Hi!
Smigenboger: This thread really gets around. I mean, Nikov's latest comment even comes close to the terrain of furries, which is surprising, given that furries seem to be extremely rare in Japan....
Sinistar: Did you have to mention that "classic" of shounen anime/manga (Hokuto no Ken). I only saw a video game based on it at a friend's place in Japanese, and the stupid macho phrases in it made my skin crawl....
MrWiggles actually expanded a bit on the other fandoms who also have extremist subgroups. While at work, I remembered things like Star Wars fans vs. Star Trek fans, or Warhammer 40K fans. I have a mild example where they didn't cross the line, but everyone was nervous about it happening on an adult board I frequent: In the subsection of one of the reknown artists, a person started a thread wondering how Space Marines would fare in the fantasy world that artist uses as his setting: That fantasy world is an original world of magic and gigantic monster girls used for drawings and stories, thus not having any game mechanics or any stats you could actually base the evaluation on. Yet, people argued, sometimes even strongly, for the perseverence of the Marines (I personally kept things simple stating basically: 1. Space Marines are not cute. 2. The local inhabitants are cute. 3. In my fantasies, cuteness always wins. 4. Thus, the Marines have no chance in my eyes. Somehow, my argument was not really convincing them, though :) :) :) )
I think, there are fans that go overboard in any fandom, and anime and manga only seem special as the main stream commercial planners in Europe and the US have declared it the current boom: More activity means more profile and also more participants.
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Anyhow, I had hoped to see some opinions on the nature of manga, and thus withheld what I know. But I guess I should come clear.
Mind you, in the following, I am talking only about shounen and shoujo manga, thus leaving out things like lady comics, and I also need to point out that there are subgenres that may drift very far from the main stream. However, if you stay away from some subgenres, the information that follows is somewhat accurate about those two manga types which still dominate the market:
Shounen manga, in their classic form, are about challenges and beating challenges. The usually young male protagonist is confronted with some kind of challenge, beats it and then may meet the next challenge. Mind you, over the years, the outside circumstances may change a bit, but that idea of conflict and winning is basically universally there. The challenge can be a physical fight (e.g. Dragon Ball), it can be mentally (e.g. Meitantei Conan), it can be sports (sorry, don't know any titles), or whatever. Even the professional manga sometimes mentioned in the media often fall into that category.
A relatively common phenomenon with shounen manga is that they become open-ended and endless (e.g. Dragon Ball) - after all, the core idea is that of a repetition of challenges of increasing difficulty, so you just need to conjure up a new foe to start the whole thing anew. Mind you, there are those manga that do not turn cyclic, but there is a very strong tendency towards it. And there are several, as far as I know, that have reached 3 digit volume numbers (^_^;;
Shoujo manga, in their classic form, are about love stories, usually from the perspective of a young female character. Over 90% of shoujo manga tell stories about school yard love, usually first love scenarios where the plot is around the female protagonist finding the courage to tell the boy she loves about her feelings. That scene and his accepting her as his girl friend is usually the end of many of the manga, although there is some variation to that. While the horror manga, which for the most part are published in shoujo magazines completely ignore that rule, sports shoujo manga (e.g. Attack No. 1) as well as magical girl manga (e.g. Sailormoon) usually stick to that pattern. It is no surprise that Sailormoon ends with a marriage.
Given the nature of the central plot, cyclic shoujo manga are very rare. Usually, a shoujo manga story is just a part of a book (less than 200 pages) or maybe 2 to 4 books long. Sailormoon with its 18 volumes is a rare exception, beaten only by a few things like the unfinished Glass Mask (I don't know how many volumes, I only know it from rumors, including that the author has gone insane in the meantime) or Tokimeki Tonight (30 + 1 volumes without actually getting cyclic; instead we have changing main characters - first a female heroine, then a story about her boy friend, then her younger brother, and finally her daughter).
Mind you, there is variation as to how much the core principle is fronted. For instance, there is a strain of love comedy manga in shounen manga, which have a central love plot at their heart (e.g. Mamotte Shugogetten!) and minimize the challenge aspect, thus moving closely to the more episodic and somewhat stagnant love comedies in shoujo manga (e.g. Akumade Rabukome). So, you may actually find manga that really leave those core principles, but they are extremely rare and often become a complete independent subgenre by themselves.
As I pointed out, the horror manga form a special subgenre which usually stays independent of either shounen or shoujo manga and concentrates on the horror story narration, although the coloring somewhat changes depending on which kind of magazine it was published in (but probably not much, as the horror manga within the shoujo manga are also pretty nasty and not often about love).
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With these basics in mind, I want to stay true to my word and confess how I fit in with that. For various reasons, I have a somewhat peculiar psychological makeup. As part of that, I feel the need to have fictional characters whom I can sympathize with. After feeling sorry for the main character in the novels of Hohlbein's Enwor, I finally came across shoujo manga and found that I could sympathize very well with those girls, who are insecure and do not dare put their feelings into words for fear of being rejected by the boy. The manga focused on their feelings and thoughts and thus were exactly the diet I was looking for. And thus, I began taking an active interest in shoujo manga.
For completeness sake, I have to admit that Japanese popular culture eventually also invaded and dominated my sexual fantasies, but these two aspects are NOT related for me - the shoujo manga are there to sooth my soul, and my carnal needs by other manga and video games.
Deathworks
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Topic: I Don't Understand The Obsession With The Japanese (Read 26956 times)