Chatterbox - Anime & Manga

Dude, people are joking. Calm down.

Most one-gender schools and colleges eventually went co-ed anyway. There were around 300 women's colleges in 1955, which has dwindled to around 40 these days. In some recent cases, like Wilson, it did face backlash from the established student body.

edited 12th Apr '15 6:56:26 AM by Logograph

This is the most surreal thing I've seen in a while. Aang makes a cameo.

edited 12th Apr '15 12:15:42 PM by TheHandle

HA! Now Avatar technically IS anime! Eat that, nerds!

...I don't see it.

It's the first person we see in the clip.

That explains it.

... Is that an actual anime series?

And on another note, why is it that manga are by default black and white (with the few exceptions being short segments within a larger chapter/volume, either independent stories or actual portions of the main chapter/volume), when European and American comic books have been full-color since the early 20th century?

edited 13th Apr '15 3:05:04 AM by MarqFJA

Keeps printing costs down I guess. Have you seen the size of their comic magazines?

No, can't say I have. How big are they? All I know is that tankoubon (basically volume compilations of multiple independent stories, chapters of a big story, or a mix of both) range between 170-ish to 220-ish pages on average.

edited 13th Apr '15 9:40:56 AM by MarqFJA

A TON of American comics are black and white!

Name one that is a relatively well-known title (not necessarily a major one, a la Marvel and DC), rather than something obscure.

edited 13th Apr '15 9:51:17 AM by MarqFJA

if i'm not mistaken weekly shounen jump is like a mini-phone book, aka elephantine in size. they're printed on really cheap paper too.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were originally black and white.

edited 13th Apr '15 9:54:25 AM by wehrmacht

Japanese comics have been black and white for as long as American comics have been in color,if my understanding is correct. The fact that they were black and white in the past is probably why there are still black and white today; it's tradition.

The original reason for this was twofold.

First, it is - or at least it was - cheaper to print black and white comics on low quality paper.

The second is because of how Japanese comics are serialized. In America, each comic gets its own...err, comic. In Japan comics are printed in large anthology magazines. Again, it's all about keeping costs down.

edited 13th Apr '15 10:06:02 AM by universalperson

I don't think that's how it works. But, after one gets used to black and white, colour becomes... unwelcome. Unless it's done extremely well, like in Blacksad.

Now that is a well-made comic.

By the way, why did early issues of The Sandman and Swamp Thing look so incredibly shitty?

I don't buy it. All those colored segments that get done every now and then show that there are people with the artistic skills to do a decent coloring job. Is it because Big Publisher wants to keep the artists squarely under its thumb and drive the costs for their hard work down? You've seen how abysmal Japanese animators have it in that article linked to a few pages ago.

Driving the costs down doesn't hurt artists. In fact it's kind of the best way to lower the price without hurting them.

I wasn't talking about the costs that the artists have to pay. I was talking about the costs of the artists that the company has to pay, i.e. how big each artist's salary and whatnot is.

The significant part of the cost for colour isn't there; it's in the actual ink and paper.

It should be noted that most mangaka have really strict schedules, to the point they may have few hours to sleep, so unless that changes, they isn't any time to color every page in a chapter.

Most. It's a wonder Berserk and Hunter × Hunter haven't been canned by now (I'm not a fan of either series and I am facepalming to what they're procrastinating doing their job on).

They're allowed to break the rules because their volume sales are always high enough to justify it.

And considered how jaw-dropingly detailed the Berserk artwork is, I suspect the former's not doing as much procrastinating as common wisdom would have you believe.

Mr. Berserk guy did indeed procrastinate one time because he was too busy playing goddamn Idolmaster.

That was critical research work.

Specifically, he was playing Idolmaster 2.

Incidentally, and we STILL aren't sure if he was joking or not, Miura commented early this year that he loved Side-M (the spinoff with MALE idols).