Re: Googlez&!
Oh I see, never found that particularly interesting. Then again, we barely even covered that topic...Right, this dark mood with a touch of magic. Alchemistic experiments and nihilism. The night and stars. Gritty and dull. Somehow that always fascinated me. When I was younger I also enjoyed Cornelia Funke's ...erm, what's it called again? The one with the dragons. Oh, Drachenreiter. Right! Great book. At least if I remember correctly.
Wow, I wish it would've lasted a year. Almost a month after it I didn't care anymore. Still, the time afterwards was just brilliant. You know, that time after school ended and before everybody left for a year or started studying. Tooons of goodbye parties and general partying. Bet it was the same for you.
Hehe don't worry. But WOW, you're like the only person I've met who said what I was always thinking! Manga is, if done correctly, a perfect combination of words and images. HunterxHunter is a good example of that. Really, people underestimate manga, which is a huge shame. It's especially annoying when I want to tell people that I draw manga, but the reactions are always the same and I'm tired of it. Sure, I can't blame them. Anime in Germany don't help that image. Plus the lack of great manga published here...I still can't get over the fact that not a single Adachi manga found its way to this country...
Oh really?? How awesome! My cousin and I plan on visiting Tokyo next summer, so maybe we'll see each other there. :>
Well, the Realism is not what you would usually call exciting or anything like that. I am, though, quite amazed by the richness of words and language. You know, authors like Flaubert and Tolstoj are just so eloquent. Their language is full of color. And it’s figuratively blowing my mind just how vast their knowledge is, like, what they know about fabrics or certain trades, alchemy, etc.…
Speaking of alchemy, maybe you might find Ben Jonson’s play “The Alchemist” to your liking. (That is, if you haven’t read it already.) I’m usually not that much into drama but this one was really cool, IMO!
Lol, yeah, it was the same for me. (Both, the longevity of said feeling of accomplishment and the parties and whatnot.) That was a great time, really.
And I’m happy to hear we share that opinion. It’s kinda my wish to try and establish a certain niche for manga in the academic context, like it already exists in Japan and to smaller extent in the USA. That would be really great.
Manga still do have this – how we would probably call it here – “Dünkel” about them, like this sort of label 'it’s stuff for kids and/or girls in puberty'. Although admittedly this has become a little better in recent times with the “discovery” of the Light Novel as a medium to directly market comics for adults. For example, there are two or three Manga featured in Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Light Novel series: Taniguchi’s
Aruku hito (“Der spazierende Mann”, was it?) and Nakazawa’s
Hadashi no Gen (“Barfuß durch Hiroshima”) and I think there might have been one by Tezuka, I’m not sure about that last one though. (Might be confusing it with Carlsen Comics’ publishing of BUDDHA as a Light Novel Hardcover Edition.)
But I can understand the publishers. Budget still runs very tight on them, they can hardly afford taking risks, so they have to go with mainstream stuff, which is easily marketable or series akin to earlier hit series. – I think it was Carlsen (or Tokyo Pop Germany) who said they try to squeeze in one more experimental title (i.e. Seinen manga in general) once every quarter of their fiscal year.
Lately, there have been quite a few good serializations in my opinion! TokyoPop went for friggin
Punpun and
solanin (still think about asking them if they already have a translator for the former…), EMA got themselves
LIAR GAME and Carlsen publishes – besides great stuff like Nausicaä’s new edition –
Vinland Saga and
I Am A Hero. So I think there had been nastier times.
German anime industry is a whole different story though. But since I generally don’t really give a shit about anime (I have to cut back somewhere, I already read literally hundreds of manga) I won’t poke my nose into that matter.
Oh, and sure can do! If by then, we’re still both active around MH and build up a peachy bromance we could hang out one time. – Might be nice for you guys to have someone around who knows the language and – hopefully by then – knows some cool spots! : )
Another tl;dr post in your thread. Sorry!