Two Random Interesting Quotes about Anime and Manga

[nenena]

From Right Turn Only:

Osamu Tezuka is imprisoned in an Ivory Tower. (In America.)

People love to discuss Tezuka. They love to talk about how important he is. And yet if you wanted an easily accessible path to enjoying Tezuka's works ... that'd be a bit of a stretch.

They publish books about his life, hold museum exhibits in his honor, raise him on an academic pedestal—everything except actually putting out his manga. You can have three Narutos a month, but trying to get a single volume of Phoenix is like pulling teeth. Astro Boy flickers in and out of existence on store shelves. Even an easily licensable short series like Princess Knight is relegated to "very special episode" status in one issue of one magazine. How is it that the most dependable producer of Tezuka's work (in America) is a boutique literary publisher that's targeted way above the heads of the kids who SHOULD be reading his stuff?

I don't know who decided to shut Osamu Tezuka in the Ivory Tower, but someone ought to let him out.

And from here:

[M]oe is an interesting issue, since it involves taking emotions that are among the most respectable a human can have -- the desire to protect and nurture -- and fetishises those emotions.

And for more random fun, here's an exhaustive list of manga-recs-for-comics-readers, and comics-recs-for-manga-readers, divided by genre. Awesome.

Comments

[nenena.livejournal.com]

I don't think it has as much to do with the quality of the stories as much as the artwork and the fact that it's old. I mean people go to the movies like mad in america,but how many average movie goers have seen "Citizen Kane" or "Casablanca"? You can barely get people to go see a movie that came out two years ago. If the tv watching, movie loving public doesn't have an interest in checking out classic movies, good luck getting them to read classic manga.

Good point. I've still never seen Citizen Kane, even though I know how it ends, and I've seen it parodied a thousand times over. ^^;;

Part of the animecraze in america is due to kids rebelling against the "childishness" of cartoons. Even though alot of the anime they consider so adult is just as childish.

LOL so true!