Should anime and manga be integrated into comics

Since the 1990s, Japanese comics and animation (manga and anime, respectively)1 have gained noticeable popularity in the US, to the surprise of even the Japanese themselves (see Kelts 2007).

Marvel has attempted to cash in on this with Marvel Anime and Marvel Mangaverse as well a the numerous Animesque shows but should it go further. For example there example have been many Marvel DC crossovers should comics and Anime do the same thing or taking it a step further fully integrate with each other. Since Marvel already has a lot of anime integration less focus on DC. Would it be a good idea to integrate anime into DC you have to admit there would create a lot of interesting plots both comedic and action based. Lets focus on the big three

Batman What if instead of Roanapur Garcia Fernando Lovelace was taken to Gotham forcing Roberta to go there instead to save him.

Having an expy to the Crazy police woman from Full Metal Panic Fumoffu. Anyone who has seen the show will notice a certain Jokeresque nature about her. So basically she would be a female good version of the joker but since she isn’t a costumed vigilante just a regular Gotham PD cop means she will put both villains and good guys on their toes.

It will be interesting to compare DC’s peek human martial artist with the super human warriors you see in anime (not dragon ball) such as Ranma, King of Fighter, Street Fighter, ect. I already have a theory that Batman’s status as the worlds greatest detective is detrimental to his martial arts abilities because of his penitent of taking the third option. Let say while training he was told to get something on the other side of a freezing river. One student would just jump in and swim. But bruce would find away to by pass that. Bruce would finish quicker and get a chance to learn more skills but the other student would gain durability and stamina from swimming in the river. You saw a bit of it in batman beyond while Bruces body was wrecked with the effects of old age the master he got to train Terry was flipping around an active volcano like it was noting.

You also get a chance to ki to explain batmans indomitable will and intimidation abilities. Bruce has mastered and understands ki manipulation but the before mentioned limitations plus his legendary stubbornness means that he is unable to access the advanced levels such as producing a battle aura, or using it as a weapon. People fell it boiling under the surface and get scared when he focuses on them and his higher reserves when compared to normal people allow him to resist telepathy or mind control since Psionics is just a highly advanced form of ki manipulation that involves tapping into certain natural ambient forces and shaping them through the lens of the mind. However other then that he reached his limit at peak human conditioning. It also doesn’t help that most anime fighter start training the moment they can walk while Bruce started at age 11.

So what would happen if say Jagi was hired to deal with batman or Geese Howard decided o set up shop in Gotham for a while.

What about Tenjho Tenge lets say recent rash of violent criminals and Meta human led in the direction of the Takayanagi Family, a clan that controls most branches of martial arts disciplines throughout the length of japan. Almost all major schools derives its art from the main line of the Takayanagi. In order to prove this he flys the Bat Family to Japan and enrolls them into Todo Academy.

Superman For Superman the obvious is Project A-ko we have two options either the an alternate universe or a future storyline.

Each one opens so many different options my favorite is the alternate universe because that would probably focus more on the anime while DC explains how Clark and Diana got married and end up in Japan. My favorite theory is Project A-ko happens after The Dark Knight Returns (the sequel never happened). Lois dies of old age and Clark eventually remarries Diana. After TDKR he refuses to work for the government any longer and is deported. He and Diana end up in Japan Clark changes his name to Hiroshi Kent Managi and Diana changes her name to Karina Kent Managi and they eventually give birth to Alison Managi or A-ko.

This could also lead to another Marvel crossover because popular theory for B-ko is that the corporate Lex in bit to stay ahead of the competition began having affairs with the female relatives of prominent companies including the daughter of a rival industrialist named Stark. This eventually led to the birth of his Grand Daughter Beatrice Daitokuji.

The reason I favor the alternate universe is because then they wouldn’t change B-ko evil seems to skip a generation. As it says in [[under project a-ko]] good is not nice apart from her obsessive rivalry with A-ko she’s not really evil. So if she and A-ko end up in the DC universe she wouldn’t do something like work for Lex Luthor because he would remind her of her father. Which is a good thing since her Akagiyama 23 is obviously based off of Tactile Telekinesis.

