Which direction should non-Japanese manga be published?

C

Charter_Mage

Pokémon Master
I imagine that almost everyone who enjoys reading manga is happier seeing it published in it’s traditional right to left format.
But here is what I want to know. How do you think western comics in the manga style should be presented? Is it acceptable for a western comic to fully embrace the Japanese culture that inspired it by also emulating the direction it is read? Or do you believe that is just taking imitation too far?
 
I dislike the idea of American comics being called manga whatever the case, but semantics aside I wish I knew how to read things that are presented - or linked to - anime/manga. A couple of examples, Vertical's release of manga (it's flipped) and because of all my time reading manga in the Japanese fashion, It confuses me to no end even if somewhere in my head I know I should just read it like a comic. The second example being whenever I see fan comics online, I never know when they take their obsession too far (which is what I would see as US Publishers printing backwards as) in how to read it. Should I read from the right ? Should I read from the left ? ...

I went a bit off topic, but NO! I see no reason, apart from "being different" that an Western author would need to sell a comic backwards. It's taking the imitating to a pointless new low.
 
I pretty much agree with jayme, i dislike seeing manga being flipped but at the same time i feel it better if its a western release if they keep the normal comic book read layout...although i haven't read any western style ones to be honest.
 
I'd say it's quite pointless them printing it backwards.. if they want to do a manga type graphic novel they can but print it in the way their culture would read it.. I see no point it doing it backwards just because you want it to seem like a Japanese manga.
But saying that I don't see a difference in which way you do it.. it's not going to make a drastic difference in the end product.

But I do think it shouldn't be called a manga, graphic novel is surely good enough.
 
Doesn't bother me either way. I expect western comics to read one way and Japanese the other but whatever fits the project works for me.

Though I echo Jayme's mentioning of webcomics - it's maddening trying to read manga-style comics where they don't make the panel order clear! It's hard to tell when it's just one page on a website.

R
 
It's *beyond* retarded for an original English language work to be made in a right-to-left format. I don't even see how this gets beyond the "refuse it if it's completely ridiculous" part of the planning stage. English goes left-to-right, <i>end of story</i>. It's not a stylistic choice, it's not a choice at all - it's just the way the language works.

I think this is what made it hard at first for people releasing "flipped" manga - ideally, you want to release it in a left-to-right format once you've converted it to English, but messing with the original art is far too high a price to pay so I'm glad they basically don't do this now.
 
Is it acceptable? Very little isn't to me. It's not as though rules of language (something I don't like the idea of - Lynne Truss and all that. Language evolves, if you read some Chaucer it doesn't sound much like today's English) or style are set in stone. You could print a prose novel back to front if you wanted to, it'd still be readable. Hey, you can release a book in a sandpaper cover if you want to! :p

On a related note, when Yoshihiro Tatsumi's works were translated into English he reordered all the panels of his books so they could be read left to right but the artwork wouldn't be flipped. A somewhat extreme but different way of doing things.
 
My feeling is that it would be somewhat pretentious for Western comics to be reversed like Manga. Japanese comics were originally published that way, so english translations are simply remaining faithful to the authors intentions when they read right to left.

Since English is read left to right it seems a little pointless to reverse comics when it would be flying in the face of our own language. Just my opinion anyhow.
 
ayase said:
You could print a prose novel back to front if you wanted to, it'd still be readable.
Click to expand...
It's not a question of whether it's readable or not, it's a question of sense. The more I think about it, if you had a credible, artistic reason for it - then OK, but I'd be highly sceptical that someone could provide a good enough reason. If your reason (as it almost inevitably would be in the case we're discussing) is "hey, look how Japanese I can be!" it's retarded.

It's basically exactly the kind of thing that gets the whole of the fandom looked down upon, and deservedly so.

edit: this isn't <i>supposed</i> to be sounding aggressive, btw, so apologies if it is. ^^;
 
Not that it would bother me, i wouldn't buy it if it had £100 strapped to it

(well possible, but only just to only sell it again)
 
I agree with ilmaestro here. It's beyond stupid to have an English language comic read right-to-left for no other reason than imitating Japanese. Furthermore, I don't buy this "OEL Manga" nonsense. Manga is defined as comics from Japan.
 
Since we're on the subject of it, sort've...

Do you care if Light Novels are flipped? I don't, however, since I associate them with my manga they do look out of place.
 
I think that graphic novels drawn and written in western countries should be published in their own direction.

It is the Japanese's prefered, historical way and culture to read backwards to countries such as ours, therefore it should just be kept to their tradition, for themselves. When their books are translated to the English language, I respect that they are kept in the same direction as originally published as it suits the culture and such from reading it. For other countries to immitate them, probably because they would like their work to be passed as a manga as they know it is a great world-wide impact, is quite disappointing to be honest.

Other countries should just stay with using their own methods of drawing and writing. Surely it makes sense?
Reading Japanese manga in the opposite direction, for cultural reasons, just makes it more fun and something different and interesting. For other countries to just copy them ruins the whole interest of it, to a certain extent.
 
I know what you guys are saying, that it's daft just to imatate something you think is cool in any situation. However, it's a form of art. And who is anyone to say the there's a correct way of doing things in art?

