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Draconmouth: The Thoughts of Jaya Lakshmi |
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Manga is the only anime-related issue I read/see on a regular basis. Anime is once in a while. I am a fan of American animes, such as W.I.T.C.H., Teen Titans, and Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper-force Go (which is pretty good despite the long title), but Japanese anime is rare for me to watch. There are some uncut animes that I’ve seen, such as Card Captor Sakura, the Sailor Moon R movie, an episode of Inuyasha, several episodes of Trigun in anime club, several episodes of Bo-bobo-Bo-bobo, and a bit of Chobits. (We were actually seeing Chobits in anime club, but the president switched to Trigun because she was worried that the school head would deem it inappropriate.) But overall I care more about the manga I read and review for The Comic Book Guy.com rather than the animes that American companies are distributing. Why is manga more appealing to me? Well, it’s not television, for one thing. I don’t have to wait for or get up at a certain time to see it. I just have to go to the library and pick up my requests every Saturday. Or, if I’m lucky, I get to go to the bookstore and pick one out at random to read. Another reason is that I write for The Comic Book Guy .com, which reviews comic books. There is a comic book movies section, but no animes are reviewed. They are mentioned for manga like Fruits Basket, Yugioh, and Pokemon, but that is mainly to settle differences between the two mediums or to let the reader know what the state of the anime is in present day. And even before I became a reviewer I would visit to see what manga would be good and what manga would not be to read for simple reading pleasure. The third reason is that I can rely on translated manga to be more accurate than translated anime. 4Kids, among many other companies, has changed a lot of things in their licensed animes when they air them. And for some reason Cartoon Network runs their animes along with the faithful Inuyasha, Full Metal Alchemist, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. That’s another story altogether. But my point is that on channels with anime a viewer either gets the bad ones or the treasure mixed with the real garbage. The difference between that and manga is that while companies can license both good and bad manga, the reader supports only the manga they like. Some people will write a review or email to let the company know that they made a bad choice of licensing a manga. And given that manga has so many genres, the company doesn’t focus solely on horror fans or action lovers, but instead tries to reach all audiences. The fourth is that anime (and animated shows in general) try to play too much for laughs. Sailor Moon is a good example of this with the SuperS season. It lost viewers because it derived too much from the manga for fans’ taste. W.I.T.C.H. also suffered the same fate for the first season, unfortunately, because the plot with the enemies was very serious. Teen Titans is the only show I have seen where there are some episodes that are very serious with little to no humor and then wacky filler episodes to make up for it. Anime does have some good things, however. Sometimes they improve on the story or make it more interesting by adding new characters and showing different character development, as they did for Card Captor Sakura and Sailor Moon R. The beginning of Trigun in the anime is funnier and more ambiguous than the beginning of Trigun in the manga. The voice actresses for Tomoyo and Sakura in CCS have the cutest voices you’ve ever heard. So which is better? I personally prefer manga, but there really is nothing better or worse. They’re two different mediums. Bill Watterson didn’t want his Calvin and Hobbes comic strip to become animated for that reason. But it worked for Peanuts, so you never know.
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