The reporter’s notebook

So your editor has given you an assignment to write about manga and/or anime, but you don’t really know very much about either. It’s never fun to be told to sound informed about something that may be completely new to you, but you decided to be a journalist at some point, and that’s pretty much going to be your job until you inevitably slide into public relations after all of the newspapers close. (They should have mentioned that in your orientation class or during one of your advising sessions, but you can probably understand why they didn’t. Sorry!)

There are lots of ways this assignment can go wrong, but there’s one that can really make you look dumb for a number of reasons. In your desire to inform people, it may occur to you to point people towards examples of manga and anime. That’s a good impulse, and it demonstrates a willingness to embrace the hyperlink as an informative tool, and all journalists will need to figure that out sooner or later after all of the newspapers and magazines become web-based instead of printed. (I bet your college offered a new media course, and I bet you took it, because you could surf the web for credit instead of just texting quietly under your desk in the lecture hall. Learning is great!)

But here’s a tip: don’t rely on the top search results for a title you’re writing about, because they’ll almost always point you to pirated versions of the property in question. I’ve seen this happen a few times in the last month via links that showed up in news alerts based on common search terms, and it’s been evident in those cases that the writer in question had no idea that there was a distinction between a pirated comic online and a licensed, published work. And in fairness, none of those sites are going to rush to tell the casual visitor that the site has no right to publish and/or broadcast the manga and/or anime, because then they’d be admitting they were stealing stuff. Now, you may not immediately see a problem with this, but I’m sure someone in your organization (possibly the publisher or, if it’s large enough, the general counsel) can probably tell you all about the ethical conundrum of driving traffic to an enterprise predicated on the violation of copyright and the theft of intellectual property. (Isn’t it great that the senior media ethics seminar is just an elective now? I heard those classes are hard! Daniella [All About Comics] Orihuela-Gruber assures me that all of her college journalism courses included a significant ethics component. Snark withdrawn.)

I’ll do a quick test by typing in the name of a very popular manga series into a search engine to see what comes up. The top link is Wikipedia, and your superiors probably don’t like it when you use that as a source. (I’m a blogger, so I can link to whatever I like!) The second link is a for-profit piracy site. It’s not until the third link that you get to someone who actually has a right to publish the comic, which you can tell from the fact that the first word in the link description is “Official,” which admittedly doesn’t immediately promise hours of fun, but it has that comforting sheen of legality. The next link is for an informational site, and the one after that is for a pirated version of the anime. Then there are two more links for pirated versions of the manga. It’s a mine field, isn’t it?

So what’s the quickest way to make sure that you’re writing about the versions that actually allow the creators to receive a portion of the profits? My advice would be to skip the search engines or at least to hold off on them until after you’ve done a search at a legitimate online retailer like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Right Stuf. All of these vendors list a publisher for every product, and then you can search for that publisher and link to the property description on their site. Some publishers share previews of many of their titles, though possibly not the specific title that you’re writing about. Some publishers even share big chunks of series online either for free or for small fees per chapter. There are also some legitimate online anime distributors that make a lot of preview content available for free.

Here’s the thing: if you can’t tell the difference between a legal version of a product and a pirated version, your editors certainly can’t. Your webmasters might be able to, but they’re overworked and cynical and people treat them badly. (Your editor is just cynical.) So it’s ultimately up to you to try and find out if you’re driving traffic to a web site that’s stealing stuff. Your best bet is to see who’s legitimately distributing the product you’re writing about and to pick your links accordingly. It isn’t as hard as it sounds, and you won’t look dumb.

And just as a quick addendum, if the online platform for your writing offers visitors the opportunity to comment on your articles, you should check those comments regularly. Sometimes people show up and mention that you’re driving traffic to a piracy site, and when you neglect to reply or modify your article, you look even dumber or indifferent to legitimate concerns about the outcome of your article.

