AnimeVice News

So our pal Jason Yadao, who writes an anime column called Cel-Shaded for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, recently announced that he's been working on a new bok called the Rough Guide to Manga (a part of the ongoing Rough Guide series of, um, guides). The book is coming out on October 19th with an $18.99 price tag, although you can preorder it for less on Amazon.

I got a chance to talk to Jason about the project, which sounds kinda cool. I don't know how many of you guys will want the book since it's aimed as more of a starting point (and I think most of our regulars are already pretty deep in the fandom), but it might be a good choice for that parent, friend, cousin, nephew, or other indoctrinatable companion who keeps meaning to get into it but doesn't know where to begin.

Anyway, here's the interview!

Anime Vice: How did the Rough Guide to Manga project come about?

Jason Yadao: Truth be told, it was really out of the blue. ^_~ I think it was around early 2007 when Sean Mahoney, who was Rough Guides' US reference editor back when Rough Guides actually had a US office (they've since closed that office, and Sean's moved on to DK Publishing), e-mailed me with the proposal. Apparently he had read some of the columns and reviews that Wilma Jandoc and I had written for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and, based on that, he wanted to gauge our interest in writing their manga guide. After a few days of thinking about it, we decided to give it a try. Although Wilma withdrew from the project after a few months, her encouragement and support throughout the writing process were invaluable to me.

Of course, it also meant that the task of producing a book slated for release in three countries -- the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia -- and possibly in other countries as well thanks to licensing agreements now fell squarely on my shoulders. Thing is, I've never really considered myself a manga "expert" per se -- there are so many other people who deserve that label more, people like Frederik Schodt, Jason Thompson, Deb Aoki, Carl Horn, Fred Patten, Helen McCarthy, Jonathan Clements, the list goes on and on. So the way I tried to approach writing this book was not as someone who knew all the answers (because believe me, I REALLY don't know all the answers all the time ... still don't, heh), but as a fan trying to learn more about his favorite series and the history and background behind the hobby he loves. It took many long days of research and longer nights fueled by iced coffee and other caffeinated beverages, but I finally managed to finish it after two years.

Looking back now, it was quite an experience. I started researching in earnest in mid-2007, right around the time the traveling exhibit "Tezuka: The Marvel of Manga" stopped off at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco -- rather appropriate given the subject matter. (If you look at the Cel Shaded column I wrote about that exhibit, you can even see a subtle hint I placed in there noting some of the first research I did for what eventually became the book.) I also wrote one of my first essays for the book (for the record, it was about Azumanga Daioh), in an Astro Boy notebook on a train heading from New Jersey to the former World Trade Center site in New York around October 2007 -- significant for me because (a) it was the first time I had been in New York since I interned at Newsday in 1999; (b) I actually visited the WTC's top-floor observatory back then; and (c) I was now heading back to the city to formally sign the contract for the book. And then, of course, there were all the manga I had to read to get up to speed on a bunch of different series. I still have all those manga today. It's ... a lot. ^_~

AV: There are a lot of manga guides out there; what makes this one special?

JY: It's kind of a comprehensive jumping-off point for anyone wanting to learn more about manga, really -- sort of a combination of a bunch of the guides already out on the market in one neat, compact package. One of the central features of Rough Guides' pop culture reference books in particular is something they call the Canon, 50 series that are deemed essential for anyone who considers himself or herself a fan of that guide's particular subject --stuff like comedy, science fiction, graphic novels, anime, and now manga. I can pretty much guarantee that there will be some disagreement over the series I picked -- heck, if you came back to me every month for a year asking me which 50 series were on my "must-read" list, I'd probably give you 12 different lists. But hey, anything that generates healthy discussion about manga is a good thing, right? (Just, umm, no flaming, please. Keep it civil.)

Aside from that, I think this may be the first time anyone's tried to weave together a comprehensive narrative about what makes the manga industry tick (starting in Japan and branching out to the rest of the world) that includes a look at the current state of the English-translated manga market. I'm particularly proud of the chapter on manga publishers, where I wrote profiles of pretty much every English-language publisher that was actively producing manga as of the time I was writing the book (and even profiles of a few that died along the way) -- it's the first time, I think, anyone's really tried to nail down that story in print. I also tried to make this book as current as I could (as of a few months ago, anyway), which made for some quick editing and rearranging as the final deadlines loomed -- I think we were able to get in something about Broccoli Books shutting down, and pull blurbs I had written about Anime Insider and the monthly Shojo Beat anthology, before the book went to press.

AV: What manga are you reading these days?

JY: Oof ... there are so many series I'm reading, and so many others that I've wanted to read but just haven't had the time to do so. There must be at least a hundred in that latter category. (Sorry, Del Rey, Tokyopop and even Viz to a certain extent ... I promise I'll get around to reading all of the review copies you sent to me and writing something about them sometime between now and 20X6.) But if I were to pick my absolute favorites, the ones I will stalk my favorite local retailers for until they get them in and run away with giggling like a giddy schoolgirl once they're in my sweaty little hands, are:

• Black Jack (Possibly the most accessible series by Osamu Tezuka in the second half of his career, a time when he was doing more experimental, mature work. Always fun to see the titular doctor's unorthodox treatments.)
• Barefoot Gen (Heartbreakingly gritty story of a boy's coming of age in the wake of the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima.)
• Oishinbo (Everything you ever wanted to know about Japanese cuisine, in the context of finding items for the Ultimate Menu and a never-ending battle between a father and his son.)
• 

