One Manga: the next webcomic site?

This is a very interesting development...

You know what they say about dark clouds and silver linings.

Meh, dozens of 'em already.

^ Because obviously I was not aware of the sheer number of existing sites.

Cross-pollination of fanbases (at least, more so than they are now), is hardly something to "meh" at.

Plenty of manga fans read webcomics already.... Megatokyo comes to mind.

^ Hence the "more so then they are now" bit.

Given the responses I've seen on their forums, it looks like a bunch of new webcomics are going to come out of this. This isn't just existing webcomics being relocated...

Also, just discussing this with one person is boring. We needs more opinions.

I think this is a worthwhile experiment.

The only way this would be cool or unique would be for it to be the same story, but every page is influenced by a manga style. There has got to be loads of people who used/use One Manga.

^ The only way for this to be unique...is for it all to be the same?

Uh...um...eh...er...ah...I don't follow.

^Maybe some original manga style, but yeah. One story told through several artists.

As interesting as that concept is (I think a few webcomics have skirted around it a couple of times), I doubt that will happen.

Anything's possible though.

Since it seems more along the lines of a place for people to upload their webcomics, I don't see why they would do an organized effort like that anyway. It's not for one comic.

On one hand, new webcomic archive means new webcomics means more stories to follow. Sturgeon's Law dictates that 90% of everything is crap but if there's going to be a lot of new comics then there will probably at least one or two worth reading.

But on the other hand, Western comics calling themselves manga don't have the greatest track record of being good. At all. There's something in the feel of manga that most writers and artists just don't get and settings regularly feature critical research failures because the writers don't know a damn thing about Japan except what they've gotten from anime and maybe half a year of Japanese 101. They'll pick up on the basic ideas of what makes it stylistically different from Western comics but miss the more subtle (and cultural) factors that actually make it feel authentic. Basically, the point is, they're shooting at the wrong target, they aren't writing what they know, and so their comics fall flat. I'm kind of afraid onemanga will end up as an archive for mimics trying to be manga instead of being inspired by manga. "Trying" being the key word there.

edited 25th Sep '10 12:54:57 PM by Luzerne

You'll note I referred to it becoming a "webcomic" site in the thread title.

It really comes down to how you define manga. Our page simply defines it as Japanese-made comics, although I suspect there's more to it than just that.

I suppose a relevant question would be asking you if there were any pre-existing webcomics you thought did fit your definition of manga and thus would belong readily on the site.

A manga is a comic made in Japan. There's nothing wrong with people from elsewhere being heavily inspired by their storytelling and art styles (hell, we wouldn't even have manga if cartooning styles were offlimits, because Japan got it from America first) but the thing is, you have to ADAPT it to suit yourself, blend your personal style and that of your influences, instead of copying it outright. And do your goddamn research, there is a horde of Western manga that set their stories in Japan (because that is where manga is "supposed to be set," which ignores the fact that they are only set in Japan because the creators LIVE IN JAPAN) and portray it wrong. Sometimes they do the research but there's still something really off about it because there's cultural values seeping in from the writer that just shouldn't be there. It's like Japan: Uncanny Valley Version. It looks like it, but it's not quite there, and it's unsettling.

The cheap bootleg edition would belong on that Onemanga too, mind you. They'd just be the junky part of it. If it's Animesque it'd belong. Megatokyo would belong (but I wouldn't consider that a good one either). Avatar would belong. Scott Pilgrim would belong. I don't have a lot of actual webcomic examples because I don't tend to stick with them for a long period of time because—like I said—they don't tend to be very good for various reasons. Para Ten is another one, which doesn't fit with what you would probably consider a standard manga, but it's got really strong Miyazaki vibes, it's drawn in a style reminiscent of sumi-e, and the whole way the story is structured just reminds me of older Japanese stories.

Also, you said "webcomic" but they said "manga." The people who go to Onemanga are all anime fans and the stories they're going to upload on there are stories they would classify as Western manga, it doesn't really matter what I might think it is or isn't. One upside to this is that that most of the comics uploaded will probably be conceived as stories with overarching plots and not gag-a-day, which are the webcomics I tend to go for, so if I sound like a naysayer I'm not.

Although I basically agree with what you're saying Luzerne, the only manga-labelled webcomic I've read is Paradigm Shift which is pretty good.

Well, this site has five webcomics labeled as manga. Edit: And here is Comic Genesis' manga list.

I also agree. The definition of manga is not as clear-cut as it used to be, and the boundaries that separate it from other forms of media are getting blurred by this. It doesn't help that there is now a distinction between the author calling it a manga and the readers calling it a manga.

This doesn't make our efforts as tropers trying to sort this stuff out easy. Our current rule of thumb seems to be to invoke Death of the Author whenever a webcomic writer calls his work a manga, and not label it such.

On a side node, Megatokyo is a pretty curious case: the creator doesn't define the comic itself as a manga, but does claim that if an animated version were made, it would be anime. Make of that what you will.

edited 26th Sep '10 7:35:52 AM by TotemicHero

Really? But it says "online webcomic / manga / doujinshi" on top.

Missed that one, so feel free to slap me. Even so, that's the only place where Gallagher refers to it as manga. Everywhere else on the site, he just calls it a (web)comic.

edited 26th Sep '10 9:57:20 AM by TotemicHero

I've looked through the whole " My original manga" thread a bit, but nowhere on it did I find any clarity on how they define " manga" there.

As far as I can tell by some of the entries posted, it's pretty much "if you make a comic that's trying to look manga-ish".

Whenever I see a board that insists on using the word "manga" instead of "comic" when it concerns user made content (that is not Japanese at all) it makes me feel kinda queezy.

Curious where they'll go with it anyway, unsure if it'll lead to anything good, but who knows?

Webcomics labelled manga? Does anyone here go to Smackjeeves?