License request day: I’ll take the usual

It probably won’t come as any surprise to you that I was a weird kid. One of the many, many ways I was weird had to do with beverages. Virtually anything one could imbibe just tasted better to me if it was served in a glass from my parents’ cocktail set, and it would taste better still if it was garnished in some way, preferably with a maraschino cherry. This applied to everything from soda (in the evenings, obviously, or as an after-school libation) to juice in the morning.

It’s not like I’ve turned into a huge drunk or anything. As I age I find that my tolerance is waning for such things, so I tend to drink for the taste of things. I don’t really get cocktail culture, and I die inside when I look at a restaurant’s “martini menu” and see ingredients best confined to the candy counter and not the bar. (I blame Sandra Lee. I could endorse a “Cocktail Time” segment in just about any cooking program, but not when it involves so much white chocolate liqueur, or any at all.)

But mixology does have its allure for me. As a result, today’s license request is served up by a handsome fellow in a vest with a shaker at the ready: Bartender, originally published by Shueisha in Super Jump, written by Araki Joh (which just sounds like a name you’d hear in a lounge, doesn’t it?) and illustrated by Kenji Nagatomo.

Bartender is about a guy who works in a tucked-away watering hole in the Ginza, mixing life-changing cocktails for a long line of customers from all walks of life. With his gift for mixology and the apocryphal wisdom of the booze peddler, Sasakura makes everything better through liquor. That, my friends, is a beautiful, uplifting message for a comic. Okay, maybe not, but it sounds like a lot of fun. It’s possible that 15 volumes of cocktails might be too much for the average reader, but we can all throw up over that bridge’s railing when we come to it, right?

Joh followed Bartender with Sommelier in Business Jump, so libations are clearly something of a fixation for the author. Sommelier sounds kind of like the wine snob’s equivalent of Black Jack, which could be all kinds of awesome, but I feel like I should only have one wine manga in the hopper at a time.

Go, vote: last chance!

Today is the last day to vote in Deb Aoki’s 2009 Manga Readers Polls. I’ve already voted, and I’ll resist the urge to stuff the ballot box in the service of my favorites, but I do like to call up my “Polls” category and look at all the covers of my chosen candidates.

Choice words from 2009

Maybe I’ll indulge in just one more look back on 2009. The bloggers at The Hooded Utilitarian assembled a list of their choices for the Best Online Comics Criticism for the year. I won’t claim I psychically predicted that Johanna Draper Carlson would notice that there are no articles by women on the final list, but I was sitting next to her during the critics’ panel at SPX, so it’s not like there’s no precedent for this observation. And it inspired Melinda Beasi’s warm tribute to some of the many women who write regularly and brilliantly about comics, manga and manhwa in particular.

To my way of thinking, that’s always the most desirable outcome of lists like these… people tossing in their two cents. And while I haven’t approached this with anything resembling rigor, here are some of my favorite comics-related think pieces of the last year:

“I Am Cynical (Orange)” by Chris Butcher: If you’ve just discovered Butcher through his excellent pieces on “10 Manga That Changed Comics” (here’s #8), let me reassure you that he’s been brilliant for ages. Case in point is this piece on the vicissitudes of distribution to the Direct Market.

“The Manga Hall of Shame” by Kate Dacey: Sometimes, manga hurts. And when that happens, it’s good to have a writer of Dacey’s caliber to speak up on behalf of the wounded. Here are this year’s inductees.

Matthew Brady’s pieces on Shojo Beat: Among the many reasons to miss Viz’s anthology of comics for girls is the fact that it also meant the end for this series of informative, enthusiastic, persuasive examinations.

“The Nana Project” by Melinda Beasi, Danielle Leigh and Michelle Smith: Three of my favorite manga critics geek out over one of the best shôjo titles ever published in English.

“The Patrick Swayze Manga Recommendation Guide” by Shaenon K. Garrity: Picking only one great piece by Garrity is like trying to choose the prettiest tulip in Holland. It’s just impossible. This one strikes me as emblematic of what I love about her writing: a great hook in service of some wonderful comics with her enviably flawless prose throughout.

The “Rethinking the Box” articles by Matt Blind: If Butcher is the go-to analyst on comic shops, Blind covers the general bookstore front in an equally astute manner. The link above points you to many of the articles in the occasional series.

