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Monday, January 22, 2001
Dr MM 1:38 PM

I posted this to my personal blog and as it's entirely anime/manga related, I thought I'd post it here too.
Hum, Kris? from Angry Babble said that she likes anime but manga and video games are the true loves of her life and that's why she was commenting on games so much recently. This has got me wondering about why I love anime more than manga.
Now, I love manga but my love of manga came about mainly from anime. I watch anime for several reasons. The main one is because I love the art. I've always loved watching animation. And, while Disney has some incredible animation, the plots are sometimes a bit lacking. Most other American animation sucks (although there are a few exceptions). Then I started watching anime and was astounded to find great artwork and plot lines to die for. As I became more interested in anime, I started becoming interested in manga as well. I started by getting the Sailor Moon mangas, and now I have a mini-collection of three series (Sailor Moon, Utena and Legend of Basara) as well as a few random volumes of other stuff.
Why don't I prefer manga when so much anime is based on it? Honestly, while the art is great and all that, I'd rather read the storyline if it's in a novel-style format than look at the pretty pictures and the minor bits of text. I'd guess this is the English major bookworm in me coming out but manga (even if translated into English) just doesn't give me the same "feel" that I love when I'm reading a book. I love books because I can imagine what's going on . . . I don't have it all spelled out for me. Manga, while it doesn't show you everything, is more detailed than a book and I can't imagine things as much.
I suspect another reason I prefer anime is because I can't read Japanese. I started taking Spanish for my foreign language before I discovered anime and by the time I wished I had taken Japanese, I only had one semester left that I needed to graduate. All of the manga I have, in order to read it, I have to rely on translations. And, as anyone who's done this knows, it's really hard to go back and forth between the translations and the page. While I watch all of my anime subtitled, it requires much less effort to realize what's happening. I've honestly gotten to the point that I don't even realize I'm watching subtitles half the time. I know I am because everytime there's a typo or grammar error I get jolted out of the anime world but with good, easy to read translations, I don't have to pay that much attention. I've even seen some raw anime and it's still easier for me to figure out what's happening than it is with the untranslated manga I have.
There's also the fact that manga is pretty impossible to find in my area. I live in Lincoln, Nebraska, home of the state capital, a good football team that the state worships and almost no multicultural aspect at all. There's only one place, a comic book store, that carries any serious anime/manga related stuff. And the few Japanese mangas that they do have tend to be stuff I have no interest in (Star Wars anyone?). They carry English mangas, but those tend to be expensive so I have to be picky about what I get. In order to get most my manga I have to rely on the Internet. And it gets pretty expensive to get an entire series (I paid over $200 for 27 volumes of the Basara manga -- and that was used). When one manga costs $7 and a fansubbed anime costs the same amount, I tend to go with the anime because it's much more accessable to me.
That isn't to say I dislike manga, because I love them. I may have become interested in Legend of Basara because of the anime, but I honestly prefer the manga as the artwork in the anime isn't what I call spectacular (plus, it ends after volume 5 of the manga). In order to become a bigger manga freak I just need two things: 1) more money and b) to be able to read Japanese. I suspect I'll always prefer anime though.

Sunday, January 21, 2001
Dr MM 11:52 PM

I watched a crapload of new anime today. The president of my anime club lent me a bunch of his new fansubs on Friday, so I spent today watching it instead of doing something useful (oh wait, I did laundry -- that's useful). So, here's what I watched:
1. Tenshi ni Narumon (1-2) -- he said it was kind of painful and I have to agree. I like magical girls anime but this was just .... bad.
2. Gokudo-kun (1-2) -- it's okay. I wouldn't mind seeing more but I'm not going to go out and buy it either.
3. Starship Girl Yamamoto Yokho (1-2) -- same as above.
4. Senkaiden Houshin Engi (1-4) -- Very, very interesting. I want to see more. I must see more. And there's something terribly fun about watching fansubs from a group that calls themselves "Slow as HELL".
5. Himiko Den (1-4) -- Of all that I watched, this is the one I liked the most. It was odd, yet really intriguing. I really, really must see more of this.