You would also get to see the heroes from a completely different view their not Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. They’re mom and dad and uncle Bruce.

You could also add Men in Black since this would be a Marvel as well which would add more possibilities if you say add Tenchi Muyo and Urasei Yatsura. Lets say the only difference between project A-ko and DC is that characters are allowed to age which the crossover crises never happened but other then that they are still the same so when A-Ko and B-ko end up in DC one of them casually mentions that the world was invaded a week ago and the heroes have no memory of this.

You could also have a knowledge is power B-ko could thwart an invasion by mentioning that the current crown prince and princesses of Jurai are on the planet, whatever DC universe would refer to Ryoko (a being strong enough to attack Jurai), and Washu (who is probably the equivalent of a celestial being) as, a galaxy police agent and a member of the prestigious Kuramitsu family as well as the Oni princess that invasion would run.

Future version would focus more on DC while changing A-ko and B-ko’s story.

Now for combat the obvious is dragon ball z but I don’t like that because I see Dragon Ball as less of a Martial arts series and more of a brawler series because while the Z-fighters have huge wells of ki they have control over it as entire episodes are spent with the fighters just gathering enough to fight. In a fair fight between Goku and Superman I would go with Superman and I don’t really consider GT canon. But I don’t give Supe an overwhelming advantage. Ultimately I believe there is no difference between Ki and Magic as both are shaped by the will and intelligence of the person who is casting the technique.

Also I like the [[science of superman version two Parapsychology and Noetic Scientific]] explanation over the [[science of superman pseudo-scientific and metaphysical]] one. So Superman would have an overwhelming advantage over regular goku. Though he would be stronger then SS Goku the tons of ki in the later’s body would mean both of then are basically glass canons making them even. SS 2 would fortify and strength Goku giving him the advantage but Supe can stay in the game if he fights intelligently. SS 3 goku has the same advantage over Supe that Supe has over regular Goku but he can’t stay in that form for very long. So Supe would have the advantage in a fight. though you could take it in a different direction Kryptonians are the descendants of the tuffles going by the fact that they absorb solar energy and Saiyans absorb Solar energy when it is reflected off of the moon.

The only Manga that I feel can stand up to Superman physically are Fist of the North Star and Shadow Skill because they are the only series that I’ve seen with fighters in the class 100+ territory with the skill to match as well as the ability to move at Flash Like speeds. Note they can only Flashstep for short periods of time both series mention that if the fighter moves at that speed for to long they will cause extensive crippling damage to their legs.

Shadow skill is out because Kuruda would be a long forgotten Kingdom in DC and Kosappo would most likely be long forgotten. If it does exist it would only be known by some out of the way tribe and only strong enough for someone to make it to Valle.

I would compare Superman vs Kenshiro to Superman vs Thor with the winner being whoever lost the last the last fight. the advantage is given to whoever has the home field advantage. If it is in the Fist of the North Star universe even though Supe will get a massive powerup because there is no ozone layer Kenshiro while maybe not a match for his strength is up there that plus the speed the complete knowledge of the Hokuto Shin Ken and the Muso Tensei gives him the advantage. Plus they would probably focus more on the after the end nature of the world maybe the heroes and villains had something to do with it.

In DC even though Kenshiro will still be the current master of Hokuto Shin Ken he would loss everything else. He wouldn’t even be as strong as he was at the beginning of the series as he would have no reason to be all the hardships of that world never happened and thus the consequences of those hardships never happened. So Supe would have the advantage.

like I said it would be a lot like Superman vs Thor as neither one would try to kill the other and after they lose they would just change their strategy and come back. Superman would focus more on ranged fighting for example.

But if people are looking for someone who could kill Superman look towards the villains Buu, maybe cell, Jagi and Raoh would go straight for the kill no questions asked.

Wonder Woman The only one I can think of at this time is Ranma ½ which could be used to introduce other amazon tribes.

An amazon was the one who created the Shadow skill so Diana knows the basics of the art.