   20th Century Boys
  20th Century Boys and Pluto (Double-dipping on Naoki Urasawa manga is always fun ... and since Pluto is only eight volumes long, it won't break the bank. One of my few regrets about the book is that I wasn't able to rewrite an essay about Urasawa and his work in time for publication.)
• School Rumble (Fell in love with the anime when I first saw it a few years ago; fell in love with the manga even more when Del Rey picked it up. Plus Jin Kobayashi visited Kawaii Kon, our local anime con, a few years ago. Squee!)
• Hayate X Blade (Cute girls, sword fights, and a moron teamed up with an ice queen. What more could you ask for in a manga, really?)
• Gakuen Prince (... except, perhaps, a series where the usual shojo manga tropes get turned on their ear, then amped up to 11.)
• Detroit Metal City (I love the whole otherwise-mild-mannered guy-turned-death rocker vibe. Rude, crude, and so very much OUT OF CONTROL. It's kinda like what I'd like to be ... to a certain extent, anyway.)
• Yotsuba&! (Thank you thank you THANK YOU Yen Press for doing a license rescue. Now everyone go out and buy 10 copies of each volume so we don't lose this uber-cute, ultra-clever series again.)

AV: Recession aside, why do you think manga has started doing so well in the last decade or so?

JY: I think much of manga's success can be traced to anime's success and the rise of the Internet as a media outlet. You have to realize that before the mid-90s or so, there was Viz and Dark Horse, and that was pretty much it -- and even then they were still focused more on getting into comic book stores rather than the mass market at large. But then you had several anime series gain traction among wider audiences -- Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, boom, boom, boom, boom. And when the publishers started realizing, "Hey, there's a market out there for people who want to know about these series' stories, let's start getting the manga versions of these series out there," that's when people started learning more about this thing called manga and that it existed. Soon, you had Tokyopop saying, "Okay, Sailor Moon readers, you liked that series ... maybe you'd like to try these series from CLAMP as well?" and pushing out of the comic shops into more conventional bookstores. And that eventually led to the "100% Authentic Manga" initiative, which caught EVERYONE'S attention because it was new and novel and oh-so-culturally correct. (To be fair, several publishers DID publish in the unflopped format, but not to the scale that Tokyopop did.) Viz, for its part, eventually launched Shonen Jump with DBZ and YGO, immediately capturing THAT audience, then added in equally strong properties like Naruto and Bleach ... and the rest, as they say, is history.

At the same time, though, a lot of the credit has to go to the Internet as a social medium and information library. Because of the Internet, you could link pockets of fans in different parts of the country (and around the world, really), find people who shared similar interests, and -- perhaps most important of all -- quickly share with one another other series that are worth checking out. You can still see that sort of community spirit today -- just throw out an appeal for suggestions for certain types of series either in a blog or on Twitter, and you'll get a really good discussion popping up as a result. You can get information about series coming out in Japan from someone in Japan and figuring out whether you want to beg/plead/otherwise bribe someone to license it and bring it over to the U.S.

AV: What do you think is the future of manga in the US?

JY: I think we're already beginning to see what happened in the anime industry echoed in the manga industry: one dominant publisher, a few others battling it out for second place, and a whole bunch of other, smaller publishing houses either finding their niche and surviving by catering to those fans or disappearing without a trace. On the anime side, we've seen Geneon, Central Park Media and ADV go under in the past few years, and I have a feeling that we may be due for a similar market correction on the manga side because there are just too many publishers out there. I honestly couldn't name every English-language manga publisher out there off the top of my head, and I wrote a chapter listing all of them! Plus let's face it -- while shopping on the Internet is nice, there's nothing quite like walking into the bookstore, stepping over the occasional "manga cow" in the aisle, noticing either a new series or a new volume of a favorite series, and picking it up because hey, it looks interesting to you. And with limited shelf space, there's no way you can put EVERY volume of EVERY series being put out by EVERY publisher out there. Something has to give.

The days where publishers would fling out a bunch of unknown series and hope something catches enough buzz with readers to make a decent profit are gone; to survive, publishers need to have some kind of hook -- a specific series or genre that does very well for them -- that provides enough of a sales boost for them to dabble in other areas. I see the future being not so much in growth of the industry, but more a maturing of the market. Take Viz, for instance -- I feel one of the major reasons an imprint like Sig Ikki can exist for them is because series like Naruto and Vampire Knight are doing incredibly well at retail. If you lead and establish enough good will among the fans, you can take more risks and be able to absorb more of the consequences of those risks. I feel some publishers are like Viz and either have the strong series or key alliances with the right publishers in Japan to survive; on the flip side, there are some publishers for whom I wonder when, not if, they'll fade from the scene. Don't get me wrong, I'm an equal-opportunity reader, and I think every publisher has at least one series worth checking out. But unfortunately, we're going to lose some good ones -- I still miss that extra layer of care and customer support that Broccoli put into its titles (plus that gap where a translated "The World of Disgaea 3" art book, if such a thing exists, ought to be will look even more noticeable now), and Wilma will forever curse the deteriorating corpse of ADV for its neglect of the Gunslinger Girl license. As has been said sometimes, though: It's nothing personal. It's just ... business.