I'm not even pro-right to left, but I'm not against doing it either. What I am against is saying something - anything shouldn't be done for cultural or traditional reasons. That was what I was trying to say in my earlier post, but now I'm more awake I can put it into words better. ;)
 
No, I don't think it's a form of art, in general. The words themselves are the art, the way they are presented is a convenience to the reader.

If the author could prove that it somehow added to the artistic value, as I said, then I guess you could make an argument for that. Generally speaking, though, English goes the way it goes, because that's the way it goes. You don't look "edgy" or "arty" for doing it a different way, you just look silly.

I know exactly what you're saying, and I agree it's generally a bad idea to just say "no, never" when it comes to something to do with either language or art, but I do feel that this is the exception that proves the rule.
 
I've never liked reading manga right-to-left. It feels wrong because everything else is read left-to-right in our part of the globe. That doesn't mean I think manga should be flipped, distorting the original version because the speech bubbles were intended to be read right-to-left, but I do enjoy reading in a less awkward manner.

I've always been too lazy to do some research in order to discover why mangas are read right-to-left.
Maes, since you're a true white otaku in every sense, can you explain to me why the Japanese read their comics backwards? Do they read everything in the same manner?

As for western comics, why should they be changed? Not everyone likes reading backwards. I don't really care because I've never touched a comic, but I have read a few manwha(sp?) and found it nice to read from the left without feeling like I'm doing it wrong.
 
ayase said:
I know what you guys are saying, that it's daft just to imatate something you think is cool in any situation. However, it's a form of art. And who is anyone to say the there's a correct way of doing things in art?
Click to expand...

Sorry, but it would appear to me that you are still half-asleep based on the subject. A book being published in the opposite direction is not art whatsoever. The drawings inside are the art, the magnificent plots of which the creator has produced is a work of art, but the way in which the book should be read is not art whatsoever and it never has been.

Western countries have basically read from left to right for as long as anyone can remember, and some other countries, such as Japan, have done so in the opposite direction for many years. This is not for "arts sake" either, it is just based on their style of writing, what makes their style of writing easier, and what they have adapted to over many a year.

Sorry, but if saw an individual in a library or book shop, lifting up a manga from its place and shouting "DEARY ME! THIS BOOK IS....IS.. BACK-TO-FRONT!! ....'TIS A FRIKKIN' WORK OF ART!!! MY LORD!! I'LL TAKE IT FOR DOUBLE IT'S ORIGINAL PRICE!!!", not because of the art inside, but purely for the fact that the book is in a reverse order as it is from a foreign country, then I would think them silly, and I think that most others would too.

Understand that this is just my personal opinion.
 
Aion: For many cultures with text which reads the other way round to ours, books (and therefore comics) tend to be printed "backwards". Quite a few major languages throughout the ages have been that way. I will generally assume English-language stuff is meant to go "forwards" (from my perspective) unless advised otherwise or in the case of translated manga.

Regarding the art complaint, I can see why when thinking of reading normal manga/comics/whatever with simple panel structures this seems like a pretentious condition. But I can certainly see an argument that some people might want to try something different and need to mess with the normal panel flow to tell a particular kind of tale or even make an artistic statement; I don't think there's any reason to needlessly impose ironclad rules on artistic mediums.

R
 
I have to say I’m of two minds on this subject.
As a bit of a purist, I must admit that I find it much harder to mentally invest in any comic that isn’t authentic, Japanese produced manga. And so I would probably recoil from a non-Japanese comic trying to masquerade itself as manga. And yet I first started wondering about this subject when I realised that I, myself, without thinking about it, always draw the panels in my own illustrations from right to left. Because I read so much manga this just seems like the normal way to do it.
So, I guess I feel that comics may be presented in whatever way the illustrator wants to draw them. Though if they are being drawn with the idea of being published, the author will have to decide how many they actually want to sell, because I think people just don’t like something trying to be something it’s not.
 
To be honest, i guess the whole idea with western comics going one way and japanese manga going the other never seemed to come to mind at all really until now at least, hah. A western comic usually goes left to right and normally always has, yet a western artist/author takes a stab at a manga styled comic and decides to go with the general manga layout of right to left instead? I'm not actually sure if that would really bother me at all. I'm looking at it this way, consider yourself Japanese and have lived in japan all your life. You've read through a lot of manga in your time and you see a western comic translated in a shop, you pick it up and you see its the other way round. You could consider the initial reaction similar to ours, strange, at least in terms of graphic novels, but would they see an eastern artist drawing a comic from left to right an immitation as well? The argument could happen there as well, but i expect they have a lot of left to right books there anyway, so which direction a graphic novel, or book takes, would be of no real concern.

If none of that made sense this may do ;p, I think that in terms of what your reading, it shouldn't matter at all in any regard. Why do you read manga? Why do you read comics? Is it the direction of which the book is read that takes you? or is the the plot/story/characters etc that takes you? Personally, story/characters etc are always going to be a must where-as the direction of which a book is read is, to me, trivial. It does nothing to deter the quality of the said graphic novel, and if it does, isn't that you mainly nit-picking above all else?
 
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