Oh my goddess would be a good idea as well. I always felt that the DC greek Gods were both two powerful and less powerful then they should be. Since only the amazons still worship them the gods need prayer shouldn’t be a factor. Basically they should be equivalent to marvels thor incredibly powerful with basis of power but that is it. OH my Goddess would address that and also show Gods and Demons who are actually in power as well as how much more powerful that makes them. Especially the ones who require limiters.

They have the gods need prayer

What do you think and are there any other idea.

They could also replace the buffyfied Dracula with Alucard.

Fanfic recommendation Nabiki one half and Tsundere by Jim Bader

my main problem with doing any crossovers like this is pretty simple - american writers don't "get" anime and manga.

the average superhero book is very different from how most manga work. Most manga are very decompressed - most japanese authors aren't really in a hurry to tell their stories. Fullmetal Alchemist ran for 9 years. Bokurano ran for 6 years. 20th Century Boys ran for 7 years. Vagabond has run for 17 years and Berserk for over 2 decades and neither is finished yet. There's a lot of introspection, scenery shots, close ups of character faces, cinematic fight scenes, and lots of moments where there's little dialogue or narration.

By contrast most superhero books, even under the influence of manga's decompression, are pretty fast-paced. There's usually a lot more text than the average manga per page, with traditionally quippy fight scenes.

Besides that, there's an "essence" in manga that just comes from being a product of a very different culture. Different beliefs, character actions, cultural attitudes, different ways of expressing all that...these differences are part of what make japanese comics distinct and appealing.

The average american comic book writer is a western comic book nerd who grew up on supehero comics from the 60's and 70's and other nerd media like Star Wars. the dna of their creativity and interests is completely and utterly western. They simply don't have the sensibilities or deeper understanding of the characters and their cultural backdrop necessary in order to represent them in a way that geels genuine.

we more or less already saw this with the Attack on Titanx Marvel crossover. it has nothing of Attack on Titan's appeal at all. they could have been any generic giant monster and it wouldn't have made any difference.

the same thing was true of the mangaverse- it wasn't a genuinely japanese take on the marvel characters, they just took the most stereotypical japanese tropes possible and slapped them over on marvel characters with bad animu art. it didn't really capture the things that make manga appealing whatsoever. what marvel should have done instead was asked big name japanese authors to write one-shots or something- so we'd get actual japanese re-interpretations of these characters.

edited 21st Apr '15 12:03:28 PM by wehrmacht

You hit the nail on the head. I think it has gotten a bit better this generation since now you do have creators who are young enough to actually have grown up on manga and anime (Babs Tarr, the artist on Batgirl has slipped in several Sailor Moon references), but for the most part the mangaverse failed because nobody actually working on it seemed to have any idea what anime or manga actually are.

It was just extremely broad generalizations like "Let's make Wolverine a samurai and have Scarlet Witch wear a schoolgirl uniform."

I'm going to have to go with no on this one. Americans generally don't understand a lot of the things that make manga a different animal from comics.

Even if they did, they'd probably just ape the stuff everyone knows instead of trying to use it to make something good.

Americans generally don't understand a lot of the things that make manga a different animal from comics

Granted, the opposite is also true, and I'd argue the Japanese understand Western culture even less than we understand Japanese culture. Oh, sure, they'll embrace some outside traits happily, but the Japanese mindset, overall, is far more exclusivistic and xenocentered than the more racially and socially diverse American one.

Still, the situation will never change unless we, at both sides, start integrating both styles of making comics together. We should stop living in our own separate ghettos while telling ourselves it's better that way 'because our creators don't understand theirs'.

edited 21st Apr '15 6:42:30 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

I don't think it's really a matter of "our way of doing things is better" so much as "this is the way we prefer to do things." There's really no impetus for either side to "integrate" what makes manga manga with what makes American super hero comics American super-hero comics. That said, so long as Japanese manga is available in the US, it will likely influence US artists to a greater or lesser degree, and vice versa for US works in Japan (though likely to a lesser degree in Japan...Japanese cartoonists are pretty sold on the Tezuka derived styles they've been rocking for...well, forever).

