, Mediafire, and Sendspace seem to be the most popular.

There are also manga that hint at m/m pairings but aren't about m/m relationships, such as Loveless, or which flirt with the idea and with gender stereotypes (cross-dressing usually features prominently) such as Hana Kimi (girl cross-dressing to attend boys' boarding school to be with a boy she admires), Ouran High School Host Club. (girl cross-dressing as a boy to act as a host in a host club to pay off a debt for breaking an expensive vase owned by the club), and Fruits Basket (cross-dressing).

"Yaoi" is the term as used in the US. In Japan, it denotes the hardcore stuff and is considered disreputable. They use the term BL or Boy's Love. "Shonen ai" is an outdated term that referred to manga from the 70s and 80s that concentrated on romantic relationships between teenage boys without any overt sexuality.

I know of women who read yuri. Either some of it is geared toward lesbians or they find it and like it even if it's aimed at men. I got the impression it was aimed at women, though, but I haven't seen any to speak of (other than the yuri hints in one chapter of Loveless, where fighting partners are linked for life and most pairs seem to have a physical and sexual connection).

I will look for and post the article on hentai later. I've also been reading about geisha for a story I'm writing, which has shed some light on Japan's apparent schizoid nature when it comes to sex, love, and marriage. Basically traditionally there's been no room for or consideration of love. Maybe that's why Gravitation, the manga that got me into yaoidom, is so popular; it is all about the power of love to affect even the most jaded and cynical, even if the love is between people who aren't supposed to be in love with each other (i.e., two guys).

Are Yaoi, Hentai and Yuri the modern versions of the Floating World? If so, give me Sharaku! What is the scholarship/buzz about he continuum from woodcut to manga?

Not with the Floating World itself - most is set in contemporary Japan, and if not that, then set in historical Japan or Europe - not usually in the US.

There's some ukiyo-e influence but the art style isn't usually very much like woodcuts.

I have seen some S&M yaoi that's pretty hardcore. It used to be that genitalia and public hair were omitted or obscured, supposedly due to Japanese obscenity law. Pubic hair still is usually omitted, but that may be for other reasons (androgyny, anybody) but genitlia is not.

I can't view 4chan right now anyway - for some reason add-ons are permanently disabled, which means no Flash. I need to switch from IE to Mozilla but I keep putting it off. I see enough porn/near porn anyway that I don't need any more. Although I must say I prefer drawn porn to photographic porn. More visually interesting.

Here's the link to an explanation of the use of the word "hentai":

http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue12/mclelland.html

Thanks for the link, lawless. There were a few passages that gave me pause, and made me wonder about the scholarship of the article.

Certainly, there are examples of some incredibly (by Western standards of illustration) explicit porn in Ukiyo-e, and some that would fit the "hentai" model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dream_of_the_fishermans_wife_hokusai.jpg
although, I understand through reading, that the term is not used to describe a certain kind of illustration until more recent times. It seems that "shunga" was the term used: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunga

I think that it would be interesting to trace the development of "shunga/hentai" manga from the woodcut onward. There surely is some connection in content, and even in style, and exploring those relationships seems like an interesting topic for discussion.