“Reviewers Can’t Win” by Johanna Draper Carlson: I always enjoy Johanna’s writing, but I have an unflattering confession to make. I tend to enjoy her writing most when she’s indignant about something. Now, I know I shouldn’t wish for life to fling irritations in anyone’s path, but I do love the results.

“You And I Until The Day We Die” by Tucker Stone. Stone was one of the judges for The Hooded Utilitarian’s poll, so he wasn’t eligible, which is too bad. I think he’s an amazing writer.

So what are some of your favorite essays from 2009? Remind me of my egregious oversights, please.

Quote of the day

“I’d like to offer congratulations to the nominees and a guided tour of the back of Previews to the nominating committee.”

– Sean T. Collins on this year’s comics nominees for the annual GLAAD Media Awards.

The Shôjo-Sunjeong Alphabet: N

“N” is for…

What are some of your favorite shôjo and sunjeong titles that start with the letter “N”?

Birthday book: Real

Hey, today is the birthday of manga superstar Takehiko Inoue! How, oh how, shall I choose to observe this special occasion? Well, since I never pass up an opportunity to do so, I’ll suggest you celebrate by once again recommending that you buy yourself a volume or seven of Inoue’s brilliant Real (Viz).

If you’re sick of hearing me make recommendations of this kind, well, that’s just tough, because it truly is one of the best series of any provenance to be published in English in the last ten years. It just is.

And if that’s not enough, I’ll simply have to hit below the belt, because you know what? You people owe Inoue, not just for his own great comics, but for the fact that, were it not for Inoue, there might be no Fumi Yoshinaga as we know her. Yoshinaga came from the world of doujinshi, fan-created comics. And do you know what one of the series was that she repurposed to her own glorious ends? That’s right. It was Inoue’s Slam Dunk.

So if the fact that Real is amazing isn’t enough for you, if the fact that it’s Inoue’s birthday isn’t enough for you, do it for Yoshinaga. There must be sufficient incentive in there somewhere.

Upcoming 1/13/2010

This week’s ComicList gives us all an opportunity to dig out from under last week’s avalanche. There are still items of note, of course.

“David,” you may ask, “just how many comics about people who see dead people or other supernatural beings can one actually read?” My answer is, “All of the ones that sound any good at all.” Your answer may be different, obviously. This week’s entry into the crowded, often awesome genre is Lola: A Ghost Story (Oni) by J. Torres and Elbert Or. Bask with me in the enticing familiarity of the blurb text:

“Jesse sees dead people, monsters, demons, and lots of other things that go bump in the night that no one else can see. No one except his ailing grandmother — a woman who used her visions to help those living in her small town. The same rural community in all the scary stories Jesse’s heard as a child. Man-eating ogres in trees. Farmhouses haunted by wraiths. Even pigs possessed by the devil. Upon his grandmother’s passing, Jesse has no choice but to face his demons and whatever else might be awaiting him at grandma’s house.”

I’ve reached the point that I would inject Banri Hidaka’s V.B. Rose (Tokyopop) directly into a vein if such a thing was possible, but I’ve been a little slow in exploring her other licensed work. For instance, Tears of a Lamb (CMX) reaches its conclusion with the seventh volume. This just means that I can order the whole thing in one massive, presumably discounted order and spend an entire weekend reading it. A plot that features both eating disorders and amnesia sounds like a really good week on All My Children in its long-ago prime, and that’s always a selling point for me.

Go, vote: book about manga

I can’t believe we still don’t have a serious piece of popular scholarship dedicated to manga for girls and women. When such a tome is published, and if it’s any good, I’ll certainly vote for it in Deb Aoki’s Best Manga Book poll. In the meantime, I have no qualms voting for…

Go, vote: classic or reissued

It isn’t actually necessary to really love a comic to deeply admire the way it’s been presented. Case in point: my choice for Deb Aoki’s Best Classic or Reissued Manga poll:

I may have found the song lyrics unforgivably bad, but Dark Horse did a magnificent job on this book.