And I think it's less a matter of US comics folks understanding Manga —I'm sure a lot, especially the younger ones, understand it fine — as there are a wide variety of factors that make storytelling in manga different from storytelling in American super hero comics. For one, frequency of publication; super-hero comics are fast paced because A. they're primarily action stories and B. they come out on a monthly basis, and need to get a lot done in their 22-32 pages. Manga installments generally come out weekly, and so can take time and digress over stuff, and give you fight scenes that go one for several installments. I remember feeling, back when I was in college and buying VIZ manga reprints, wondering why the hell Manga moved soooo sloooowwwlly.

I think every side of the issue needs to experiment and continue to evolve, and part of that means looking around and seeing what we can learn from everyone else. At the same time, I think each side wants to retain what makes them unique.

Oh, really? Because when I was reading manga comics in the early 2000s and picked them back up right before 2010(or rather, found some online), I remember being refreshed at how much managed to happen, how little they tended to milk plot threads.

Granted, the overarching plot would take years to finish "There's a demon over there, go kill him". But "Demon's monkey minion in my way?" Over and done. "Monkey minion unleashes quirky mini boss squad?" Done quicker. "Need to teach partner how to swim to beat member of squad." Done in two releases.

Granted, I liked me some superhero comics back then, but She-Hulk for example, seemed set up to keep her in the law firm as long as possible, with no end goal in sight. I rarely liked reading about the Avengers, so I was glad she left, but you think rebuilding her reputation after getting booted would be some overarching thing or something. Nope, just got referenced out of the blue and then went back into the ground. Again, I didn't dislike this kind of story telling. I liked the case of the week approach and anything that dissed Marvel's most overexposed team was fine, but seeing plot threads rapidly get resolved to move into new ones was still welcome change of pace.

Then again, that might just be my frustration for trash like Maximum Carnage, Clone Saga, Civil War et all getting issue after issue while better stories were left unresolved because their comics that didn't make 12 talking.

admittedly this is a much lesser problem now than it was like a decade ago. a lot of authors and creators were raised on the stuff and seem to get what makes it appealing, i was just pointing out that this was hardly the case not too long ago.

This isn't entirely accurate.

Some manga do come out weekly, especially the most popular ones serialized in magazines like Shounen Jump. so maybe that's applicable to those.

However many manga, including massive successes like Fullmetal Alchemist and Attack on Titan, were/are serialized monthly. Many of them like Berserk and Vagabond are still heavily decompressed, cinematic comics that aren't necessarily super preoccupied with having a lot happen in each individual release. The fact that their authors take frequent hiatuses show that there's a price to be paid for that in the stories move at a glacial pace...but on the other hand the material they've accumulated so far is some of the best work in the entire comics medium (vagabond is one of the most technically impressive comics i have ever read), so personally it doesn't bother me to wait for it.

ideally a good decompressed story manages to make each chapter compelling. This doesn't always happen and can sometimes be excusable if the material is godlike when read in trade, but if you can manage to make each chapter gripping you're doing your job properly. Naoki Urasawa is very good at this.

edited 22nd Apr '15 9:34:25 PM by wehrmacht

I remember seeing a Space Battleship Yamato poster on Iceman's dorm room wall from a X-Men comic from the late 70's, and there was an issue of Marvel's Star Wars from the early 80's that had a ringer for Captain Harlock in it, if that tells you how long at least some western comics creators have been looking at Manga. Apropos of nothing; just thought I'd share.

Yeah, when I think glacial, I think Bleach; when watching the anime, I could miss several episodes and start watching again, only to see the story hadn't progressed at all. Characters have been unconscious during a fight for what feels like months...

edited 22nd Apr '15 10:07:17 PM by Robbery

Bleach is an example of decompressed storytelling being done extremely poorly because it's a lot of time spent on things the audience probably doesn't care about, not to mention that the payoff past soul society tended to be awful.

it's bad in the manga as it is but even worse in the anime. adaptations of long-running shounen tend to milk manga content (which is already decompressed, mind you) for all its worth so they don't have to make filler as quickly because the manga is usually still running at the time.

i remember seeing this first-hand when my brother was watching naruto on netflix; the fight between gaara and sasuke dragged for like 3 episodes where NOTHING was happening; a lot of time was wasted on unnecessary flashbacks and recaps to save budget. having a long fight is fine, but things have to actually happen.

edited 22nd Apr '15 10:16:16 PM by wehrmacht

However, monthly manga (the high-selling ones anyway) often have more pages a month than American comics, sometimes up to twice as many.

You know how Japan has a reputation for making everyone work extremely long hours? Manga artists are regarded as extremely overworked even by Japanese standards.

I have no idea if this is still done over there anymore, but I think I should add that over in Japan manga were once published the way comics might still be doing in Europe (and haven't been for years in America), with several ongoing stories to a publication. Of course, those are huge by American standards, in the hundreds of pages...

And I find that somebody mentioned it. Probably should've read it.

edited 23rd Apr '15 9:56:25 AM by Aldo930

yep, and many of them are so passionate and dedicated to their craft that they go the extra mile.

takehiko inoue once spent the better part of a month unable to make progress on a vagabond chapter because he kept trying to figure out what the main character was going to say in a given situation. he only finally came to a satisfactory conclusion like 2 days before his deadline and somehow managed to pull an all-nighter to make it happen.

kentarou miura claims that including bathroom and food breaks he works 16 hours a day when he's making a berserk chapter.

Britain. That's how they're published in Britain. France has basically abandoned floppies in favour of albums, and I think Spain is there as well. Italian comics are published in a manner similar to America.

It should also be noted that manga artists have a *lot* of uncredited 'assistants' who do most of the actual drawing. I think Osamu Tezuka had like 20 at a time. This is actually a big part of why the whole notion of 'manga style art' even exists; since (uncredited) artists need to be able to move between series rapidly and seamlessly, there is a social pressure for a much greater degree of homogeneity in manga than there is in American or European comics.

Thanks for confirming that; I had a feeling it was still going on somewhere in Europe but can't be sure. The anthology comic used to be popular in the USA but eventually kind of died out in the fifties and sixties, and now the only people who do it are in the underground and alternative fields.

Still, the idea kind of-sort of survives in Japan, so that might be one thing American comics could learn from manga.

the assistants are pretty much what allow some manga to be so consistently polished and "on-model". vagabond, berserk, blade of the immortal, any urasawa work, etc would not have such lush and impressive illustrations if it wasn't for their assistants helping with backgrounds, lettering, inking, etc.

it's VERY important to point out though that this is pretty much just a time-saving measure. A mangaka knows how to draw just fine, they just likely wouldn't be able to meet a weekly or sometimes even monthly schedule and keep the book as high-quality as it is if they had to do everything themselves. i speculate that the fact that assistants can do some of the lifting is what allows mangaka to specialize in being character artists and excel in that particular area, which is why for example hiroaki samura has such strong figure drawing skills compared to artists in the industry.

you can think of it like animation where there's the heavy duty animators who do the key frames and the inbetweeners who fill in and help out.

edited 23rd Apr '15 12:18:27 PM by wehrmacht

I know that in the US, particularly prolific comic book artists have frequently worked with assistants, especially during the Golden Age. All the Superman comics until Siegel and Shuster lost control of the character were done by their studio, which consisted of a number of artists (once he had assistants, Joe Shuster, apparently, did very little drawing, much to Jerry Siegel's irritation) including Jack Burnley, John Sikela, and Wayne Boring. Batman comics were, I believe, also provided by Bob Kane's studio, pretty much entirely by his uncredited assistants, until Kane retired in the mid 60'. The bigger comic strips still often work like that (Peanuts did not; while assistants provided images for merchandising, Charles Shultz drew every Peanuts strip himself, for 50 years). Most American comics artist don't make the money that their counterparts overseas do, and thus generally can't afford assistants.

it's unfortunate because even just one dedicated, competent assistant would probably help the general art quality of a lot of books.